Games I Finally Finished, vol. 1: Wolf Among Us

I remember reading a statistic somewhere that said some insane percentage (like 90% or something) of games owners only finish like 25% of the games they own or something like that (feel free to fact check me on this), and at the time that made me feel a lot better about myself, because my track record when it comes to finishing games is something just this side of abysmal, so much so that I am always stunned when I actually get into a game enough to finish it--something that has happened less and less as I've gotten older and more prone to watching Endurance Runs rather than firing up games on my own.

There are some games which inevitably get earmarked for completion--the Dragon Age games, for instance, as well as pretty much any FPS with Halo in the title--but these surprises manage to keep me from feeling like I've fell into a rut of just playing the same thing over and over again.

So when I got back from SDCC, I had comics on the brain. I'd already played and subsequently abandoned Walking Dead somewhere around episode 3 (I have strong, pretty much entirely negative feelings about Walking Dead), so that was out of the question, but I'd also picked up Wolf Among Us during a Steam sale at some point, and the release of episode five meant I wouldn't run into a wall and have to wait for more. I fired it up expecting to essentially enjoy an episode or two and then probably abandon it because I doubted there would be much there to grab my attention. After all, part of what soured me on Walking Dead (apart from its boring-ass setting) was the plodding controls, and I doubted they improved much in Wolf Among Us.

I was right about the controls, of course, but something about the Wolf Among Us managed to hold my interest far more effectively than the Walking Dead games ever did. Part of that was the brighter neon art style, which reminded me of games like Hotline Miami and movies like Only God Forgives (although to be fair Wolf Among Us is a much less violent experience than either of those). The setting was somewhat familiar I'd read the first three or four trades of Fables back when I had time to do things like sit in a Border's (or Waterstone's in this case) and thumb through trades that I couldn't afford in college, so the setting was familiar, and I at least remembered that Snow White and Bigby Wolf were a thing, although I knew the game to be a prequel to the series. Familiarity isn't always a guarantee that I'll be more willing to invest in a particular game, of course--I read a lot of Walking Dead and the only thing that did was make me even more stubbornly against even giving the games a chance; familiarity bred contempt in that particular case. I'm also an admitted sucker for a good noir tale (Brick remains, quite probably, my favorite film, for instance--and that's in spite of all the time I spent wearing out VHS copies of Star Wars as a kid), so a chance to play a hard-bitten detective who smokes too much (and I guess in this case turns into a giant fucking wolf from time to time) was always going to get me interested in a way that other games wouldn't. Then again, I never quite got into L.A. Noir, and that was even more squarely aimed at my interests, so setting and story alone didn't quite match it.

When it comes down to it, I think it was the ability to actually play the role the way I wanted to play it--I wasn't expected to always act in a certain way, and there wasn't really any strong motivation to play one way over another in a refreshing departure from Bioware's apparent belief that good people are good all the time and bad people are bad all the time. Having my actions result in consequences that were, to some extent, isolated to the people my actions had a direct effect on was far more nuance than I'm used to seeing--I could be a dick to Toad, because Toad is an uncooperative little turd, but I could also try to keep him from getting sent to the Farm in the end. Likewise, I could end up in a sort of uneasy friendship with the Woodsman, despite having thrown him out a window earlier. The ability to mend fences, and to have a sort of evolution in how I treated the rest of the denizens of the world was nice--and having that evolution something that was recognized and respected by the game (or at least carried the illusion of being respected) felt good. This isn't something I felt they'd perfected back in the first season of Walking Dead--for all I know they've improved dramatically, but then again I don't have any desire to check that out.

So yeah, Wolf Among Us carries a lot of the stuff I generally don't like--sort of clunky controls and QTEs--but the narrative, and the way it responded to my decisions, carried me through to the end. I like a good twisty-turny sort of ending, and episode five delivered that. I'd really like to see another tale like this come out of Telltale, although I don't know if there were any plans for Fables to get more than one season. Maybe if we're lucky we'll get some other, similarly noir-influenced tale if there's to be no more Fables. Maybe a Fatale adventure game? That could work.

Looking at most game achievements, I believe that statistic is likely not that far off.

I remember growing up thinking everybody finished every game they played and just felt crushed when I'd get stuck on one, man were my eyes opened when I first saw achievements stats.

As far as WAU goes, I didn't think it was quite as strong as the TWD Season 1. Maybe it was the prequel nature of it, so you knew certain outcomes in advance, but I felt like I could see behind the curtain too much on some of the choices, and those middle episodes kinda spun their wheels a bit.

Still fun though!

Yeah, there's a whole other discussion to be had about prequels (basically I am way less likely to pick up a prequel, because I know the outcome--it's what murdered the Star Wars prequels especially, because you already knew who lived (Obi-Wan, Yoda, Luke and Leia, the Emperor, Darth Vader) and who died (Everyone Else). Well, that and they were poorly written and poorly executed, but still. It speaks to the strength of WAU's writing that I wanted to keep reading even though I mostly remember how things are at the beginning of Fables.

The thing about prequels for me is their ability to tell interesting stories/explore interesting ideas within a set of constraints; i.e. what the audience already knows is going to happen. The new Planet of the Apes films have been particularly good at telling interesting stories even though you know humanity all dies out/becomes savage and the apes wind up "winning" whatever war. Fables manages to tell a solid noir tale (guy meets girl, girl gets murdered (OR DOES SHE), guy uncovers immense corruption, guy realizes vast corruption is inevitable, guy manages to root out most of the corruption, community as a whole gets maybe better or maybe worse or maybe the same) and in the proud tradition of most 1920s noir the detective gets beat to shit but manages to come out alive at the end.

With Fables ending its run soon (if it hasn't already) I'd be interested in a game set after the comic, or even another game set during the comic but as a side-story deal, you know? Better yet, just give me a game that's just a Chandler novel in disguise. The further adventures of Philip Marlowe. Get in touch with me Telltale, I've got ideas.