Note: the following review is as spoiler-free as possible. Haven’t played the game yet? Fear not, and read on!
Telltale Games has struck gold again.
The developer first announced an episodic adventure game based on Bill Willingham’s long-running DC/Vertigo series, Fables, all the way back in June 2011, way before we’d ever get our hands on our favourite game of 2012, The Walking Dead. Haven’t read the series? That’s no problem, as The Wolf Among Us is set 20 years before the first issue of the comic. This doesn’t make the plot meaningless, however, as Telltale has designed the series alongside Willingham, who has crafted a previously untold, yet canon story.
The Wolf Among Us suffered multiple delays during its development, but the game’s premiere episode is finally here, and after my first play through, it’s quite clear that Telltale remains the undisputed king of adventure titles.
As the game opens, we’re dropped into Fabletown, an area of New York City where Fables (fairy tale beings) of all shapes and sizes make themselves look like humans (using a Glamour spell, duh) and attempt to live human lives. You play as the sheriff of Fabletown, Bigby Wolf, a Fable who’s trying his best to reform himself after a long, sordid past (under his human skin he’s literally The Big Bad Wolf) by keeping all of the other Fables in check. Naturally, things don’t seem to be going too well for Bigby, and he’s finding himself in trouble much more often than he’d like. The Wolf Among Us plays out like an investigative/noir/deep character drama. It’s almost like a more magical L.A. Noire, except it’s not in the 1940’s, and you’ll actually want to play it beyond the halfway point.
If you’ve played The Walking Dead (you have played The Walking Dead, right?), you’ll feel right at home with The Wolf Among Us. The gameplay here is nearly identical, and that’s a very good thing: it’s a point-and-click adventure game at heart, and unlike, say, Quantic Dreams’ recent Beyond: Two Souls (which I actually really liked), The Wolf Among Us doesn’t waste its time with complicated button combinations require confusing instructions (or lack of) to do simple tasks, and instead puts the phenomenal plot, tough choices, and gorgeous visuals and audio front and centre.
The really incredible feat here is how the game improves on nearly every aspect of The Walking Dead. You’ll immediately notice the extremely striking visuals and audio of this title. While The Walking Dead‘s (albeit still gorgeous) comic book artstyle was much more drab and grey, the world of The Wolf Among Us is immediately more colourful, featuring a diverse neon palette that we never saw in Telltale’s previous game. As Faith faded in from black and I saw Bigby’s stark, unshaven face pass through the different levels of street lighting, I couldn’t help but say “wow” out loud. It’s that good, and Jared Emerson-Johnson’s varied soundscape is one that’s just as impressive. A year later, I barely remember what the music of The Walking Dead sounded like, but I could easily put the audio of The Wolf Among Us onto an iPod and listen to it regularly. There’s simply a level of polish present throughout the game that The Walking Dead (in all of its game-of-the-year winning glory) was never able to match. It’s blatantly obvious that Telltale learns a lot from each title that they develop, and it shows in each subsequent game, The Wolf Among Us being no exception.
The choices that Faith presents are perhaps the one facet of gameplay that The Walking Dead did better. Not that there’s anything wrong with the options given here; they’re tough, can be life-or-death, and they definitely all have pros, cons, and different outcomes. It could simply be due to the difference in setting, or it could be that The Walking Dead‘s choices didn’t really start ramping up until episode two, but I simply felt that the choices that I made in Telltale’s previous title were more meaningful and personal. Almost every major decision throughout The Walking Dead, I thought “what’s best for Clementine?” or “if I choose wrong here, I could mess everything up.” I haven’t yet felt that here, and while still tough, I’ve predominantly chosen based on which option sounded more intriguing. I think that the choices are bound to become harder and harder as we become more attached to these characters, but right now my choices are based on what sounds more interesting for the (infinitely intriguing) plot, rather than what’s best for the lives of my party.
Continuing the improvements over The Walking Dead are the gameplay mechanics themselves. Action sequences in The Wolf Among Us feel much more organic, and feature much less mashing of a single button. Contextual actions seem easier to perform, yet never feel too forgiving. Arguably the most welcome improvement is the addition of a fast-walk button, which nearly doubles the speed of the abhorrently slow default walk. Seriously, if a faster walk was the only improvement to the engine that Telltale made, I’d have been a happy camper. The gameplay and controls worked excellently in The Walking Dead, and it’s all on par or better here.
The Wolf Among Us isn’t perfect, of course. It seems that, being a modern Telltale title, the game needs to include the myriad of technical issues that plagued each and every episode of The Walking Dead. Voices (did I mention how good the voice work is?) go out of sync and sometimes lines are repeated, cameras lag and hang before finally changing angles, and some users are experiencing the inevitable save game bug. Most of the problems are simply minor annoyances, but are extremely noticeable since the rest of the game is so damned polished.
Overall, Faith is an excellent entry point into what’s already becoming one of the best narrative games of the year (this seems to be becoming a regular occurrence for Telltale). The game is polished, the plot is great, the choices are tough, and the ending leaves you eager to jump into the next episode (which is about a month and a half away). The premiere episode of The Wolf Among Us bests last year’s The Walking Dead opener in nearly every way, and if episode two, Smoke & Mirrors can improve on what we’ve seen here, The Wolf Among Us could easily be a contender for game-of-the-year.
Whether you’ve read the book or not, I’d wholeheartedly recommend The Wolf Among Us to everyone (though be mindful of the ESRB rating, it’s definitely not for kids). I can’t wait to get another taste of Fabletown and this gorgeous neon New York. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go buy some Fables TPBs.
The Wolf Among Us: Episode 1 – Faith scores an impressive 4.5/5.