TellTale Games' The Wolf Among Us: Season 1/ Episode 5 "Cry Wolf" – Overview/ Review (with Spoilers)

Overview

With a handful of your decisions being accounted fully and judgment upon you, truly your actions speak louder than your words.

Trigger Warning(s): Moments of gore

Review (with Spoilers)

After about an hour and 15 minutes, it was all over. I was left with some of my decisions haunting me, some leading to me being the people’s champion, and the weight of how to handle the lives of multiple people. Needless to say, it wasn’t easy but, in the end, you are left mostly satisfied.

Characters & Story

With your meeting with the Crooked Man, terms are talked. It is revealed who truly killed Faith and Lily, and The Crooked Man is more than willing to give him up to you. But, while that solves one case, it does leave how to handle the Crooked Man. Someone who has found himself injected into the heart of Fabletown and has perhaps floated the town’s economy more than Bluebeard. Yet, at the same time, this man has made your life hard. He has sent his cronies to impede justice, even assault you, Bloody Mary on multiple occasions nearly killed you, and now you finally have the man behind it all. Leaving you to decide, will you get justice? Will Lily get justice? Will Faith get justice? And when the people think of Bigby, will he be deserving of his legacy as the Big Bad Wolf?

Praise

Perhaps the key thing that needs to be said is that with this episode, while all of your decisions over the past 4 don’t matter, a handful do. Certainly not as much as I would hope, but perhaps that maybe due to the sure amount of times your decision get noted just in this episode. For while I made it through my play through without a game over, I am left wondering if I attacked one person instead of another, if I went after the Crooked Man instead of Georgie, and many other decisions, how much of a difference it would have made? And with some of the episodic content of TellTale Games’ games, sometimes you feel far too guided while playing, but I must admit I loved the fact this episode makes you feel like one wrong move, either past or present, could have led to the Crooked Men getting away with everything. Be it because you were just a complete butthead to all the townspeople, or just because you were just made that one wrong decision which could have changed everything.

Which isn’t to say this felt as nail biting as when you found out who was leaving or staying in The Walking Dead Season 1/ Episode 4, but you certainly get the sense that your decision may not just matter for this episode, but may carry over in season 2, if that comes about. Especially as you make decisions about how the future of the two will be. Whether there will continue to be a privileged class, and everyone; what to do with the Crooked Man; whether you will show support for Snow or not; and then Nerissa. She plays a role in not just the trial, at least for my play through, but there is something hinted at in the ending that makes you wonder if she maybe who she really says she is. Much less why does she pop up at the most convenient times.

Criticism

Really, the only thing to critique is that this is a very guided playthrough and you’re mostly just making verbal decisions, dodging attacks, using the mouse to make attacks and you don’t get to investigate much. But, with this being the finale, I don’t know if it is really fair to have expected one last big investigation into The Crooked Man. I mean, we know just about all he has his hands in already. But then comes the trial. With this, even with it being rushed, I feel like things you’ve collected, like Faith’s glamour, among other things, should have came into play. Also, it does make you wonder if the rushed trial was more so to hide you were kind of a crappy detective. After all, you don’t take pictures, don’t really take much in the way of evidence, and with this trial, I must admit while the Crooked Man was certainly throwing me curve balls during his defense, I felt like I should have had evidence like in L.A. Noire or something to discredit him.

Overall: Worth Buying

I think it is pretty much a given that TellTale Games makes some of the best games out there, even if they don’t meet the graphical standard of the current generation. For, while surely not on Mass Effect’s level when it comes to noting decisions and everything, it does feel, in the long run, that how you treated that person, or what you did or didn’t do, may have actually mattered. And it’s no different for The Wolf Among Us. You are given this world where you may not get to explore, or really even interact with much, but you do feel like you do have some control over how the end will turn out. Which is why, consistently I believe, I said this is worth buying. For while you could surely just rent it and keep your save file for the next one, I continuously feel, going episode by episode, there is always that chance that one thing you did could possibly make something harder and make you want to go back to the episode you messed up in and pick a better decision. Partly because it would make your life easier, and at the same time just to see how much that one decision could change things.