Review: The Wolf Among Us, Season 1 Promises An Engrossing Series Of Games

SPOILER ALERT: There really isn’t a way to do a real enticing review or commentary of the entirety of the entire season of The Wolf Among Us game without crossing into mild to serious spoilers of each episode. Continue at own risk, but be warned that from this point forward, ALL of the information given will taint the choices you may make in the game and give away outcomes.

EVERYONE DIES. Ok, are you ready to talk about this. Have I sufficiently scared anyone off? Good. Let’s have a bit of discussion on some of the finer points I thought about in this first season.

–  YO, when they tried to show that Snow was dead? I almost flipped out. I lost my only ally in the first episode? Man. Then she was alive in the second and I was so confused for a minute. Then I finally understood how the glamour game was being run and from there I was ready for it.  The glamour trick never really happened again, but in the strikes against the Fabletown government, from hereon known as Fabetown, I thought this was the biggest one. Fabetown wants poor citizens to pay for their high priced glamours and actively discourages the black market versions that would allow for them to have a way to follow the law at a cheaper rate. At the same time, Fabetown offers no subsidy or effective way of providing a means to create jobs for the poor. So it’s failing on all fronts to stop the poor from being involved in activities it has denoted illegal. Talk about catch-22s for the poor, but this is something we often see in real life and I thought it was an excellent juxtaposition to place in a time period such as the mid to late 80s New York especially in areas like The Bronx.

–  So we have a murder mystery where two prostitutes are dead and the leading suspect is a shadowy pimp character eventually revealed to be Georgie Porgie, which is hilarious. I was shocked that he was the one who actually did it. Not that I should have been, but I just thought the game was trying to outsmart me a bit and overthought it when the time came to point out the killer to the Crooked Man. Fabetown has a pimp who goes by the name, Georgie. I couldn’t help but picture Eric Benet playing in the background of his club the whole time. I laughed every time he was on screen.

Pimping in 1980s Fabetown

–  My man Bigby was always angry at folks thinking he wanted to kill and hurt people, his pops left his moms and he lost his mom only to lash out at everyone until he was put in some semblance of structure. We sure this wasn’t really Antoine Fisher with a glamour on to stop people from seeing his blackness? I feel like he just needed to give one good speech about how he wasn’t that person anymore. “I’m still standing, I’m still strong, and I will rip your throat out. Don’t make me go Goku Saiyan Destruction Wolf* on ya’ll.” There are levels to this.

–  Beauty and the Beast are the two single most annoying characters in the game. Not only do you say, DO NOT COME INTO THE HOTEL ROOM and she does anyway, but you find out she only out here stressed because she might have to downsize her lifestyle. Beast was out there like a goon delivering packages on corners to people he didn’t even know so his wife wouldn’t have to work. I’m not saying, they’re bad additions to the story. They ended up providing good leads, but man if this was Facebook and Beast said that stuff about her not having to work? They would be on White Whine so fast.

–  Nerissa was out there playing that role too. I still don’t know how I feel about the whole story’s plot being subverted by one character. That’s usually a copout added to the end of stories to allow for future progress and I genuinely feel there was more than enough there for season 2 already. However, she did drop that bomb at the end to make you think that maybe she was but maybe she wasn’t but maybe she was Faith in a glamour. Man, I can’t wait for season two to see how that unfolds.

–  Lastly, the Crooked Man really was out there just filling in the gaps that government allowed to exist. One could ague that he was absolutely right about their failings but I’m so idealistic that I made sure he took his butt to jail. Of course, I got a lick in on him first but the man choked me! Don’t he know who I am? I’m the Juggernaut of this Fabetown game man!

Let us know below what you thought of the game. Did you like it? What did you think about some of the subtexts of the plot?

* – Dragonball would air its first episode in 1986. I just assume Bigby has a really good connection with Japan and had some copies sent over so he could make this reference.

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