Warning: This article is split into non-spoiler/spoiler sections, or no-shark/shark if you prefer. This here is the non-spoiler bit (other than the usual review-level brief overview stuff). Further down there’s some more bold text and past that it’s shark alarms as far as the eye can see.
Welcome, fellow mundies. A few disclaimers: I have never read the Fables comics. In fact, I only learned of their existence about four days ago. I’d seen the title in Dave’s Comics (if you are not Brighton-familiar, you can substitute that for ‘comic book shops’) but never paid it any real attention. Over the course of the few hours it took me to play through Episode 1 of The Wolf Among Us I learned very quickly how foolish that was, as I fell a little bit in love with its world and the characters in it.
It does, however, mean that I am no expert in what I just played. Just a very new fan. In fact I’m pretty sure that there were some bits I didn’t fully understand, so I’m writing this from a place of interest rather than authority. Ideally, I’d like the comments section of this article to be a place where we can have a bit of a chat about the episodes as they’re released, but I also understand that the nature of making yet another gaming blog is that I might just be talking to myself. I’m fine with that, but if you do feel the desire to contribute, please keep “I’ve read the comics so I know that…” spoilers out of the equation, because I want to discover where this goes as it goes there.
For those not in the know, The Wolf Among Us is the latest episodic game from Telltale. It’s based on a long-running DC comic, but I guess that comic didn’t have its visual style carried over into the game. Unless chance had it that it’s drawn exactly like all Telltale games are.
Yes, that means it looks just like The Walking Dead, and there are plenty of gameplay similarities too. The primary difference is that I found The Walking Dead was mostly unfulfilled potential and riddled with flaws throughout, whereas initial impressions of The Wolf Among Us are much more positive.
The action itself takes place in a rather grim version of mid-’90s New York where fairytale and fable characters have taken up home, following some form of exodus from their homeland (which, so far, is only alluded to in passing). Those who don’t look quite human need to use a magic called a glamour to conceal their true identity from the ‘mundane’ people, but glamours (especially the effective ones) are an expensive resource. This seems to be creating a class system of sorts, as any poor Fable with non-humanoid features needs to find a way into riches to continue living in society or face ghettoisation in The Farm; a sort of prisony holiday camp for those who haven’t scraped together enough money to hide their true forms.
There’s plenty of political subtext involved, and indeed the first episode takes us inside the Mayor’s office to see the politics close up. It ain’t pretty, and one character voices the situation in a particularly effective and thought-provoking way – at least in my version of the story. I get the impression that some players didn’t experience the conversation the same way I did.
The lead character throughout this is Bigby Wolf, the sheriff of Fabletown. He’s the guy who blew those three little pigs’ houses down, and who ate Red Riding Hood’s grandma, but he’s put his dark past (mostly) behind him and has become a man of law. He’s a fairly standard hero type, but quickly shows a lot of depth as he grapples with his past and his ‘other’ nature throughout this first episode.
As far as I’m willing to reveal plot here, I’ll just say that it appears to be taking the form of a mystery/detective story. Think LA Noire, but better.
Gameplay-wise it’s sticking to the template set by The Walking Dead but doing a much better job of it. The biggest major change is that The Wolf Among Us is in a releasable state, which makes a huge difference. The unoptimised mess that was The Walking Dead [Ed: Dylan played The Walking Dead on the Xbox 360 and enjoyed it less than AJ, Shaun and Potter] really killed the tension and the flow of its narrative, so whilst The Wolf Among Us has inexplicably long loading times for a fixed camera game in a single scene with mostly static furniture and props, at least it doesn’t start loading a character’s dialogue mid-sentence or pause to think in the middle of an action scene.
Action scenes have been overhauled whilst broadly sticking with the same template, making them more dynamic with much more effective and really quite shocking violence. I’ve heard it said that the action is less enjoyable than it was in The Walking Dead, but I couldn’t disagree more. I really enjoyed the action in The Wolf Among Us whereas there wasn’t a single action scene in TWD that I didn’t wish was either not present or done much, much better.
Crucially, the core gameplay remains in the dialogue and story choices, and the game allows the player more freedom to explore additional information about the world and characters; something I lapped up willingly as it was so well implemented. For folks like me who know nothing of the backstory there’s also a regularly updated Info page offering a run-down on any characters we didn’t quite catch the gist of.
We’re only one episode in, but the fact that I picked up this laptop and started writing furiously the second it finished speaks volumes about my response to it.
SHARK ALARM. SHARK. ALARM. Right, actual spoilers after the image, so seriously if you haven’t played it yet – stop. Why not play it, then come back and read the rest?
