by Mike Favila, Editor

If you’ve read my review of The Wolf Among Us Episode 1: Faith (and shame on you if you haven’t), then you know I really enjoyed it.  With great cel shaded artwork, excellent story, and overall excellent mechanics, the folks at Telltale Games are obviously no slouches.  So when I heard that episode 2 of The Wolf Among Us was coming out, I couldn’t wait to see if they could keep up the streak.

While I’ve been waiting for this next episode to come out, I finally gotten a chance to start reading the original comic book.  Fables, Bill Willingham and Mark Buckingham’s account of fairy tale characters exiled to New York, is a compelling and quick read.  I’ve literally read the first 70 issues, and the world that they have created still has a lot of room for expansion and deep storytelling.  For me, coming back to this next episode is very exciting after delving into the characters.

This time around, Episode 2 can be summed up with one word: darkness.  While the story has been set up as a typical film noir,  the first episode had a number of hilarious moments which really ingratiated you with the residents of Fabletown.  Now that we’ve started to get attached to everybody, the creators aren’t shy away about ripping apart their lives.

As the story begins, the player finds out that Snow wasn’t really murdered.  Instead a fellow resident was glamoured to look exactly like her.  Bigby rushes to  investigate, all the while keeping Snow close by.  Beauty, who made a mysterious cameo in the first installment takes a bigger role here.  The fights are a little more focused and felt like they were more central to the story.

My  choices were colored after reading the books, knowing who loves who or what everybody’s motivations are, but I still felt enjoyed the variety of the menu choices.  This time around, I decided to make Bigby a nicer guy, after beating everybody up in the first episode.  The ending, which I won’t spoil here, was shocking, and leads well as a great cliffhanger into the next episode.  Although I mentioned this in my last review, I still enjoy the fact that the game will mention when you made a relevant choice that will affect the outcome later. Of course, everything is relevant! But it’s still nice to know what kind of impact your choices made.

I know that Bill Willingham didn’t write the game, but Pierre Shorette does a great job continuing the tone and mannerisms of the characters.  To a certain degree, everybody is an empathetic character.  I felt like the gameplay moved faster this time around because I was familiar with the mechanics and the timed response style for the dialogue.   It’s really nice that my choices from the first segment were acknowledged and modified the direction of the story.   And even though this is a small detail, I love the “Scenes from the next…” preview at the end of the episode.  It makes me feel like I’m watching a show I’m highly invested in and can’t wait to get even a little teaser of what’s to come.  If you weren’t hooked by the first episode of The Wolf Among Us, then this should have convinced you already!

ComicsOnline.com gives The Wolf Among Us 5 out of 5 vicious beatings!

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