The Wolf Among Us
The Wolf Among Us is an episodic adventure game developed and published by Telltale Games. It is based on Bill Willingham's Fables comic book series, to which it serves as a prequel. The game consists of five episodes that were released throughout 2013 and 2014. Retail versions for the PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Xbox 360, and Xbox One consoles were made available in November 2014. The game is set in Fabletown, a clandestine community within New York City consisting of fantastical characters from fairy tales, novels, and folklore, where sheriff Bigby Wolf must investigate a series of mysterious murders.
The Wolf Among Us received mostly positive reviews for its writing, atmosphere, and characterization, though it was criticized for technical issues and some aspects of the gameplay.
In July 2017, Telltale announced that a second season of The Wolf Among Us was scheduled for release in 2018, but Telltale eventually had to shut down for "insurmountable challenges" in 2018, with its assets being acquired by LCG Entertainment. One of the first original games from this new company, doing business as Telltale Games, will be a sequel to The Wolf Among Us, titled The Wolf Among Us 2, which was announced in December 2019.
Gameplay
The Wolf Among Us is a graphic adventure game, played from a third-person perspective. The player controls protagonist Bigby Wolf, who must investigate a series of mysterious murders. Throughout the game, the player explores various three-dimensional environments, such as apartment buildings and a bar. When exploring an environment, the player may find an object they can interact with; when this occurs, they must move the cursor over the object to select and examine it. Items of interest are stored in an inventory, and can be used later in the story. The player may also talk with non-player characters, and see the conversations presented in the form of dialogue trees. The dialogue options chosen during conversations will either have a positive or negative effect on how other characters view Bigby, and their perceptions will influence future events in the story. Some scenes are more action-oriented, forcing the player to respond to a series of quick time event prompts. The player is not required to complete every QTE prompt, and skipping certain prompts may affect future events in the story.Synopsis
Setting and characters
The Wolf Among Us is set in the year 1986, nearly twenty years before the events of Fables. For years, many of the magical lands described in myth, legend, and folklore have been occupied by an enigmatic tyrant known as the Adversary. To escape the Adversary's totalitarian regime, many of The Homelands inhabitants fled to colonial America, and created an enclave known as Fabletown, now located in modern-day Manhattan. To mask their presence from the native humans, all non-human Fables have to purchase an enchantment known as a "glamour", which allows them to appear human, otherwise they will be relocated to a rural community known as "The Farm".The protagonist of The Wolf Among Us is Bigby Wolf, formerly the Big Bad Wolf. He is the sheriff of Fabletown, currently working at the "Business Office" under corrupt interim mayor Ichabod Crane, aided by Snow White and the Magic Mirror in his investigation along with the help of Bufkin the winged monkey that manages Fabletown's records. Aristocrat Bluebeard also works at the Office though his motives are unclear. Bigby resides at the Woodlands apartments where Colin, one of the Three Little Pigs, occasionally crashes at his place. Beauty and the Beast are also residents of the Woodlands, though currently struggling with a troubled marriage. One of the Fables that Bigby frequently contacts is Mr. Toad and his son TJ, who live in a run-down apartment building nearby.
In the first episode, the player is introduced to The Woodsman, who lives in the same building as Mr. Toad. Standing in Bigby's way are Dee and Dum Tweedle, twin private investigators and criminals. Bigby also encounters Holly, a Troll who runs the Trip Trap bar, and barfly Grendel. The second episode introduces trickster and thief Jack Horner, Georgie Porgie, a pimp and the owner of the Pudding & Pie strip club, along with prostitute Nerissa, the former Little Mermaid, Vivian, Georgie's lover, and Clever Hans, the club's bouncer. The third episode introduces the janitor Flycatcher, the Crooked Man, a loan shark with a large influence in Fabletown, Bloody Mary, a sadistic minion of the Crooked Man, and Aunty Greenleaf, a rogue witch who illegally sells cheap black-market glamours to Fables. The fourth episode introduces the Jersey Devil, the manager of the Lucky Pawn shop and another minion of the Crooked Man; and Johann the butcher, the former owner of the Cut Above butcher shop who has been forced out of his business by the Crooked Man's henchmen.
Plot
This is a broad overview of the plot. Certain decisions made by the player will alter details of specific events.Answering a call by Mr. Toad, Bigby Wolf arrives to find a prostitute being attacked by an intoxicated Woodsman, prompting him to intervene. Saving her, Bigby returns to the Woodlands to rest only to later be awakened by Snow White, whom finds the head of the same prostitute he saved on the Woodlands' doorstep. Investigating the clues left with the head, Bigby and Snow identify the prostitute as Faith, a Fable from Allerleirauh. They discover she and her husband, Prince Lawrence, had fallen in debt. As a result, Faith turned to prostitution to make ends meet. However, they also come across Tweedledee and Tweedledum, whom are also involved and briefly escape Bigby's pursuit. Later, when returning to the Woodlands, Bigby finds Snow's head placed on the doorstep the very same way it happened with Faith.
