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dkirschner's The Wolf Among Us (PC)
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| [January 25, 2015 11:45:01 AM]
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Quickly huffed and puffed my way through this Telltale adventure. Overall impression: Wonderfully imaginative and adult fairy tale that for some reason is not as interesting to me as The Walking Dead. I feel like this should be more interesting and I can't quite put my finger on why it just isn't.
I love love love the notion of fairy tale characters leaving "The Homeland" on an exodus to New York City. The characters are similar to their representations in popular stories, but they are not the same. For example, Snow White marries Prince Charming, but then he cheats on her with her sister. Their lives become very different living in New York. Beauty and Beast are in debt up to their eyeballs; The Little Mermaid is a prostitute; Bigby Wolf (the Big Bad Wolf) is trying to put his days of terrorizing people behind him and be a good, upstanding guy. Unfortunately for them they mostly live in slums and are poor. They seem to live in a rather self-imposed ghetto and I don't understand why they can't get out. They are very wrapped up in their own drama. I've been reading Watchmen, the graphic novel, and the grimy NYC setting and in-group drama of the masked adventurers is similar to Telltale's story.
The cast of characters varies widely. At first I thought it was going to be only the most memorable fairy tale characters, but they bring in Disneyfied characters, more generic creatures like trolls, urban legends like Bloody Mary and more. It's really cool whenever a new character is introduced because you have to do this immediate reconciliation between where you know the character from and who they are in this story. I do wonder how much of their stories is drawn from the Brothers Grimm and other pre-Disneyfied texts. The violence of the game leads me to believe the old, more haunting stories were a major influence, but it's fascinating to see those versions juxtaposed with modern versions.
So in this game, you play as Bigby, the Big Bad Wolf. You're the sheriff of Fabletown, which exists sort of hidden within NYC. Any "mundy" (mundane person) can come in, but they don't see wolves or pigs or Mr. Toad or anything abnormal because the fairy tale folks use magic to make themselves appear normal. Bigby is trying to do right by Fabletown and basically keep its residents from ripping one another apart. Long story short, you and Snow (White) investigate two grisly murders that lead you deep into the underworld of Fabletown. Although I enjoyed the story, its twists and turns lie in the characters who appear, not so much in the details. Like, I didn't really care that someone was stalking Snow White, but that it was THAT GUY! What a weird juxtaposition.
Like in the Walking Dead, you make narrative decisions that affect little outcomes here and there and that affect how other characters act toward you. For example, you occasionally get to choose where to investigate (option A, B, or C). I found that these choices hardly mattered to me, although they are presented as very serious! After playing the Walking Dead, I wasn't that impressed because I understand how Telltale's branching works and how deep it isn't compared to Bioware games, for example, although it appears deep on the surface. I generally painted Bigby as a good guy, and I did kill a couple citizens of Fabletown for being assholes. Trust me, they deserved it, and I shrugged off Snow's reprimands.
One thing Wolf Among Us has over Walking Dead is action-packed fight scenes. WD surely has some, but WAU's fights are awesome. Being a big bad wolf affords some more adrenaline than being a regular person. I was disappointed, however, that there isn't any real transformation sequence for Bigby turning into a wolf. It just...happens. I was expecting something a la Werewolf in London.
The last thing I'll say is BUGS! Toward the end of the game in Episodes 4 and 5, I kept getting this dialogue option bug where every option said "This choice is blank!" I had to quit and restart from checkpoints more than a few times. My favorite bug though -- and I am pissed I missed getting a screenshot! -- was in Episode 2 or 3. I picked up a wad of cash from somewhere and Bigby got a dollar bill stuck on his thumb. It looked like his thumb pierced the bill, and it was just stuck there on his hand for the rest of the episode. It was hilarious, Bigby performing normal actions and walking around oblivious to the fact that a dollar bill is stuck awkwardly onto his thumb.
Are they making a season 2 for this?
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dkirschner's The Wolf Among Us (PC)
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Current Status: Finished playing
GameLog started on: Friday 23 January, 2015
GameLog closed on: Saturday 24 January, 2015 |
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