We’re finally reaching the halfway mark in The Wolf Among Us, and if its third episode is any indication, things are about to get even worse for Fabletown’s hard-boiled sheriff Bigsby Wolf.
A Crooked Mile has Bigsby and Snow White hot on the trail of Ichabod Crane, who turns out, is way in deep in the case of the glamoured murders going on around New York’s Fable sanctuary. This episode turns out to be less about exposition, since we don’t really get a whole lot of answers for the questions that have been piling up since the start, but that lack is easily counteracted by the sheer amount of great moments mushed in together into this episode. Or should we say, punched in?
Bigsby’s choices are far from friendly neighborhood in A Crooked Mile. Luckily for us, playing the part through the lenses of the former villain turned copper, some of the decisions in this episode leave a lot for us to meld what is apparently a pretty well defined character into something of our own. Sure, he’s still a badass who isn’t afraid to let his fists – and sometimes, his claws – do the talking. And boy, does this episode deliver on that department.
Much like what Telltale Games began in the fairly flawed Jurassic Park game and further refined in The Walking Dead, The Wolf Among Us makes use of few instances of actual direct character control in favor of quick time events during key moments during the game. Moving about is probably the most you’ll be actually getting out of a traditional analog input, since all other commands are tied to a very simplified dialogue and inventory system.
The aforementioned quick time events are played up to an even higher degree in this particular episode, and will probably go up a few notches as the season comes to a close. In some of the dev’s previous games, that might make it sound like an annoying thing, due to its lackluster implementation, but it The Wolf Among Us‘ case, it’s good news. Although simple and pretty much fail-proof, the action scenes that involve Bigsby’s more animalistic nature are handled extremely well. So well in fact, that they might not even happen if you aren’t taking your “own” Bigsby that way in his approach.
As a detective story, The Wolf Among Us is proving to be one of Telltale’s best yet. The Fables’ source material plays a big part in setting up an incredibly interesting backdrop for a mature story that so far is being delivered pretty damn well. This is a colorful game with a striking visual design, but it’s the furthest you could get from a kid’s game. Although it strays from the usual approach to what many hold as mature, i.e sex and nudity, it more than delivers an intriguing tale filled with dread and characters that manage to evoke sympathy with only a few lines of dialogue.
Telltale Games has once again delivered a solid episode in an already strong series. A Crooked Mile builds upon a strong foundation set in place by the previous two episodes, all the while laying the extra ground work to what is heavily implied to be a strong conclusion to the season. The wait begins anew.
