Description
The Wolf Among Us is a five-part adventure game series based on the Fables comic book series by Bill Willingham. The game is canon with the comic book universe and is set in the 1980s, thirty years before the first comic book. It describes an alternate version of our world where characters of our fairy tales and fables live in a separate world known as the Homelands ruled by a tyrant known as the Adversary. There are some who have fled the world, referred to as Fables, who has established a colony in the human world known as Fabletown, located in Manhattan in the USA. They have to hide their presence from the humans by taking on a human form through an enchantment known as glamour. When Fables refuse to take it or cannot afford it, they are sent to a rural community known as The Farm. In the game the player controls Bigby Wolf, the reformed Big Bad Wolf who has now become sherriff of Fabletown. His task is to make sure the residents follow the laws. The game is filled with references and characters from famous fables such as Snow White, Beauty, Beast, Mr. Toad, Bluebeard, The Little Mermaid and Woodsman, but often with a grim attitude while most of the game has a noir, hardboiled atmosphere.
On the PC the episodes were not released separately but only as a single season pack. The Xbox 360, PS3 and iOS versions offer the first episode as a separate purchase. The other four can then be bought separately (PS3/Xbox 360) or in a pack through a season pass (Xbox 360) or Multi-Pack (iOS). There is also a free trial version available with just the first act of the first episode for the Xbox 360 and PS3. For the PS3 all five episodes are also available as a single purchase through the season pass version. Both Xbox 360 and PS3 received a compilation release afterwards bundling all episodes. For the PS Vita, PS4 and Xbox One, this is the first release of the game on the platform.
Each episode consists of six chapters. The five episodes are:
- The Wolf Among Us: Episode 1 – Faith
- The Wolf Among Us: Episode 2 – Smoke and Mirrors
- The Wolf Among Us: Episode 3 – A Crooked Mile
- The Wolf Among Us: Episode 4 – In Sheep’s Clothing
- The Wolf Among Us: Episode 5 – Cry Wolf
The gameplay is largely identical to The Walking Dead. The game is story-driven and incorporates decisions by the player that are carried along for the entire game. There is a certain amount of freedom in exploration and sometimes multiple paths are offered, for instance in choosing where to go next. Many objects in the environment can be examined and some can also be picked up and are stored in a separate inventory. These objects are not always necessary to solve puzzles, but can improve relationships in conversations when the object is useful. Conversations with key characters and solving small puzzles are the most important trigger to progress through the game. Many of the action sequences are shown as a cinematic or through quick-time events for the player to act quickly. When they are not performed in time, the character dies or the game chooses a different route for the events. As in The Walking Dead, conversation options are almost always time limited and when the player does not react in time, a decision is made automatically. Each episode ends with a sneak peek at the events in the next one and a new episode starts with a short recap.
