The Wolf Among Us is a new episodic adventure game form Telltale Games, and is based on Fables comic book, published by Vertigo. We play as Bigby Wolf a.k.a. Big Bad Wolf, who is a sheriff in Fabletown, and... you know what? Go read the article in Wikipedia about the comic.

Anyway. The gameplay is identical to The Walking Dead. We walk around, click on objects, hear a monologue, talk to characters and have to choose, in a given set of time, our answers. And we have QTE. I will not spoil the story, because IMO the first episode is quite short (in comparison to the first episode of TWD), but it has every element of a good film noir story.

For fans of Fables, I would say, this is a must play.

And below, a wild speculation about the story, and ending of the first episode.

Spoiler

My theory is that, it wasn't Snows White head, that the police was looking over. It was just a normal head, that someone magicked to look like Snows.
Also, Bluebeard did it. Why? Because fuck Bluebeard

 

Is Frau Tott...Totem... Is Bellflower in it?

 

As someone who hadn't even heard of Fables before getting into this - I give it two thumbs up. The combat is a whole lot more satisfying than in TWD provided you use mouse+keyboard.

I also found myself growing attached to the characters that I'd just been introduced to. This is probably because I don't know who carries on into the graphic novels, but whatever. I also really enjoyed how Bigby's decisions are more about how much violence should be employed/ what to do first. Lee was a great character, but his choices focused on what the player thought was best for Clem.

Are they releasing an episode every week?

 

Frau Totenkinder? Not yet. And I don't think she will - this happens before the first comic arc as Collin is still alive, so no Bellflower.

It's the same deal as The Walking Dead - so every month.

 

Yes. German is my Kryptonite.

Anyway, in my opinion it will not be a proper Fables game without a visit on 13th Floor. And is this suppose to be canon complaint or we can expect unexpected?

 

Right now it's its own story because... well, finish the first episode to see it. I still have my theory that explains it, and makes it canonical, but right now it is just wild speculation on my part.

 

Finally played it and even made a Steam account for it. It's good, but I dislike that they're releasing it as episodes.

Spoiler

It would be good to know if it's suppose to be canonical or not. If it's not then Bluebeard did it and if it's then probably Woodsman did it and Bluebeard helped him somehow (because he is guilty one way or another). Though while I was playing I suspected the Pimp. Woodsman is a little too obvious because not just events point at him, but he has a perfect weapon for it that turns out is magical. But him being murderer makes more sense plotwise because then the game is a reverse of a classic fable with Snow White ending up as Red Riding Hood (I doubt it was her head).

 

According to the comic creater, the answer is yes. After the entire game is released, it will be considered as Fables canon.

 

A new episode is out. It's good, but too short for the amount of time between releases.

 

Yeah, I guess the releases might be coming a little bit later than we thought. I'll play through it later this week when I get a chance.

 

I just finished it. Felt it was a little too short. Maybe later when I play them all together later I'll feel different? Still was fun though.

 

A new episode was released and once again it was too short. It would be nice if there was more game elements in it.

 

And it's finally finished. While the episodes were too short compared to the wait between them, overall it was a very good game.

That said, I didn't get the last scene with Bigby having final realization and I needed to check what other people are guessing. A suggestion that

Spoiler

he never meet Faith, only glamored Narissa

is the most likely to me.

 

It is a solid game, but I can't help but feel a little cheated by the last two episodes. They were very short, and the final episode felt rushed in a lot of ways. (they even lack at least one failure state)

I would by lying if I said it hasn't hurt my confidence in episodic releases. Not enough to not buy the next game, but enough that if it repeats I might have reservations.

As for the spoiler: that seems most likely.

 

In my case it was the last time I bought the game before it's fully done. There are many reasons for it. The episodes are short and waiting ten months to finish the game is a too long for me. But mostly because I do feel a little cheated financially.

I got it for the full price, but if I waited I could get it for only 1/3 of it during the Summer Sale before the game was fully released. On one hand I did pay for a chance to play previous episodes before people waiting for promotions, but on the other we all get to finish it on the same day.

It's not a big deal, but it's a questionable situation to me.

 

I'd bought both Walking Dead & Wolf Amongst Us because I wanted to support Telltale in telling this kind of story and the mechanics interested me. But it's becoming clear that while the stories being told are rather engaging... I'm not feeling like I'm getting my money's worth on content, playability and regularity, if that makes sense. Telltale could just as well make either game a cartoon series without a single input from the player with a "season" coming out each month or two and I'd be as sated.

 

@Hashasheen: I like the Telltale setup. I very much enjoyed the first season of Walking Dead and honestly I think I enjoyed The Wolf Among Us more. The murder mystery thing really compliments this style, and I honestly felt there were much harder questions to answer in Wolf as opposed to Walking Dead.

@Celestin: The summer sale thing seems like the best option. I got The Wolf Among Us during this one and that worked out pretty well. I did get The Walking Dead: Season Two at full price though, and that one is already kind of a disappointment.

I'm more worried about the idea of game companies using this model to sell games early, and then failing to deliver on the end game content. It's a very real risk with these things, and I feel they shaved it very close with The Wolf Among Us.

I'm not disappointed with the content there was. Honestly, I feel like the experience as a whole is pretty good. The main problem is they raised our expectations too high and came up short. The five episode set up feels forced and unbalanced. They probably could have made four solid episodes with what they had and we wouldn't be having this conversation. Otherwise the game itself is pretty good. Now that it's complete I would recommend it to those with a passing interest.


As a side note:

Spoiler

I'm disappointed we didn't get the choice on whether or not to kill Bloody Mary. I was looking forward to that decision. It would have been a much tougher call than the Crooked Man. I haven't read any of the Novels, so I don't know if that was possible or not, but still disappointing.