Number 64: The Wolf Among Us
A while back I wrote about Life is Strange, specifically how playing through that game with friends made the experience more memorable. The Wolf Among Us seemed to have a cool, unique setting so we decided to go back to that well. I decided, and gifted copies to my friends. Kicking and screaming I tell you.
Every time I see this image, it looks like Bigby is cradling a football in his left arm. Every. Time.
This game is a dark, edgy take on familiar fairy tales, and I don’t mean that in a shitty way. Gritty? It’s fairy tale characters in a gritty, modern setting. That sounds shitty too. Okay, the game opens on the Big Bad Wolf (Bigby Wolf) beating the ever loving shit out of the Woodsman, Georgie Porgie owns the strip club where Ariel is a dancer, and you just might tear Grendel’s arm off at a bar or rip Tweedledum’s throat out. Strap in, kids!
It’s a fun twist on a classic noir-style story. As with most Telltale games, The Wolf Among Us has branching dialogue options where the details of the story change based on your choices. Early on, for example, you see Beauty trying to slip away unnoticed, and she asks you not to tell Beast that you saw her; when you see Beast, he asks if you’ve seen his wife. How you respond determines how those characters treat you in the future. You’ll also be doing quick time events; they’re not my favorite, but I understand wanting to have some active button pushing in there so your game doesn’t get tagged as a Visual Novel.*
It’s possible to kind of peek behind the curtain in most of these choices matter games and see the video game machinations turning. While the game gives you lots of choices along the way, the major story beats are mostly set in stone. For some people this understanding ruins the experience but, as with Life is Strange, I found myself so wrapped up in the story and the moment to moment intensity that I don’t care about any of that. I wanted to see how the murder mystery unfolded. I wanted to see what other fables they’d wrap into the game. And I liked Bigby a lot. He feels like your typical down-on-his luck private eye, only we inherently know a lot about who he is as soon as we hear “Big Bad Wolf.” I could find some sympathy in my heart for most characters, even the ones who weren’t the nicest people. Toad is just trying to get by and take care of his kid. The Tweedles aren’t built to be anything more than dumb hired muscle. Beauty and Beast? Well, kinda fuck those two. The characters are all living in a rundown town just trying to survive, and the game does a good job of portraying their struggles without painting them as simply bad people.
It’s a testament to the writing in The Wolf Among Us and the quality of its source material that my friends who are very much not into This Kind of Game got swept up in it. There was a good week or two where we were talking about Bloody Mary, Snow White, the Jersey Devil, and Ichabod Crane. This is one of those games that I very much wish I could play again for the first time.