Snow White: "So...starting now...we do everything cut and dried, by the book, straight as an arrow."
Colin: "Pure as driven snow..."
-From Episode IV: "In Sheep's Clothing"
I often think that life is an expectations game--or, at least, it is for me. Before I read a book, watch a film, play a game--or even do something more mundane, like head into a staff meeting or stop by Dillon's for the week's groceries--I instinctively develop a mental narrative of how that experience will unfold. My guess is that most people do this to some extent. How something plays out, then, inevitably stands in contrast with my expectation of that event; my resulting evaluation colors my memory, my attitudes shaping the very facts of the experience.
With The Wolf Among Us, I had very high expectations. A production of Telltale Games, one of my favorite game publishers (and based in my spiritual home of Marin County, California), the game uses a similar engine and format as The Walking Dead, Season One, one of the best games of recent years. It has a noir setting; draws on the smart comic series, Fables; features similarly breathtaking visuals as The Walking Dead; and stars many of the same excellent voice actors. My mental narrative was an exciting one. It foresaw The Wolf Among Us as a brilliant riff on Western fairy tales and urban legends, holding the Magic Mirror up to these classics and showing us their dark undercurrents.
Expectations can be fatal, however, to the success of a game. The writers behind The Wolf Among Us failed to pull together a coherent story, let alone one as smart and caustically insightful as The Walking Dead.
Up through Season Five, I was quite deeply engaged in the story. My favorite character (other than our hot hero, Bigby Wolf) couldn't be any other than the morally demanding, politically engaged, strong female character of Snow White. In some ways, I consider her one of the best developed characters in video gaming of recent years. She takes charge, but vocalizes her self-doubts; she holds firm to principles of justice in the face of exceptions that have proved the rule for too long in Fabletown. Her back-and-forth with Bigby is compelling, and though predictable her relationship with him satisfyingly deepens over the episodes.
The climax of the game, though--apparently meant to be a dramatic and epic fight between Bigby and the villain's henchwoman, Bloody Mary--nearly drove me to laughter. Suspension of disbelief may seem strained in a game where pigs complain and moan between draws on their cigarettes, but it wasn't until this climax that I felt the boundary had been broken. This silly turn-of-events made me realize that I had crushed on Snow White and Bigby Wolf so much that I no longer really cared what was going on in the narrative. For an intentionally story-driven game, this isn't a good thing. It not only failed to turn the critical eye on literature that I wanted, but it collapsed inward on its shoddy narrative. Not even the strength of its voice acting, graphics, or gameplay, in my view, can balance out the game's inability to make good on its reason for being: to provide a rich interactive story. My expectations far exceeded what The Wolf Among Us became. As a result, it seems little more than glamour on a pig.
The magic of this fairy tale thus broken, I sit disappointed. I would recommend The Wolf Among Us for fans of Telltale, of noir, and of interactive stories. But only just. I wish this weren't the case, that it had been as masterfully developed as The Walking Dead. But there lies the problem: The Wolf Among Us will always stand out in my mind as the weaker counterpart to an amazing game.
My Rating: Decent, 6/10
