Telltale games made its mark on the gaming world with 2012's episodic interactive storytelling triumph, "The Walking Dead." So, when they released the first episode of their next game series, "The Wolf Among Us," I was excited, but at the same time, I wondered if they could live up to the hype set up by the Walking Dead. Essentially, "The Wolf Among Us" is based on a series of graphic novels called "Fables," and it is its own story within that world. It seemed like it was going to be great, but I vowed not to review the game until I had played all the episodes, and with the release of the final episode of the season last week, I am ready to review. The Wolf Among Us is a downward spiral in many ways, but it is worth the money you spend on it. Let me explain what I mean.
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Combat in The Wolf Among Us is intense and interactive (1).
(Sorry about the change in font size. I messed up something). Since it is the least important thing in a Telltale game, I will start by discussing Gameplay. The thing about Telltale gameplay is that it is nothing revolutionary: It is a combination of semi-point-and-click wandering and semi-quicktime event combat, but in "The Wolf Among Us," Telltale takes their gameplay formula and makes it a tad bit more exciting. It is something that is hard to explain well, so let me put it this way: Do you remember Heavy Rain's approach to quicktime events? Well, the combat in "The Wolf Among Us" is like a watered down version of that. The phrase "watered down" has negative connotations, but I don't mean it in that way. The combat is exciting and fast paced, and unlike a lot of quicktime events, it makes you feel like you are performing the actions, not just watching them happen. |
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| Snow White is one of the stronger supporting characters (2). |
One thing that Telltale games can be counted on to do is to deliver fleshed out, interesting characters. And for the most part, the do that in "The Wolf Among Us." You play as Sheriff Bigby Wolf, the "Big Bad Wolf" from the fairy tales. His job is to keep the peace in Fabletown, even with the distrust he has caused with his actions in the fairy tales. The thing that I love about playing as Bigby Wolf is the fact that you can't make him evil or good. He is going to be a jerk, but you get to choose how much of a jerk. You don't get to change his character, but you get to work within the context of the existing character. Surrounding him, in the first episode at least, is a cast of memorable characters. I won't name any, because a lot of things I'll talk about will automatically spoil things if the character names are mentioned. But take my word for it, at the beginning, characters are fleshed out and memorable. But then, that downhill spiral I mentioned comes into play. As the series goes on, the characters seem less like the characters that you have worked with and at least somewhat influenced. As the series goes on, characters make dramatic, nonsensical turns with no purpose other than to make you make choices with the characters you have. For instance, there is a character who, in the first episode, is talking about how she wants to help the poor, and how the criminal justice system as it is forces the poor to go to crime. This is a character who wants the system to work, but thinks that it should never cause harm to those who are less fortunate. But then, a few episodes later, she is ordering you to burn down an impoverished woman's tree because she has been forced to use the tree to make glamour charms (which fables are required to own, otherwise they are sent away from society to "The Farm") without a permit. This made absolutely no sense. One minute this character was saying, "the system should try to understand their situations," and then the next she is ordering you to destroy the only thing an impoverished woman owns because she wasn't acting legally. It is obvious that this change only occurred so that Bigby would be forced to make a choice regarding the tree. This trend of characters changing to fit certain molds regardless of whether or not it makes sense continues up until the last episode. But I'm happy to say that in the last episode, this trend dies, and characters who previously seemed 2-dimensional became fleshed out. But it took far too long.
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| Bloody Mary will be getting a high spot in this years "Top Villains" list (3). |
I need to take a step back here to talk about a particular character that I was incredibly impressed with. In the third episode, a new villain is revealed, "Bloody Mary." She is the urban legend incarnate, the creature that comes and carves your eyes out if you say her name three times into a bathroom mirror. And she is by far the most well-done character in the series, and she is also the most consistent. Bloody Mary is the kind of villain that you want to kill from the moment she enters the picture. Every word she says is underscored with a hint of pure psychopath, due in part to her character's spectacular voice acting. Every confrontation with Bloody Mary is a high point in the series.
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| Characters will react this way, but it won't mean a thing (4). |
But back to the negatives. Another way in which "The Wolf Among Us," is a downhill spiral is in its choices. In the first episode, Bigby has to choose which place to go to first. Depending on which place he visits first, a character can die or survive. I thought this was a fantastic way to do choice-making: have a character's survival depend not on whether or not you choose to let them survive, but have it depend on something secondary. It was a realistic decision/consequence thing, and I approved. But I made the choice that allowed him to survive, and I never saw him again. Now, maybe my save file glitched out or something, but all I know is that this guy never appeared again. This is a trend that continues throughout the series. None of my choices seemed to matter. Ever. If I disagreed with my boss, she would just say, "Fine, we'll table this for now, but I'm serious! This is the way it has to be!" And then, things would work out the way she wanted, not the way I had decided. I wouldn't expect my decisions to matter every single time, but I would have liked them to matter once. I even KILLED a character, with my bare hands at the end of an episode, and the boss character was talking about how nobody was going to trust me after that, but it wasn't even brought up except for one reference to it in the final episode. No matter what choices I made throughout the game, it never had any impact, save for maybe one that played into the final episode.
