The Wolf Among Us and why you need to play it!

(I've tried to keep this as spoiler free as possible with any important details being within the first 20 minutes of game play)

Back in 2012 Telltale games took the gaming world by storm, taking their style of episodic writing and merging it in the cruel zombie infested world of The Walking Dead. It was a match made in heaven. Here was a game that made you think and care, where it wasn't the game mechanics that mattered, more your cast of characters; and most importantly the decisions you made. There was never a decision with a clear black or white area, it was all a nasty shade of grey, something which made the game unique and left me, along with many other gamers, longing for more. This is where The Wolf Among us comes in.

Bigby Wolf

Following the same style of The Walking Dead it was an episodic adventure with decisions and tense quick time events galore. Set in 1980's New York as a prequel to the hit comic series Fables you play the sheriff of Fabletowns Bigby Wolf. Discovering a severed head on your doorstep you are sent on a spiralling chase to discover the culprit, uncovering a wider mystery that could very well change Fabletown forever. 

That face just tells you
she's gonna be trouble

Like The Walking Dead though the game is only as powerful as the cast of characters you get to interact with, and there is a particularly powerful relationship that I'd like to highlight. Meet Snow White, personal friend of Bigby and current assistant to the Deputy Mayor. She feels a great deal of compassion for the less fortunate fables, and is angered at her inability to help in her role of assistant. So when circumstance place her as the new Deputy Mayor she is insistent on finding a way to help these fables and is often with Bigby to help with his investigation. This creates an interesting dynamic where you are often challenged between choosing what you think is right and what Snow thinks is right, where you have to weigh up what matters more to you; the satisfaction of carrying out your own course of action, or the opinion of Snow White.

So why then, as my title says, do you need to play it? It's simple really; the story. Telltalle have created their own little slice of the gaming market which you can't go anywhere else for. I want to have those overbranching decisions, that matter and effect the rest of my game. I want to have those set of characters where I love some and hate others. I want those quick time events where the battles, though in gameplay simplistic, offer a tense atmosphere where one wrong move costs you your life. Only Telltale manage to offer all of these things in one place, and if it's a Telltall game your after The Wolf Among Us is the best one yet. Each episode presnting more of the bread crumb trail you've been following to the culprit before blowing you away with a finale which left my mind spinning.

Even the poster oozes a noir
detective world

Before those of you go and play this masterpeice of a game I want to leave with you a reccomendation; never pause the game to give yourself time to mull over those difficult decisons. Those time limits cleverly create a feeling of haste, that you need to act, and that in itself often means you rely on gut feeling. Gut feeling can be wrong and my case I made mistakes, but it makes the games storytelling all the more powerful when you feel like you, the character, grows throughout your time playing and is molded by your decisons.

Thanks for reading and I hope I've managed to give some of you the incentive to play such a wonderful game, all kudos to the talented people at Telltale!

Ross