Bigby is taken in by the New York City Police Department for questioning, but Ichabod Crane uses a spell to erase all memories of the incident from the police and rescue Bigby. When returning to the Woodlands and attempting to question the one Bigby captured, they discover Snow is still alive as the "Snow" head and corpse actually belonged to a troll named Lily, using a clandestine, yet ineffective form of glamour. Bigby follows the leads to Lily's workplace, the Pudding 'N Pie strip club, where Faith also worked. While the owner, Georgie Porgie, proves uncooperative, one of the dancers, Nerissa, subtly guides Bigby to a nearby hotel, where he comes across Lily's apparent murder scene and photographic evidence of Crane engaging in sexual acts with Lily while she was glamoured as Snow. Snow and Bigby return to the Woodlands to find Crane is gone, having destroyed the Magic Mirror and taking one shard to avoid being tracked down.
Investigations into Crane reveal that he had been embezzling money from Fabletown for years to pay off outstanding debts to a loan shark known as the Crooked Man. After tracking down one of the Crooked Man's collaborators, the clandestine witch Aunty Greenleaf, Bigby and Snow corner and detain Crane at the Pudding 'N Pie, but are intercepted by the Crooked Man's henchmen - the Tweedles and Bloody Mary - whom near-fatally injure Bigby even in his wolf form, forcing Snow to surrender Crane and save Bigby's life.
Shifting his attention to the Crooked Man, Bigby uncovers an illegal glamour manufacturing operation that uses the Pudding 'N Pie girls for slave labor. He also comes across a pawn shop run by the Jersey Devil where he recovers the missing Magic Mirror shard. The mirror reveals the Crooked Man has a mobile lair, which Bigby races to and reaches it in time. There, the Crooked Man exposes Georgie as Faith and Lily's murderer, and that Georgie "misinterpreted" his orders to deal with them when they attempted plotting to leave his forced employ. Resisting arrest, Georgie is fatally stabbed, but is rescued by his lover Vivian. Pursuing them back to the Pudding 'N Pie, Bigby corners Georgie and Vivian. Vivian soon takes her own life after admitting to replicating her ribbon's spell - that forced obedience, silence and decapitation when attempting to remove it - to those of the other girls.
Bigby tracks the Crooked Man to an abandoned foundry, where he is forced to turn to his true wolf form to finally kill Bloody Mary, and corners the Crooked Man himself in his office. Bigby then either brings the Crooked Man back to the Woodlands dead or alive for trial where he almost convinces the Fables of Fabletown's failures to protect and provide until Nerissa comes in, testifying of the Crooked Man's schemes and cementing his guilty verdict.
In the aftermath, Bigby meets with Nerissa the next day, where she reveals Lily and Faith planned to use Crane's incriminating picture to try and blackmail Georgie and the Crooked Man, but Nerissa panicked and exposed the plot. She also confesses to having been the one whom put Faith's head in the Woodlands' doorstep, setting the events of the game in motion. She gives her farewell to Bigby, stating that "you're not as bad as everyone says you are". Bigby recalls Faith saying those exact words and wonders if Nerissa was actually Faith all along.
Episodes
Episodic releases for the Microsoft Windows, Xbox 360, OS X and PlayStation 3 platforms were released near-simultaneously within the same week; the iOS and PlayStation Vita episodic releases were expected to trail these by about a month or so.Development
In 2011, Telltale Games acquired licenses to develop video games based on two comic book series, The Walking Dead by Robert Kirkman, and Fables by Bill Willingham. This came around the same time that the television series The Walking Dead became critically successful, leading to Telltale to put much of their initial focus on developing The Walking Dead property through 2011 and 2012. This game was released in April 2012, and was a critical and commercial success for Telltale. With The Walking Dead shipping, the company then started working on their Fables title, but according to Telltale's Job Stauffer, they struggled with the narrative of the title over a year and a half. Stauffer said at one point, they found the game to be more of a comedy, but without much humorous substance and in an un-shippable state. Stauffer said that their team rallied together to refocus the game, delaying it from an early 2012 release to late 2012, and ultimately to October 2013 when it finally shipped. This did allow for Telltale to incorporate mechanics that had proven successful in The Walking Dead into their Fables game.Due to these delays, Telltale re-announced the Fables game at the New York Comic Con in October 2012. The title of the game, The Wolf Among Us, was revealed in March 2013, and is based on the main character Bigby Wolf.
Pre-orders were made available on October 3, 2013, from Telltale Games and Steam. Those who pre-ordered through Telltale received a collector's DVD at the end of the season.
The game was initially released across five episodes from October 2013 to July 2014 for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 platforms.