The Wolf Among Us Review

Telltale’s The Wolf Among Us is a game within the Fables universe, set twenty years before the events within the Fables comics. The story takes place in the 1980s in New York. Creatures from different fairy tales and folklore has been forced to escape from their own world due to a tyrant called the Adversary having occupied it. The fantasy creatures escaped to our world, and established a small town called Fabletown. In order not to be recognized by ordinary humans the fantasy creatures have to buy an enchantment (a Glamour) in order to blend in. In the game we play as Bigby Wolf, who used to be the Big Bad Wolf. Bigby is a detective by trade, who also has to keep the magical creatures in line. The game starts with Bigby visiting Mr. Toad, who is having trouble paying for his Glamour – if he don’t he will be sent to the Farm, a place where creatures who can’t or won’t keep up apperances end up. After visiting Mr. Toad he engages with a drunk and angry Woodsman trying to beat up a prostitute. Later that evening Snow White and Bigby finds a decapitated head on the Woodsman’s doorstep, and they identify her as Faith. Snow White and Bigby are ordered by Deputy Mayor Ichabod Crane to investigate the murder.

Going to her apartment they find Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum rummaging through her things, making a run for it when confronted by Bigby and escapes. Snow White and Bigby learn that Faith and her husband Prince Lawrence had a hard time paying the bills, so she took up prostitution. Bigby leaves Snow White to pursue other leads, but when he returns he is met by police, and Show White’s head sitting on the steps of the building. Bigby is taken in for questioning by the human police, but Ichabod uses a spell to wipe their memories. Upon returning they find Snow White alive, and learn that the head they found was of a troll called Lily that had bought a black market Glamour. Bigby’s leads takes him to a strip joint called Pudding & Pie run by Georgie Porgie, who says he has nothing to do with it.

Nerissa, a prostitute, guides BVigsby to a hotel room where he discovers Lily’s blood and a photography of Lily, glamoured up as Snow White, having sex with Ichabod Crane. They go back to confront Ichabod, but find him missing. The Magic Mirror, used to reveal the location of people, is also shattered with a missing piece. They continue to follow the clues to Ichabod’s whereabouts and ends up at the apartment of a witch called Aunty Greenleaf, who makes the black market glamours. They also learn that Ichabod has been embezzeling money from the town in order to pay out a debt to the Crooked Man. The witch sends them back to the Pudding & Pie, and they find Ichabod trying to get information from the prostitutes to prove he is not guilty. Ichabod is thus arrested, not for murder, but for embezzlement. When they want to leave the club they run in to the Crooked Man and his henchmen Tweedle Dee and Dum and Bloody Mary. A fight ensures, and Bigby turns in to a werewolf. He is shot and wounded by a silver bullet from Bloody Mary, and Snow White ends up stopping the fight and handing over Ichabod in order to save Bigby’s life.

Bigby has a harder and harder time finding clues, but at some point Nerissa shows up, and Bigby learns that she is wearing a ribbon that prevents her from speaking the truth. Faith was wearing an identical ribbon, and she died when it was removed from her. Following up on the new clues Bigby learns of a black market of Glamours being sold from a butcher shop called Cut Above, The Lucky Pawn pawnshop owned by the Jersey Devil where the Crooked Man runs his loan sharking, where Ichabod Crane is located and even the lost Mirror shard. The Mirror tells Bigby that Ichabod is being flown overseas by Bloody Mary to make sure he does not rat them out. Bigby also learns the location of the door to the Crooked Man’s lair which is constantly moving. Bigby enters his lair alone. The Crooked Man tells us that Georgie Porgie is the murder of Lily and Faith, and that he misunderstood orders. Georgie Porgie denies it, and says the Crooked Man ordered him to murder them.

They end up fighting, but the Crooked Man and Georgie Porgie (being mortally wounded) ends up escaping. Bigby ends up apprehending the dying Georgie and his girlfriend Vivian at his club. He learns that the Crooked Man and Georgie was trying to stop Faith and the other prostitutes to escape their ‘masters’. Bigby learns that Vivian is the first prostitute to have the ribbon, and that she made copies of it to enslave the other women. Regretting what she has done Vivian unties her ribbon, which makes her head fall off and breaking the spell. The Crooked Man is then found at a run down foundry with his goonies. Bigby turns into a werewolf and kills Bloody Mary and confronts the Crooked Man. He demands a fair trial, and the player has the choice of bringing him in either dead or alive. Back at the office both him and Snow White has to defend their actions, and through testifies from other Fables they deem Bigby’s actions fair. If the Crooked Man is still alive Bigby gets to choose his punishment – forever imprisonment, killing him or throwing him down the Witching Well.

In the game’s epilogue Snow White takes over the job of Ichabod Crane as Deputy Mayor, and have to deal wih the aftermath of the Crooked Man. Bigby helps Fables back to the Farm, and whilst doing so are approached by Nerissa who admits that her, Faith and Lily made a plan to blackmail Georgie Porgie and the Crooked Man in order to get their freedom by using the image of Ichabod and Lily. Panicking, she told Georgie of the plot, and he killed the two. It was Nerissa who left Faith’s head for Bigby to find so he would become involved and take out the Crooked Man. She also gave false testimony in order to have the Crooked Man punished. Before leaving Nerissa tells Bigby that he is not as bad as everyone says – something Faith told him at the beginning of the game, leaving Bigby to think that maybe Faith is not really dead, just in a black market Glamour.

And thus ends the mystery of the Fable murders. The Wolf Among Us is a dark game, with a dark story set in a dark underbelly of New York. It plays on some of the old detective tropes, but it sets up a good mystery that might seem straight forward, but has it’s crooked ends. The story, in true Telltale fashion, has different choices the player needs to take throughout the game, and depending on the choices the player makes, the story ends differently. This makes for a bit of replayablity, although the story does not deviate that much in the end. Not long prior Telltale came out with their award-winning games from the Walking Dead universe, followed up with The Wolf Among Us. In my personal opinion The Wolf Among Us is far superior, and probably the very best game they made. The story is great, the graphics are nice – cartoony, sort of like a comic book from which the universe stems from. The music is good and fitting. The only negative – if you find this a negative – is the gameplay. The game relies on occational QTE’s, the rest is pure picking what to say when in dialogue with characters. If you don’t mind this way of playing point-and-click games you are in for a treat. This dark take on fairy tales and folk lore is a fresh breath within the genre, showing a whole other side to your well-known characters.