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| Even in episodes where there isn't much tension, there will be at least one tension-filled point (5). |
In the first episode of "The Wolf Among Us," tensions were extremely high. There had been a murder, and it seemed to be a message being sent to the police department of Fabletown. Everything was shrouded in mystery, and more and more questions kept being piled up as the first episode carried on. Then, it ended with an absolutely shocking bang. In the second episode, there was also plenty of tension as the episode opened up with yet another shocker. More and more questions were posed in the second episode, and it ended on the second shocker of the episode. The first two episodes were fantastic, but then the third and fourth episodes were entirely filler episodes. No major headway in the mystery was made in either of those two episodes. Not only that, but it really seemed like the Noir focus was lost after the second episode. By the third episode, you are no longer seeming to act as a detective, but as an action movie star. That is a slight exaggeration, but I just lost the entire Noir feel that the game had by the third episode. It just seems like it isn't so much a mystery as a "finding this guy" story. If you are going to have a mystery tale, it kind of defeats the purpose to have the mystery basically solved before you are even halfway through, especially if the consumers of this mystery only find out what happens next after a two-to-three month-long stretch of waiting.
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| Episode 5 delivers on some fronts, but not all of them (6). |
The final episode was a major step in the right direction. It starts off on a high note, then enters into some spectacular, absolutely spectacular action sequences. Then it humanizes a character that was just a scumbag in the past, then it throws you into a trial sequence that is masterfully crafted and intense the entire time. The trial sequence is one where you have to think fast, or you will suffer for it. It is a battle of wit the likes of which we don't see very often in games. Yep, for the most part, the final episode was the kind of follow-up I had been wanting since the second episode ended. I thought the resolution to the main mystery was underwhelming, but it was handled so well that I can't take points off for that. But after the conflict is resolved, everything goes downhill. I would be disappointed if there
weren't ambiguity at the end of a mystery story. I mean, there kind of has to be a tad bit leftover for a mystery to make you think after the credits roll. But there is a fine line between healthy ambiguity and excessive ambiguity, and that is the way to describe the end of this season. The ending to "The Wolf Among Us" is ambiguous to the point of sheer and utter disappointment. Not only that, but there were several, several, several plot holes to be found by the time the screen faded to black. There were far too many threads left untied for me to have enjoyed the ending. Now, I can understand if these threads were left untied so that they could be addressed in the next season, but it really didn't feel like that was the case. It really felt like these many side threads were forgotten. I exited out of the game feeling like I did at the end of Season 4 of Game of Thrones (because I'm a book reader, and anyone who reads the books knows how they screwed up in the finale. I'm still mad about that), that is to say, utterly disappointed. I didn't feel like I'd gotten what was promised to me throughout the series. Like I said, the final episode is fantastic, but it severely under delivers at the end, where it is most important that it makes a good impression.
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| The Wolf Among Us will make you feel what it wants you to feel, have no doubt (7). |
So, there you have it. The Wolf Among Us does a lot of things right, but it also does a lot wrong, and it fails to deliver on a lot. I have really ragged on this game in this review, but I loved playing it, and it is well worth the cost despite the many gripes I have with it. You know how it is, you have complaints, and those complaints give you infinitely more to type about than the praises. Its just the way it works. Yes, there were many flaws with The Wolf Among Us, but it is well worth the cost of admission. For most of the time, the characters are fantastic and tensions are high. And all throughout, the gameplay (though not entirely important in a Telltale game) is well done. If you play The Wolf Among Us, your jaw will drop and you will gasp out loud (as my roommate can tell you, having been in the room when I got to the major shocker at the end of episode 2). You will feel anxiety and sadness, and you will feel anger and spite at some of the villains, and you will feel utterly fulfilled when you get to confront certain characters. It is a game that will tug at your emotions in a variety of directions, but it is a game that will not leave you satisfied. All in all, this has been a difficult game to give a score to, because of the nature of connotations in certain number scores. But in the end, I have decided that The Wolf Among Us gets an...
8/10
Just think of it as in the higher registers of the 8-range.
Excellent work once again, Telltale Games, Excellent work.
Picture Sources:
Cover:
www.pcgamer.com
(1):
www.blog.gamingdragons.com
(2):
www.wegotthiscovered.com
(3):
www.gameinformer9.com
(4):
www.dualshockers.com
(5):
www.destructoid.com
(6):
www.en.softonic.com
(7):
www.hardcoregamer.com
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