The Wolf Among Us Review (PC)

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The Telltale era of gaming is one I missed. Despite being a fan of choice based games it simply passed me by, and I wouldn’t try my hand at them until Batman sometime around the late 2010s. I’ve played a few since then but it’s still hard to process just how long ago some of these released. I mean, 12 years ago? Crazy.

If The Walking is Dead is their rise to fame, then The Wolf Among Us could be considered the pinnacle before their eventual fall from grace. Over the years it’s been widely rewarded as their best, or second best game (after Walking Dead), but this being my first time playing it I’ll be the judge of that.

Set in a noir city, you play as the sheriff in a town full of “fables” which are basically all fairytale characters. I’m not very well versed in fairytales, but the game provides you with a journal (which I forgot to use after episode 1, whoops.) that tells you their lore, very neat and helpful. Not long into the action, you get wrapped up in a murder mystery and spend the remainder of the game tracking down this mysterious killer.

It’s an interesting setting, after all murder mysteries are always engaging. Sadly, I feel like it sort of goes nowhere despite being the focal point of the entire game. A common complaint for Telltale games is them being full of the illusion of choice rather than your choices holding any weight and I feel like no game represents this better than Wolf.

You will identify the gameplay loop fairly quick. Bigsby gets the option to go to a different set of locations. You will go to ALL of them, but you get to pick the order. This changes events slightly as you might speak to one character if you head somewhere first, and they’ll be gone if you choose to go there last. But since you go to all of them anyway and get the required information one way or the other, it doesn’t feel like your choice had any impact whatsoever.

Characters do remember if you were nice or mean to them, and they show it by throwing in one line of dialogue every now and then, but I mean, whatever. I guess you do get the choice to kill 1 character (and I did take it.) but in Telltale fashion, if you don’t they only show up once after the fact and don’t do much.

Gameplay is standard Telltale, you got your QTEs and timed choices. There are segments where you walk around a room and look for clues, and that’s really it. Nothing groundbreaking but it gets the job done. The game is also fairly short. I clocked in at 8 hours, which is less than the other games I’ve played from them. Episode 2 specifically felt really short compared to the rest, and it was definitely the weakest one in my opinion.

In all honesty, I found The Wolf Among Us fairly disappointing considering its reputation. The big reveal fell flat to me due to the lack of credible suspects. It’s still a fun time, just nowhere near Telltale’s best.

SCORE: ***1/4