Game Review - Fables: The Wolf Among Us - Episode 1: Faith

-Gregg Dietz
Reviews Editor

“Fables” is a graphic novel series created by Bill Willingham for Vertigo back in 2002. The series is about all the fairy tales and folklore, who refer to themselves as “Fables”, being kicked out of their own world they call “The Homelands” by “The Advisory”. They live in one of two places, “The Farm” or “Fabletown”. Fabletown is a clandestine suburban community in upper manhattan, and The Farm is the location of the Fables that can not blend in with regular society because they are either anthropomorphic animals or monsters of some kind. Some are able to live in Fabletown due to a witch that sells spells called “glamours” that cause non-human Fables to appear human. Fabletown and The Farm have protection spells placed on them from “Mundys”, A.K.A. Humans.

Now that you know that information, The Wolf Among Us takes place before The first issue of the graphic novel. You play as Bigby Wolf who was, as I’m sure you saw coming, the Big Bad Wolf from any fairy tale where a big wolf was needed. In Fabletown, he’s the sheriff and is tasked with keeping every fable in line so as to not cause commission with the mundys. This was developed by the same people who made the recent phenomenal game “The Walking Dead”, Telltale Games. Much like The Walking Dead, this will be an episodic series. This is a review of episode 1 and I will continue to review each episode individually.

My overall feeling of this game was complete satisfaction. I loved every second of it. I’m a fan of the graphic novel and that may be a large part of why I’m so into this title. From the second the game starts, you know you're in for a thrilling ride because the music and ambiance is intoxicating. You are, for lack of a better phrase, sucked in. The visual style is that of The Walking Dead but darker, not in tone but in color palette. It’s cel shaded so when it wants to look mysterious, it does with expert execution. The gameplay is pretty much the same as The Walking Dead, a pseudo point and click adventure with the occasional action quick time event. I say “pseudo” because in classic point and click games, you don’t normally move character. It’s usually all done by clicking on what you want and the character moves there to interact, this however, you move the character to the thing to interact with it.

A lot of the puzzles are actually quite easy to solve, I never experienced anything that was too difficult and unsolvable. As long as you are thinking and paying attention to the dialog, you’ll be fine. There are moments where you’ll have to make a decision and this will change the outcome of the story, of course you can always play it again and go for the other option. This is possibly my favorite mechanic in the game simply because it gives me replayability with a relatively short game clocking in around 2-3 hours. Granted, it is only the first episode of 5, its still a very short play.

I have a few gripes with the game though, it has a few technical issues that I experienced in my play-through  One of which is the loading, in some cases, its very quick and seamless, in others like right before a huge quick time event, it takes around 10 seconds. I know that might not seem that long but when you're immersed and excited and ready for this fast paced part, it’s maddening. Another was not being able to click on an object simply because the camera hadn’t switched yet and you needed to be in the exact right location for it to register. These gripes are overall just minor annoyances to an otherwise great experience. This title is available on Steam, PSN and Xbox Arcade for $5, that to me was well worth the cash. I give this game a score of 9/10.


-Gregg Dietz