Here is a collection of half-formed, lopsided, illogical, nonsensical or downright stupid thoughts:
- So I don’t believe for a second that either of those women are dead. Couple of reasons – Snow was built up a bit too much to just kill off that easy; and there were a few too many issues with Faith’s death, mostly the mirror. Mirror-dude said that there was some magic preventing him from seeing her, which implies she’s alive. Doesn’t prove nothing, but it implies it. I think that magic is involved somehow, and someone else looks like Faith, and that person is dead. And someone else also looks Snow, and that person’s dead. Don’t know why, but it’s my theory and I’m going with it.
- Loved the various bits of background fable-related gags. Don’t know how many of those are from the comics, but some of ones I spotted and still remember were: Huff’n’Puff Cigarettes, a broadway play called Three Apples, the Trip Trap bar, and a shoe shop called The Silver Slipper.
- I want that little flying dude to be my best friend/sidekick/flatmate, and for us to have adventures together in the summer hols.
- Ichabod was an asshole, and I regret not telling him to fuck off.
- When I was asked to pick a suspect, I said no-one, but frankly I didn’t know who a couple of those people were anyway, possibly because I went to Toad’s house first so didn’t get all the potential character introductions. One of them looked like Walter White in the summary at the end though, so I reckon it was him (Actually, I don’t think it was any of the suspects we’ve been introduced to yet, not directly at least).
- The second scene at Toad’s house went from tense to funny pretty quickly. I thought we were going down the child abuse path, but it was actually some fun, lighthearted detective-based goon comedy.
- I’m intrigued by the idea that Lawrence would live if I’d done the story differently. My narrative instincts tell me to stick with my story though. No take-backsies.
- The way they handled Bigby half-transforming during the bar fight was fantastic. It was scary to me, because I felt like it was me that was going to lose control.
- Did I just feel empathy for the Woodsman during that last confrontation? Because that guy was a colossal bell-end, but… his voice was so sad, and his regret so convincing. I’m torn on the guy. And on Bigby himself for that matter.
What did you think?
Comments
16 responses to “The Wolf Among Us – Episode 1: Review and Discussion”
"Ichabod was an asshole, and I regret not telling him to fuck off." I hear that.
I visited Toad second, so that Prince is alive and un-well in mine. I actually hadn't even considered that Snow may still be alive too. I just assumed given how cruel Telltale were in the Walking Dead, they were screwing with anyone devloping the romance angle!
Aaight! It looks like you and I made very much the same decisions. Walking Dead was, in a lot of ways, a bunch of magician's choices when the whole thing was over–but it's so extremely well-done that it almost doesn't matter. If the narrative wanted a character dead, they were going to kill them no matter what you did. And I think that kind of forced the game to be a lot deeper–it ends up being about degrees of culpability, or your moral stance towards certain actions. I don't know if any of us would be banking on Lorenzo living for much longer, you know? It might not matter in the long run.
I've never read the comic either, but a friend of mine is a huge fan and she's going to be playing the game. I actually love the way they're stripping out the adventure game elements even further, and how the combat scenes are based more around directing the action rather than success or failure. I'm very much a fan of the idea of interactive movies–the term has been so poisoned by the 90s, but that's really what Walking Dead and Wolf Among Us are, and they're making excellent ones. I have honestly never been able to play a Telltale game pre-TWD–I'd played Bone, Strong Bad, and at least one other and didn't like any of them and finally played TWD when a friend bugged me enough about it. I loved it–so yeah, for me TWD was a franchise I didn't care about from a company I didn't like, and frankly given that Wolf is the next step from that, I see it as a company that finally just clicked. It feels like there's another step they ought to make with their next series–like, I feel like they've got a few interface tweaks under their belt to make it even less explicitly game-y and integrate everything somewhat more smoothly–there is a mild interruption to the rhythm during the game bits of Wolf, which basically boil down to "Walk to a place and say hi to a person or look at a thing" which is dull while the conversations are all fascinating. I think they can figure it out.
I actually didn't get on with the 'magician's choices' in TWD. It felt to me like my contribution was a roadblock to the story, mostly because there seemed to be a version which Tell Tale had planned for where there was dialogue and story and action. Then there was the 'other' version. If you were A STUPID BAD PLAYER and picked the 'other' version, the game would fob you off with a brief and uninspired reason why actually the other thing happens anyway.
Fine for those who could read Tell Tale's mind or were just plain lucky, but insulting and disappointing for the rest of us that were thinking for ourselves or didn't have the benefit of blind luck.
Agreed completely on the way the action scenes in Wolf are more about directing the action then using pass/fail scenarios to break the experience. A very welcome improvement on TWD. However, disagree on the 'broken action' you mention. Those bits tended to be the parts where we were given the option to use our gamer's intuition to either 'get more background flavour' or 'move on'. I always wanted the background flavour, but I feel that the people who just want to move on should always have their wishes respected first and foremost, so being given a choice felt just right for me.
