by Jacob Doolin
Endings are tricky to execute, and videogame endings are especially
difficult. More so than any medium, games have a need to end well because of
our devotion to them. Hours are poured into the lives of these digital heroes,
and their final moments call for some feeling of satisfaction and closure. Telltale
is no stranger to this challenge. Last year they hit a sweet spot with The Walking
Dead, offering players a
bittersweet and memorable finale for its characters. Now we are presented with
their next attempt at an ending to an episodic series, and while it is a
different beast entirely, The Wolf Among
Us ends on a similarly emotional note by reminding us of one thing:
It started with a girl.
It’s hard to think about how all this started so many
episodes ago. Over the course of the first
season players have explored every inch of Fabletown and its inhabitants,
finding years of hidden aggression and sadness brewing in them all. Yet all
this began with a girl named Faith, and the events surrounding her murder are
what propelled Bigby to investigate all of Fabletown and the corruption that
plagued it.
The season finale, Cry
Wolf, goes a long way to bring us back to that original crime and how its
implications will send waves through all of Fabletown. It speaks to the quality
of writing that every character is given a moment of empathy and guilt. The Wolf Among Us has developed one of
the strongest supporting cast in all of gaming and seeing how your choices affect
them is one of the games greatest pleasures.
Bigby himself goes through many changes in this episode as
the choices the players made over the season come back to help or hurt him in
one way or another. Actions as simple as a glance or handshake speak so much to
the maturity of the character and the bond Bigby has formed with the people of
this town. By the end of the episode I was still questioning my sense of
justice and its effects on the people I had come to care about so deeply.
If there is one fault with all of this it is the lack of
Snow White, who doesn’t appear until the final twenty minutes of gameplay. For
someone positioned to be Bigby’s other half, it’s odd that she wouldn’t have a
more stand out part at the end. The Crooked Man who was only introduced an
episode ago gets more screen time than her, which feels like a cheat to her
character. Even so, her actions along with those of the other residents of
Fabletown add up to the brilliant ending that ends as many lives as it saves.
The gameplay does take a backseat to the influx of story in
this episode, but that doesn’t mean the bits of it are under-used. Instead the
first half of Cry Wolf is filled with
several action packed sequences that go from a car chase on the busy streets of
New York, to an abandoned factory where a long delayed duel finally takes
place. The QTE events felt natural this episode, instead of the usual push in a
preset the direction.
The game’s visuals also make a little go a long way, giving
players a new way to look at familiar locations. A strip club featured heavily
in past episodes is cast in a new light giving it a melancholy feeling as its
lights dim. Locations that might seem cliché have also taken a new direction.
The abandon factory and apartments are taken in new and interesting directions
giving them a fresh feeling as you make your way through.
Out of every character in The Wolf Among Us, the
most understated, and yet important one is Fabletown. The idea of creating a
new path for yourself, one that strays from your predetermined story, is what
drew many of the Fables to this place. And more so than the murders,
corruptions, and drugs The Wolf Among Us aimed
to show us a town at the cusp of being something bigger. When the final moments
come, and everyone in town has made a decision about the future, you feel like
you’re witnessing something bigger than that one moment. It’s not just the end;
it’s a start, the start of something these people, this town, needed. And in
that moment, they’re free.
It started with a girl. It ended with a town.
9 out of 10
+ Difficult choices come back
+ Fabletown comes together
+ Gameplay and visuals work with story
+ The ending
- Lack of Snow White
