{"id":155,"date":"2015-02-06T10:36:41","date_gmt":"2015-02-06T08:36:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/?p=155"},"modified":"2015-02-27T13:28:14","modified_gmt":"2015-02-27T11:28:14","slug":"wolf-among-us-review-bite-the-hand-that-feeds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wolf-among-us-review-bite-the-hand-that-feeds\/","title":{"rendered":"Wolf Among Us Review: Bite The Hand That Feeds"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oh, TellTale.<\/p>\n

I have a very serious love\/hate relationship with you and your products. On the one hand, I think your storytelling is great \u2013 Wolf Among Us is proof of this, as it has a quite mature narrative that it handles very well, but then…<\/p>\n

…well, we have several things that are very badly wrong.<\/p>\n

Because of your model, there are games that simply will never get a second outing and completely deserve it. This particular game is one such.<\/p>\n

Let me tell you why.<\/p>\n

\"A
Each Fable has a bio<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I\u2019ve already mentioned the story telling. So let\u2019s talk about that for a little. In this particular outing of Fables, which is a comic book series written by Bill Willingham, we meet Bigby wolf who is \u2013 of course \u2013 the Big, Bad Wolf. Bigby has been set up as the sheriff of Fabletown, a place where all the fables you know from your childhood \u2013 Little Red Riding Hood, Snow White, the Little Mermaid \u2013 have all come to settle to make a better life from themselves, far away from their original stories.<\/p>\n

In this particular version of the world, it\u2019s important that Fables lay low, so that the mundies \u2013 regular, mundane people like you and me \u2013 don\u2019t spot them. Naturally, when gruesome murders begin to take place, Bigby has to investigate, before the mainstream police find out what\u2019s going on.<\/p>\n

This is the narrative strand that carries the game \u2013 a slow-burn noir-like detective story that spans five episodes which clock in at about an hour and a half to two hours or so per episode. It\u2019s very much like a TV drama where you\u2019re driving the action.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a lot to like about the narrative: it sometimes yanks the rug from underneath you just as you\u2019re getting comfortable. It\u2019s a genuinely adult story, with all the complexities that brings to the table. Absolutely everyone has an agenda and you need to keep that in mind while you\u2019re investigating. From the crass Bluebeard down to Bigby\u2019s \u201croom-mate\u201d Colin, everyone has an angle. For Colin this is simple: don\u2019t go to The Farm. Bluebeard has greater ambitions and a quite sadistic streak.<\/p>\n

The problem with the narrative is where it fails. Because this is a TellTale game, it has very<\/em> Telltale problems.<\/p>\n

The first, glaring problem is that your choices won\u2019t matter. Not a lot, anyhow. The story has a very scripted arc which can meddle with your choices. A very early example of this comes when you meet Toad and his son TJ. Toad has various problems \u2013 most of which are story-related and that I can\u2019t go into here, because I don\u2019t want to ruin the plot, but near the end of the game it seems like you can solve them, however no matter what you do, Toad\u2019s problems always become insurmountable, and he\u2019s always in the last scene and always in a bad situation.<\/p>\n

Upon initially finishing the game, I went searching for forum threads and the like detailing how you could solve Toad\u2019s problems, but you can\u2019t. That outcome is the only outcome there is. It feels cheap of TellTale to do this, because it absolutely feels like you\u2019re failing the characters.<\/p>\n

The second problem with Wolf Among Us and it\u2019s narrative is your complete lack of agency in some spots.<\/p>\n

Until I discovered that you can pause the game to make conversation decisions, they were flying by too quickly, because Telltale feels that you should only have a handful of seconds to decide what to say or do. This is problematic for various reasons, cardinal of which is that your actions and words dictate what sort of Bigby you are.<\/p>\n

You can either be<\/em> the Big, Bad Wolf, tearing people limb from limb or you can be an understanding, reasonable sheriff, searching all of Fabletown for some answers. However, the pause function is absolutely pivotal here, as a result of the short time frame you need to make decisions.<\/p>\n

\"This
Beast! I just want to be friends!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But this doesn\u2019t even begin to address the greater problem with this system: the complete lack of input you have in certain situations that absolutely demand it. At several points throughout the game, Bigby\u2019s life will be in danger and at almost<\/em> all of these, TellTale decided to strip you of choice, instead opting for Quick Time Event-driven fight scenes. Were you playing the benevolent Wolf? Too bad. You have to beat these people to a pulp.<\/p>\n

It cheapens the central hook upon which the game lies: can you stop your wolf from escaping? It\u2019s so problematic, especially because<\/em> a lot of the narrative exists around this central hook. Many Fables even remark on it in some way or another. I understand and accept that it costs money to create each individual fork in the road for each particular choice, but this is a TellTale problem: sell the idea that your choices matter when, sadly, they don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

These are the two biggest problems with the game, though. Everything else is wonderful, from the slightly VNV-Nation-like electronic soundtrack to the crisp, hand-drawn locales, the world of Fables will draw you right in and hold on right until you finish the last chapter.<\/p>\n

And that ending? You might see parts of it coming, but your mind will positively reel at the final conversation.<\/p>\n

So, my take away? TellTale have created a fantastic game that has some of the same problems they\u2019ve had with every game they\u2019ve made to date, but the story, characters and world of this particular outing are interesting enough to absolutely warrant your time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Oh, TellTale. I have a very serious love\/hate relationship with you and your products. On the one hand, I think your storytelling is great \u2013 Wolf Among Us is proof of this, as it has a quite mature narrative that it handles very well, but then… …well, we have several<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10],"tags":[6,18,3,4,5],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":159,"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155\/revisions\/159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}