The Wolf Among Us

"The word is out, you're doing wrong
Gonna lock you up before too long
Your lying eyes gonna tell you right
So listen up, don't make a fight"

Michael Jackson - Bad



Well now... The Wolf Among Us proved adequately bearable...
And I do mean proved, as in it had something to prove. To me at least.

See, despite my fascination with the psychological symbolism of fictional wolves and lycanthropy, I'm sorely disappointed by how modern media treat the lupine-leaning. Usually, werewolves get relegated to second or third-act disposable mooks, bloated over-muscled props for the hero's rising action. The few times they're given more plot-centric attention, it's likely to center entirely on the physical or on lycanthropy as a disease instead of exploring the intrinsic misanthropy, seclusion and instability which lead a wer to be condemned as a wolfe.

I'm also leery of adaptations, not least because Hollywood has conditioned all of us over the past century to expect the worst whenever a movie studio lays claim to a book title. Fundamentally, trying to mangle, deface and torture a concept from one medium into another inevitably raises my hackles as an act of vandalism. So I'm not inclined to weep for the demise of Telltale Games, a company dedicated to knock-offs, spin-offs, rip-offs and jack-offs. When I learned the story here was adapted as prequel to a comic book already adapting old fables, to me it just sounded doubly knocked off.

In the interest of fairness, I'll magnanimously admit I may not have been entirely right in entirely dismissing the entirety of the conceptual background for The Wolf Among Us. Mostly. Its biggest flaw is attempting to drag adventure games, a genre defined by careful sleuthing and dreamy exploration, into the fast-paced twitch-friendly "action" direction of anything being watered down for a larger (read: dumber) audience. Most of the idiotic quick-time button mashing events I badmouthed in my previous post are bad enough, but did one of them really need to be a high-speed car chase? Did chasing cars as a giant dog-man really enrich the urban fantasy gameplay experience there? Does it even fit the game's overall precept of upholding the masquerade? Was that the best use of development time and funding? Am I asking rhetorical questions?

Moreover, the variable leeway in queuing the user's commands combined with obsessively interspersing mini-cutscenes with actual playable content result in some unnecessary confusion as to when you do or do not have control of your character. Along with some poorly timed dialogues, this had me missing quite a few of my cues. Even more, too many scenes end automatically by triggering a specific environment or NPC interaction instead of allowing the player to choose when to exit. I have no idea whether I missed any actual clues this way or just flavor text, but either way I felt cheated every time I accidentally triggered a cutscene before I'd had a full look about me.

I can't speak as to the game's adherence to the comics on which it's based, but I will say that in amplifying the classic tropes of folklore to modern sensibilities, it falls into our all too familiar misandrist presumptions. Except for one token villainess (positioned as hypercompetent second-in-command and not the ultimate evil, natch) the female characters are all angels, saints, radiant beauties or martyrs just trying to get by. The men are all fat, ugly, slovenly, lying and cruel deadbeats, literal toads and pigs, crooks, drunks, mafiosi, thugs - or craven perverts or lurking stalkers or looming control freaks just waiting to ensnare and murderize those poor innocent women to slake their evil, unnatural masculine lusts. (Muahahahahaaah! *twirls moustache*) Though the ending hints this primitive-minded dichotomy might not have been as absolute as it seemed, that does little to change the overall pattern. All of your suspects are male.

On the other hand, that image brings us to some of the game's good points: "didn't say anything" is a valid dialogue choice, and pet theories are split fairly evenly. This fits both thematically into the story's film noir aesthetic and practically into patiently gathering clues and reserving judgment. While having to fit into the comics' canon obviously limited end results, your build-up of dialogue choices does yield a personalized playthrough to a greater extent than even most RPGs, much less the more linear adventure genre. As a whodunit, the plot is more complex and ambiguous than one would ever expect from a computer game. Prepare to be out-sleuthed.

Its success is carried more through execution than concept. I can bitch all I want about the mechanics post-facto but once you fire it up The Wolf Among Us is accessible, engaging and immersive. Most characters digress from their main aesthetic at some point so as not to seem too flat. Its visuals are both detailed and fluid, its aural accompaniment is evocative enough for its purposes, and the voice actors really outdid themselves. Especially Bigby. The cynical, hard-boiled film noir detective is one of the few modern roles which mesh well with the old-timey misanthropic hermit on the edge of town, rumored to be not entirely human. Bigby's lines sound appropriately put upon, fed up, run down and edgy not only in their subject matter but their tone, constantly on the edge of lashing out. Both writing and voice nailed the attitude. Though far from ideal, stomping around as Bigby yielded a much more satisfactory portrayal of wolfing out than playing a shapeshifting druid in a DnD adaptation or Skyrim's degradation of lycanthropy to pack-mule status.

Call me biased, but at least for the sake of gettin' hairy, in the end I can't dislike this game.