I was a little late to the party when it came to Telltale’s first game, but when I did get my hands on The Walking Dead I loved it to pieces. The story telling, the character development, the pacing… all of it. I wasn’t alone, obviously, The Walking Dead was solid GOTY material in the eyes of many. Therefore, naturally, I’m not the only one who is intensely curious about what sort of game Telltale would produce to follow the success they had with their first title.
This weekend, I got to play through the first portion of The Wolf Among Us where I, as Bigsby, responded to a report that “Mr Toad” had been showing his face around town without a disguise. Which was a problem, given that these fairy tale creatures are supposed to be hiding in regular human society.
After some giving Mr Toad some hard lines about how his troubles weren’t my problem (and the game assured me he would remember this), I headed upstairs to put an end to some domestic dispute. By domestic dispute, I mean the Woodsman slapping around what was probably a prostitute. Yeah, this game may be about fairy tales, but it got pretty real and I was only playing for 15 minutes, if that. This scene gave me the opportunity to either try to talk the woodsman down, or punch him in the mouth. I punched him in the mouth.
The combat in The Wolf Among Us consisted of a series of quicktime events, sort of like what we saw in The Walking Dead, but it felt much better. It was more interactive, there were more choices, and I’m not sure how much the course of the fight was altered by what I did, but I can tell you one thing: In the trailer that’s been released, it looks like the Woodsman throws Bigsby out a window, and I can confidently say that I was the one doing the throwing.
The depth of the story (which I have no doubt will be awesome), the sheer amount of character in each… character (I really loved Mr Toad), and the expanded agency means this game looks to build upon what Telltale has become known for and, perhaps, give us their best game yet with The Wolf Among Us.