Episode 190 - Goth Mommies - The Wolf Among Us

No, I’m Pod. He’s Cast. Welcome back to the podcast! Today, for the
second episode of Mystery May, we’re going to be talking about The
Wolf Among Us, a narrative adventure game from Telltale. Telltale’s
style of design really exploded with the Walking Dead, and has
since led to a number of choice-based adventure games that would
cite it as inspiration, but The Wolf Among Us sits in a unique
position in their catalogue as the last indie property they would
make a game out of following the studio’s previous success. Because
Fables, the series that the game is based on, is relatively niche,
many of the players for this game were fans of Telltale’s games
specifically. This has led to the game having a particularly
outspoken following, and a very positive reputation. And one it’s
earned, we think. The game centers around a murder mystery, placing
you in the shoes and paws of Sheriff Bigby Wolf trying to identify
the killer. And this mystery is very well written, with pacing that
makes the game’s five episode structure flow surprisingly well even
when playing through the game all at once and characters that are
deep enough to make sense of their motivations and, importantly,
predict their reactions to your choices. Some of the mechanics show
their age, with Telltale’s usual reliance on QTEs and truncated
dialogue choices introducing a little bit of friction, but if these
are things you can deal with, this may be the best example of what
Telltale can do out there. We’re going to talk about the audience
expectation that comes with writing a story using preexisting
characters from two different mediums, managing tone with a mature
premise but a silly pretense, and we revel in our success as
podcasting magnates. Thank you for joining us again this week! As
we’ve mentioned on the last two episodes, it’s kind of crazy we
hadn’t talked about a Telltale game up to this point. We have
different histories with the studio, but we both like the games
inspired by them and have played multiple games from them in the
past, so it was honestly a matter of time. Do you think The Wolf
Among Us is The Wolf Among the best games Telltale has released? Do
you jive with the general structure and mechanics of this now
twelve year old game still? Let us know in the comments or over on
our Discord! Next time, the fates have deigned we talk about
Half-Life, so be sure to join us for that!