The Wolf Among US FREE DOWNLOAD + REVIEW

Developer: Telltale Games
Publisher: In-house
Release date: Episode 2 due early 2014. Episodes 3, 4 and 5 TBA
Link:The Wolf Among Us site

The Wolf Among Us is an episodic series of adventure games based on the universe depicted in Vertigo’s Fables comic book series. Fairytale characters carve out a hard life Manhattan, camouflaged by magical human personas called ‘glamours’. You play as the current sheriff of Fabletown, Big Bad Wolf, a man feared and respected for the dark old days he spent blowing down houses and trying to eat Little Red Riding Hood. There’s a mysterious and terrifying murder, of course, and soon enough you’re investigating your friends, and digging through age-old fairytale relationships. It’s rendered beautifully in a stark noir style, and got off to a thrilling start with episode one in October.

Fabletown's mysterious murder weighs heavily on Snow White, who's assistant to the deputy mayor.

Bigby Wolf isn't worried about survival. Before he left the Homeland, he was the Big Bad Wolf. The one who terrorized the Three Little Pigs. The one who schemed to have Little Red Riding Hood for dinner. He can handle himself. But he is worried about his job as the sheriff of Fabletown, a community of fairytale immigrants hiding in plain sight in 1980s New York. And as Bigby looms over The Wind in the Willows' Mr. Toad, separate button prompts for questioning Toad and hitting him in the face force me to decide what kind of sheriff Bigby really is. I'm sure as hell worried about my reputation.

"Without a moral anchor like Clementine, though, guiding Bigby's character is harder, more nuanced."

Bigby's reformed, you see. He's trying to leave his big bad days behind and help people. Problem is, it's not always easy to do the right thing. Telltale Games' now-signature moral dilemmas form the core of The Wolf Among Us, which proves last year's The Walking Dead wasn't a fluke of mature video game storytelling for Telltale. Wolf trades the zombie apocalypse for a murder mystery, but the dialog options and tough moral decisions are familiar territory.

Except there's that job to think about. The Walking Dead's Lee Everett was more or less a blank slate with a big moral compass to follow: Do what's best for Clementine. When I played Walking Dead, choosing who would live and die twisted my guts, but I always tried to make choices that would keep Lee and Clementine safe. She was my North Star.

Mr. Toad isn't as dapper as he was in the old days.

Bigby Wolf, on the other hand, is an established character from Bill Willingham's Fables comic series with established relationships (most everyone fears or hates him). As a result, I never feel like I'm trying to build emotional bonds with Mr. Toad or Bigby's boss Snow White the way I did with The Walking Dead's survivors, who were all meeting for the first time. Without a moral anchor like Clementine, though, guiding Bigby's character is harder, more nuanced--and more fun as a result.

"This looks like a place where people would be murdered all the time."

"Faith," which kicks off the five-episode story of The Wolf Among Us, introduces Bigby and Fabletown--the game is set about 20 years before the comic--before dropping a grisly murder on the sheriff's doorstep. Investigating the crime doesn't involve much more than walking around and clicking on highlighted items in the environment--in fact, Telltale has further distanced itself from old adventure game trappings like item collection and environmental puzzles. In this case, the simplicity works. Walking Dead's occasional puzzles felt out of place sandwiched between moral crises. Without them, Wolf is a leaner, moodier detective thriller.

The Wolf Among Us is so moody, in fact, that when Bigby remarks that there hasn't been a murder in Fabletown for a long time, I'm surprised. Telltale's artists did an incredible job envisioning ’80s New York through the lens of fairytale neo noir, where harsh shadows collide with neon pinks and purples. The bold colors give Wolf an oppressive, grungy ’80s vibe. This looks like a place where people would be murderedall the time.

Click here to apply axe.

Consequences

But Fables, as it turns out, are tougher than humans, which is a convenient basis for some brutal quicktime event brawls. The fights are flashily animated and choreographed, but they're also my least favorite portions of the game, because I mostly lose control of Bigby's character. Thankfully, most of the first episode’s snappy two-hour runtime is devoted to conversation, and Bigby does talking very well. The dialog system in Wolf is identical to The Walking Dead's, with four conversation options covering the spectrum from gruff asshole to gruff silent type. Bigby also does not talking very well--I grinned more than once when I passed up speaking in favor of smoking a cigarette and glaring. Ominously.

Wolf presents a couple major binary decisions in its first episode, and these big choices (as well as smaller ones) will influence how future episodes play out. My favorite moment, though, is a tense sequence that's unusually open-ended for Telltale. I have to decide when to ambush a suspicious ruffian rooting around a crime scene; If I jump out of hiding too soon, I won't learn why he's skulking around. If I wait too long...well, there's a gun in the room, and I don't want to find out what he might do with it. The risk sets my heart pounding.

You can tell that The Wolf Among Us is set in the past, because taxis still looked cool.

The more I've thought about The Wolf Among Us, the more its choices and their ramifications have gotten under my skin. I lie to someone in the first episode, thinking it's better not to get involved in their problems. But what if they learn the truth? I also let a violent Fable escape, and he's prowling Fabletown's shadowy streets, somewhere. I don't think he's a killer, but if he is, will the next death be on my hands?