Am mostly steering clear of this thread as I've not played TWAU yet, but I think there's a misunderstanding of TWD here. The overall outcome of major events didn't vary greatly, but how characters felt about the player character altered. That is what TWD was really about – interpersonal relationships and group dynamics under high stress – and I think those "magician's choices" fed into it very well, in that despite the player character possessing agency they ultimately could not force decisions, direction or control onto any of the other survivors.
I can see how this could be criticised as 'a little too convenient' upon reflection, but for me the façade functioned perfectly.
I don't think that argument addresses my point. I'll speak in hypotheticals here to avoid TWD spoilers, and use an easy obvious example.
Let's say that a character called Barry is going to die in the story. The game will give you the choice 'Do you want Barry to die?'
He's going to anyway, so if I say 'Yes', I get a full scene in which realistic reasons are given, everyone responds appropriately and the writing seems good. The characters talk about it appropriately in future.
If I say 'No', I get a very brief 'whoops, well he died', that is a fraction as well thought-out, and in future, characters either don't talk about it, or talk about it in a cut-down way.
That's the major issue with it, not whether or not the choices 'matter'.
The game at no point presents a choice akin to "do you want Barry to die", so I'm not sure where you're going with that analogy.
The game offers you dialogue choices, and your character will follow them up, but there are typically about half a dozen other people around who may or may not agree with whatever you just opted to have your character say. Those group dynamics are binding.
Perhaps the closest event to what you're describing occurs during your first visit to the motel, and with that I'd contend that what transpired was never the player's "choice" – it was a path predetermined by the character you encountered there, meaning your choice would only ever come down to your emotional or intellectual response to what you witnessed.
I guess what I am trying to say is what I also tried to say on the podcast: that for me, TWD is great because the majority of your choices are only significant to you. At most other occasions you are carried along with what other characters decide, or larger events. In this way TWD does an able job replicating real social dynamics and an individual's free will but limited agency within a group. That's something I don't think many games have ever represented.
To be honest, if this is your major complaint, I don't understand how you got through LA Noire.
I think the person who needs to be pulled into this argument is Potter as he actually tried out every single outcome until he got what he preferred and see if he agrees with this statement. The reason I say this is because I suspect Shaun and I played the game very differently and neither of us felt short changed.
The only scenario I can remotely relate to is if you [SPOILERS]
let Lily back on to the camper after she shoots [the person]. The outcome then makes her exit stage left even if you try and calm her down.
[END SPOILERS]
I think if the game did that 'Do you want Barry to die' and then killed him anyway that is a good thing. Because what you want and what is going to happen are two different things.
LA Noire is the fucking worst for this. Nothing you do matters in that game and yet it has a scoring system to tell you how 'well' you did. Because you can't do anything in LA Noire it basically means that the whole thing becomes a disjointed mess.
Don't have time to rant about it now. I suspect this is something we should have an argument about at some point.
"I think if the game did that 'Do you want Barry to die' and then killed him anyway that is a good thing. Because what you want and what is going to happen are two different things."
I'm not disputing that, it's more the issue of poor storytelling I mentioned above, and which you provided a fine example of.
I don't see how it equates to LA Noire, as that has a prescribed storyline. The scoring system is about the gameplay, not the story.
I liked the puzzle in LA Noire I helped you and B with. That's about the sum total of my experience with it!
I actually don't think that was a fine example. I found that part was a mild whiff rather than a full blown 'fuck this game' problem.
Pfft, LA Noire and gameplay go together like farts and elevators. The scoring system deliberately undermines the storyline because you aren't really allowed to figure out how you feel about events. The 'gameplay' is telling you explicitly that there is a better way to do it, or at least a quicker way.
The mere suggestion of replaying an area of a game that contains multiple choices when it doesn't is dangerous, adding a scoring system is sheer stupidity. It is inviting the player to poke massive holes in the storyline while at the same time redoing cutscenes into insignificance. That is why LA Noire is a bad game.
Why it is a bad story is because every character is flimsy in terms of depth at best and downright embarrassing at worst. It also can't decide whether it wants to go for schmalzy noir trappings or be some kind of gritty, 50s-set message piece and ends up being neither at the detriment of of both.
The ill-advised clumsy speech in the flashback about the Japanese makes no sense as a period piece but only as a bit of retrospective writing (something we would hope we would say in the 40s but that the us of that time would never say as we would lack the education and the access to information). The bartender that happens to be the serial killer that you interviewed once in passing is so cheesy and would have been fine in another story but in this one it undermines any attempts LA Noire is making elsewhere.
It looks really nice but that is it.
Awful game, awful story and never do the two meet happily.
Walking Dead does not suffer from that.
Also, you can barely see it but my new avatar is awesome.
I approve of the return of the badger.
Now in 3D!
I thought he might be, but couldn't see it well enough! Who made that then?
An old colleague, don't know what possessed her but it is awesome so I am happy.
[…] in October we ran an open discussion thread for Episode 1 of The Wolf Among Us. Yep, it really has been that long since the first part […]