Review - Wolf Among Us

One of best Telltale games, a crime drama Wolf Among Us follows a detective embroiled in a murder mystery that turns out to be more complicated than it seems on surface.

GAMEPLAY

The usual Telltale formula is back there again, with Quick-Time Events along with choices in combat scenarios meaning you can shape your character's attacks to your liking. The game has five episodes which all last from 90 minutes to 120 minutes. Replay value is high thanks to multilayered nature of the story and achievements that encourage it in form of background lore snippets. Game also has some light puzzle elements which are really easy and serve mostly to showcase detective's skills. Combat has some great choreography and animations. It is hard-hitting and brutal, you will often see limbs flying off.



STORY

The story is a neo-noir crime drama that follows Bigby Wolf, a sheriff of an estranged community of Fables, urban legends and myths that find their place in modern New York where they have to hide their true nature from humans who are unaware of existence of magical things. In first place, the game is a murder mystery, accentuated by Fables being hard to kill, that evolves into an all-encompassing political plot with elements of mafia and organized crime making the game a lot more complex than it seems at first. The cast is very strong with some great voice-actors and colourful characters like Snow White, Bloody Mary, Colin the Pig etc. That ambience gives a incredible sense of having your childhood stories coming to life, although in an incredibly dark and brutal way. Choices make Bigby Wolf explore different avenues in story to resolve the murder. They have most impact in the last episode where you cannot not find the murderer, but you have to decide what to do, whether there will be a just trial or just an execution. The story has a lot of callbacks and hidden stuff and such demands the gamer to follow it closely.



GRAPHICS

Graphics are beautiful, and a faithful recreation of the original source material which is the Fables comics by Bill Winningham. The game is cel-shadded with textures being sharp. World is very colourful, yet somehow the atmosphere is dark at the same time, brilliantly achieving the neo-noir aesthetic. Character models are all unique and recognizable, which is important considering the game has a large cast of characters who are all important to the story. Enviroments are detailed and nicely realized, making them feel like an actual New York city. Magic that Fabletown residents use is clearly shown and does not have any graphical weirdness and mumbo-jumbo typical of depicting magic in other media.



VERDICT

The game is a must-play. It excels in every area, from story to graphics. Its plot-driven nature with character arcs will draw you in and it is easy to binge the game afterwards considering it's main story is at most 12 hours long. Atmosphere is one of the best in all of gaming, perfectly capturing the essence of comics addled with the neo-noir ambience of the New York city. The game ends on one of the best cliffhangers of all time which still has some gamers discussing what happened. Sadly, it will not be revealed considering Telltale broke down, but it is still worth playing since that cliffhanger can be actually seen as a satisfying ending akin to noir movies of old.