With Cry Wolf , Telltale finishes its second series since it impressed everyone with the first season of The Walking Dead. Before The Wolf Among Us had doubts about whether the study could maintain the high level shown, and whether it could raise such a solid story with another license.
The relationship between Clementine and Lee in The Walking Dead was the main pillar that supported and promoted the plot in that game, so there was interest in knowing if the study would succeed without the benefit of the discovery of those two characters. In addition, there was doubt about the fact that this project,
based on the comic of Vertigo “Fables”, uses characters established in the series, including two of its main characters -Snow and Bigby-, which a priori would be seen as a Potential obstacle versus the freedom to create your own characters with what you can do anything.
With the season completed, it can be said with satisfaction that the studio remains in good creative shape and that it is in a good position to face the future – Season 2 of The Walking Dead is also going very well, which shows that the different Teams in the study are in good standing.
The Wolf Among Usis a great adaptation of the material of comics, which plays with familiar concepts to create their own paths, with enough skill to not repeat ideas but also not to get away from the spirit of the original comic. In the comics,
Bigby and Snow have more career in their posts while in the game, conceived as a prequel, you can see the inexperience and the fact that Fabletown is practically in its infancy, but both are recognizable in spite of the different attitudes and positions that we can adopt.
As a brief summary for newcomers, Cry Wolf is the fifth and final episode of the season of The Wolf Among Us, Telltale’s new work. The story, based on Bill Willingham’s award-winning comics “Fables”, is based on the idea that a large number of characters of stories and legends have been forced into exile in the world of mortals, a cold and inhospitable place where they
have to worry about things that did not exist for them before – like the bring money home. A group of them decides to settle in New York and create a community called Fabletown, gathering resources to help each other and at the same time establish a
series of norms and rules to live among humans without raising suspicion. In the game, the protagonist of the story is Bigby, diminutive of his old name: Big Bad Wolf, the great wolf of tales like Little Red Riding Hood or the Three Little Pigs, who in this community has accepted the role of sheriff. Beside him is Snow, Snow White, who takes on the role of Fabletown’s de facto ruler,
Explained the premise, what The Wolf Among Us proposes is a black novel with supernatural elements and the mixture of dialogues, decisions and sequences of action that has become the hallmark of the house for Telltale. From a terrible murder,
Bigby He begins to investigate and immerse himself in the darkest and tragic side of Fabletown, confronting the contradictions and failures of the system of rules supposedly created for the protection of its inhabitants. The set of the five episodes forms a game of
about six hours, with the possibility of replaying it to make different decisions – although in this it must be said that the Telltale games lose a bit of grace when they are replayed, since it is easier to account of the tricks they perform so as not to alter the future of the
plot too much, despite the decisions you make. There are hard decisions and palpable consequences, yes, but the episodic structure and the tight deadlines to make each delivery prevent the game from presenting diametrically different “routes” in terms of the main story.
This is not bad, in fact it is a virtue that the study manages to maintain that illusion of smoke and mirror thanks to the solidity of its execution. The very beginning of Cry Wolfit is a good proof of this: a remembrance of the highlights of the other episodes, including some decisions that decide on the life or death of certain characters or that change their lives forever.
Depending on whether we have tried to do things right, or have behaved like a bully unable to contain their instincts, we will face different attitudes and different consequences, but the main thread of the game is built not to change radically based on those decisions . However, it is effective because the solid construction of dialogues, the work with the voices, the facial animations and the whole set help to give weight to these consequences.
