The Wolf Among Us is something of a dark horse in Telltale’s stable – a vivid translation of Bill Willingham’s Fables comic series. You probably haven’t heard much about Fables and that’s not surprising – fantastic as it is, it’s never received the same degree of attention that The Walking Dead has, and it’s certainly not as widely known as Borderlands or Game of Thrones. So what we have here is a game that most people are going to know exactly nothing about before they play it.
The story unfolds from the point of view of Bigby Wolf, a gruff but generally well meaning law enforcement type. It’s like this – the characters from all your childhood fairy stories are real, and were forced out of their homeland by a power called The Adversary. They all basically seek asylum in New York, using spells called glamours to blend in with regular people. Bigby is the Big Bad Wolf in human form, set the task of policing Fabletown and making sure no one exposes their presence.
What’s interesting about Bigby in comparison to the other Telltale protagonists is that he already has an established reputation. Most of the other Fables fear and outright hate him because of his violent past, treating him as a volatile loose cannon, and you have the option to live up to that reputation in glorious, bloody style, or walk a different path and try and redeem Bigby as a man of the people. The fact that Bigby has the ever – present wolf inside, glinting behind his eyes and bared teeth at every confrontation, almost as if to taunt the player into losing their cool and ripping someone’s throat out for smacktalk. And the antagonists are so well written, so positively smarmy and outright baiting, that it just seems so satisfying to let Bigby flip out and smack them around a bit. It’s like a part of you thinks well, they think I’m a monster anyway, I might as well live up to it.
The story is consistently thrilling, equal parts film noir and fantasy, with a hell of a lot of dry humour mixed in for good measure. It’s hard to fault it – save for a relatively weak third act that doesn’t quite live up to the rest of the game’s standard. At its very core, it’s a murder mystery, and an intricate one to boot. The story’s various interlocking layers and elements come together gloriously, with the cojones necessary to make the game enough of a hit to establish itself as a standalone entity (without the wildfire franchise popularity of its fellow Telltale titles).
Fabletown itself is beautifully realised – suitably drab and run down, but somehow still alive with colour. It really can’t be faulted on a visual front. It’s a comic book come to life, and the characters are all distinctive, unique denizens of a world halfway between fact and fiction. Where Telltale excels as usual is in the complexity of its characters, and Bigby’s volatile nature offset by his guilt for his past and his genuine desire to do good. Most Fables have some degree of that – The Woodsman, drunkenly clinging on to his past glories, Beauty and the Beast living in debt so they can afford their old lifestyle. Princes and queens forced to live in squalor amongst the mundane. It’s a compelling world, and even though The Wolf Among Us only really scratches the surface, it still delivers the most interesting cast of secondary characters ever seen in a game.
It makes for some excellent action sequences, especially with Bigby’s real self always threatening to make an appearance. There’s plenty of satisfaction to be had in losing your temper, and it will have consequences – more than once in my first playthrough I went further than I should have and regretted it. But the story is so intricate, and the overarching mystery so beyond you that it just makes sense to lash out at the bad guys every now and then (even if you don’t necessarily have any proof). Bigby, whilst lovelorn and long suffering, just doesn’t seem like the kind of guy to turn the other cheek. The violent options are always dangled tantalisingly in front of you when the shit hits the fan (though that may say more about my own state of mind than anything else).
A few words about the PS4 version – there’s no upgrade in graphics obviously (Not that it would have needed one in the first place) but the overall performance/frame rate seems much improved. It doesn’t make any real difference which platform you own it on – it’s a game you have to play regardless.
The Wolf Among Us is without a doubt a game that will stay with you forever – a gritty fairy story and noir murder mystery all in one. And if it doesn’t compel you to go have a look at some of the fantastic source material by the end, I’ll be very surprised.
Disclaimer:All scores given within our reviews are based on the artist’s personal opinion; this should in no way impede your decision to purchase the game.
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