The Wolf Among Us just finished up it’s first season on the PS3. Now it’s been collected so that PS4 owners can enjoy it in one package.
The Wolf Among Us, a five episode series from the creators of the 2012 Game of the Year: The Walking Dead. Fairytale characters are being murdered in this hard-boiled, violent and mature thriller based on the award-winning Fables comic book series (DC Comics/Vertigo) by Bill Willingham. As Bigby Wolf – THE big bad wolf – you will discover that a brutal, bloody murder is just a taste of things to come in a game series where your every decision can have enormous consequences.
• From the team that brought you 2012 Game of the Year, The Walking Dead
• Based on the Eisner Award-winning Fables comic book series
• Now, it’s not only WHAT you choose to do that will affect your story, but WHEN you choose to do it
• A mature and gritty take on characters from fairytales, legends and folklore who have escaped into our world
• A perfect place to begin your Fables journey, even if you’ve not read the comics this game is set before the events seen in the first issue
The Wolf Among Us is based on the DC/Vertigo Comics book Fables. The game is a prequel to the series so you don’t have to worry about any continuity of the almost 150 issue series. You play as Bigby Wolf or the Big Bad Wolf as he was known in the fairy tale world. It turns out all of the fairy tale characters are living in a section of New York called Fable Town. Bigby helps to protect the Fables (the other fairy tale characters) as their sheriff. You will meet Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, one of the three little pigs, and even Ichabod Crane. You will meet many more familiar characters although you might be using Wikipedia to remember who they are as there are some “obscure” characters thrown in the mix.
The game is broken down into 5 episodes in a similar way to Telltale’s other series like The Walking Dead. Each episode is a standalone game and tells it’s own story, but you need to play them in order for it to really make sense. Each episode is about 2-3 hours in length, pushing the full season to about 10-12 hours long.
If you have played The Walking Dead you should be right at home here since the gameplay is similar. You have a area of the screen to explore with your character and you can maneuver him around it. You can talk to other characters and interact with other objects. There will be quick-time events when you are in an action sequence so be prepared for those. It’s pretty basic but it gets the job done, allowing you to focus on the story, which in this type of game is the most important element.
While this is an adventure game, don’t get your hopes up for the same type of game like Sam & Max, Monkey Island, or SBCG4AP. Those previous games from Tell Tale put a premium on puzzles to help advance the story and you could be stuck for hours trying to find the right way to get though. Narrative and story are what matters.
The game looks great. They nailed the comic book look and feel with the cell shaded graphics. It really immerses you into their world. The other important thing for this is the voice acting which is excellent. The voice cast really helps to build a genuine bond with the characters as you play, making you miss them all the more when the game ends.
I’m going to do my best to be completely spoiler-free. Bigby is going to be spending the next 5 episodes investigating a murder, and this will lead to bigger discoveries and great plot twists.
The game will have you make choices while talking with other characters. Usually the options you get to choose are similar answers, but they have different tones and the characters will react differently depending on what you. While you are talking with people, you will see notices from the game that tell you characters will remember the choices you made.
Each episode ends with an awesome cliff hanger making you want to jump right into the next episode to go even further into the darkness of Fable town. After you beat each episode the game also looks at the major choices in that episode and tells you what you picked vs. what other people picked.
This great package is made even better by the inclusion of a platinum trophy! That’s right you can earn a relatively easy platinum in no time. The game also includes six gold and silver trophies as well, making this a trophy hunters dream come true. There is a little more work required than for the first walking dead game where you just received the trophies for beating the game, but usually it just involves replaying a chapter and choosing a different branching path.
I don’t know if you can tell but I really enjoyed my trip to Fable Town and will probably make the trip again. Tell tale did a great job recreating a comic book experience. Now that I’ve finished the game, I actually started reading the Fables series and everything really falls into place and you can believe that this is part of that world. The story was on par with other great comics and great TV series that I have seen. Do yourself a favor and check this out.
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