The Wolf Among Us

Telltale Games stumbled into greatness with The Walking Dead, and while The Wolf Among Us proves it wasn’t entirely a flash in the pan, in hindsight, it’s clear that the studio had no idea what to do with its signature style. This series benefits from being the progenitor’s direct follow-up, released before its novelty was thoroughly driven into the ground. It also extracts an interesting story centered on wealth inequality from the otherwise hackneyed premise of mature fairy tales. While the quick time event-driven action scenes are as underwhelming as ever, the writing is top-notch, and the visuals and audio are a wonderful fusion of neon and noir. The detective segments where you piece together clues and catch characters with contradicting stories are also a highlight.

For the first few episodes, the primary thing holding the series back is its connection to its source material, Fables. The laws of that universe demand nearly all characters be practically invincible on top of the standard prequel plot armour, draining the tension out of every “dangerous” scene. Episode 2 stands out as the best of the lot largely because it avoids relying on such scenarios. However, the later episodes display the more grating hallmarks of obvious rush jobs. Episode 4 is particularly burdened with scenes that were clearly meant to continue the detective gameplay but then just…don’t, while much of Episode 5 is taken up by even-lazier-than-usual quick time events. Both episodes also regularly forget to conclude established character stories.