The Wolf Among Us Episode Five: Cry Wolf Review

While everyone is eagerly awaiting the final few episodes of The Walking Dead Season Two, The Wolf Among Us season one wrapped up this week and it did so in glorious fashion. The Wolf Among Us is quite a bit different than The Walking Dead, although you could argue that they are both similar games due to the gameplay style and all, their chosen genre is what makes them different. The Walking Dead focuses on horror while The Wolf Among Us is pure noir. I mean, it’s just beautiful.

So we’ve had four tremendous episodes thus far, although we’ve seen people complaining about the rather short length of episode four, leading us all into episode five; Cry Wolf. Cry Wolf leaves us in a precarious position, in a literal den of thieves facing the Crooked Man as well as every other villainous character that you’ve met throughout the season (bar one, which we’ll touch upon later). It’s clear that Bigby Wolf is not in the greatest of positions here.

All roads have led Bigby to the Crooked Man being behind not only the murders of Lily and Faith, but for blackmailing and keeping everyone in Fabletown under his oppressive reign due to his wealth and status. If Master Blaster ran Bartertown then the Crooked Man ran Fabletown all while pulling the wool over the eyes of as many people as he could. It’s time for vengeance, right?

Well, it’s actually not easy. I mean, Bigby is in a room full of adversaries, of course things are going to go awry, especially when Bloody Mary makes an appearance, helping the Crooked Man to escape while Bigby has to face down the rest of the goon squad. This is the first of what will be a few action sequences in this episode, with this one definitely having the most bang for your buck when it comes to Bigby Wolf violence.

It’s followed by a car chase scene where Bigby has turned into a werewolf and is hopping from car-to-car, roof-to-roof in an attempt to keep up with the escaped Georgie. Georgie, of course, has been outed as the murderer, although it clearly doesn’t feel right that a two-bit pimp would also be murdering his own girls for no reason. Bigby eventually catches up and there are answers but man, nothing about it is pretty. In a way, this is exactly what you wanted out of this game; gritty, dark and unrelenting. There are answers in there but damn do they feel awful.

This does lead him to where he believes the Crooked Man to be holed up. Of course, there is a problem here, with Bigby noticing the silver bullets that have been produced in the metalworks and the voice of Bloody Mary goading him on. We’ve seen what Bloody Mary is capable of doing to Bigby and that she might be capable of a whole lot more. The fight that ensues is tense, leading into what is just sheer insanity. This is probably one of the more fun fights in the game and will play a lot more like a “boss battle” than what you are used to in Telltale games, which is an interesting twist. That being said, it’s still not that hard.

Because, c’mon, when are any of the battles in these games that hard? The decisions are what are difficult, the gameplay is just the icing on the cake usually, which drives some people mad with these games. What follows is one of the coolest sequences to date in any Telltale game, that being a trial scene. The audience of your peers can be swayed in either direction, making your choice of words vital, because you don’t want to lose this one.

It also is followed by one of the tougher decisions in the game. You could have stopped this episode here and walked away feeling alright about it, but the game has to remind you of some of your earlier decisions and how you’ve impacted Fabletown. You’ll feel really rotten about some of the difficult decisions that you’ve made — no matter how right they are — while some decisions that you felt alright about will be thrown in your face as crappy ones. In past Telltale games your decisions had weight, but here it’s just almost oppressive.

Like any solid noir, it ends with a girl in the rain and an air of uncertainty. That’s a damned fine way to end a damned fine season, if you ask me, even if this one was only 70 minutes.

Published on July 9, 2014 at 4:41 pm
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