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The Wolf Among Us ‘Faith’ Review

The Wolf Among Us ‘Faith’ Review
Christopher Park

Christopher Park

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After The Walking Dead’s release in 2012, there’s been huge anticipation surrounding Telltale Games’ The Wolf Among Us. Garnering many Game of the Year awards, Telltale has brought back the point-and-click adventure genre.

Fables is a story about characters from fairy tales who are forced out of their Homelands and are living in the “mundane” world of New York City. The Fable characters are given life by the popularity they have with people in the real world, so characters like Snow White have survived for centuries since fleeing the Homelands.

Over five episodes, The Wolf Among Us will dive into DC Comics’ Vertigo series, “Fables” by Bill Willingham.

The first episode, “Faith”, is an introduction to key characters like Bigby Wolf, formerly known as The Big Bad Wolf, Snow White, and the area known as Fabletown.

An intense point-and-click adventure

The Wolf Among Us is a point-and-click adventure game. Following the success of The Walking Dead, many elements of the series were implemented into Telltale’s newest game.

Featuring an overall linear quest, The Wolf Among Us includes branching dialogue trees. The experience in Episode 1: Faith will differ depending on the decisions you make, the responses you give, and how you handle specific tasks.

This creates a compelling reason to replay the game to see how different decisions will change the gameplay. This gameplay formula is made even stronger because of Telltale’s understanding of the property its using – Fables has over 100 issues and a massive history. The Wolf Among Us happens before the series begins so players are introduced to recognizable characters before their original appearances in the comic books.

As The Wolf Among Us is part of a five-episode series, it doesn’t take long to complete a single episode. The decisions you made throughout the game are broken down at the end of the episode and the completed save file will be imported into the next episode so all decisions continue to affect your experience with the game.

More action than expected

It was surprising to go from The Walking Dead to The Wolf Among Us. The game moves at a faster pace and the experience you go through as Bigby Wolf feels like a crime drama. The use of the mouse and keyboard work well when exploring and during the more exciting scenes they’re also very effective.

Since The Wolf Among Us is generally linear, you don’t have much exploration outside the predefined boundaries but tight writing keeps everything interesting. The small details in each scene show the focus on detail in the Fables universe.

Stylized Fables universe

Telltale has really defined the look of its games. While The Wolf Among Us doesn’t look exactly like the comic, it does look like a comic book. The animations of characters like Colin Pig and Mr. Toad are amazing and fluid. Bigby’s action scenes are also very satisfying.

The writing in the first episode surprised me. I had expected something more adult, but the dialogue in the first few minutes had tons more cursing than I anticipated. It’s definitely a game meant for adults and even though the game includes fairy tale characters, it’s not for kids!

The PC game doesn’t have high requirements to run but it still looks impressive with the Telltale art style. On PlayStation 3, there are long load times which breaks the immersion of the game, but still provides a great experience. It’s actually a little easier to control with a controller than mouse for some events in the game.

Go into The Wolf Among Us knowing nothing

The story of The Wolf Among Us starts with an unexpected encounter and continues to ramp up the tension with each scene. The best thing to do is dive into the game knowing little about the story, playing completely from fresh.

At the end of the episode when you get your statistics of the decisions you made, you realize just how gray the world of Fables can be.

An emotional ride

If the first episode of The Wolf Among Us is an indication of the rest of the series, it’s going to be very intense. With more characters to introduce and a deeper mystery to explore, the remaining four episodes are likely going to be crazy.

The influence of past decisions carrying over to new episodes is going to tailor the experience to each player, but also provides great replayability because the experience can change completely with a single decision.

Telltale Games has taken another property and created a compelling and enjoyable game experience. It may take elements from The Walking Dead, but The Wolf Among Us could prove to be even better.

Review code sent by Telltale Games.

Christopher Park

Christopher Park

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