The Wolf Among Us - A Gaming Diary

 I saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand.  Walking through Soho in the rain.  He was looking for the place called Le Hoo Fook's.  Gonna get a big dish of beef chow mein.  I don't know why I started with Werewolves of London either when this takes place in New York City but I felt like a reference was an inevitability.  I'm surprised how long it has taken me to get to this one.  I mean I guess I shouldn't be too surprised, I didn't even regularly PC game until a few years ago and when I did, my game choices were out of my hands.  But of the TellTale games I bought in a Humble Bundle years ago, this is the one I feel like was made for me.  I'm actually a pretty big fan of Fables, the politics of its author and the work by extension not withstanding.

To be clear, I read it when I was a lot younger, it was during my "Disney adult phase" where I was super into everything fairytales, I wasn't media literate enough to pick up on the undertones.  I read somewhere that my favorite show in 2012, Once Upon a Time (Shoutout to Haley Whipjack, the GOAT), was inspired by Fables and started picking up the comic trades and adored it.  Once Upon a Time, for the record, was not inspired by Fables, that was just a lie on the internet.  AND I was super into TellTale games because I was a weirdo who latched onto others' opinions about the gaming industry so I lauded them as the return of LucasArts.  The fact that this combination has taken this long to pop up is shocking.  And I'm especially curious to play it now because, of the TellTale games, The Wolf Among Us is often lauded as the best of them, even better than The Walking Dead, which I played and adored.  And also I played Dispatch already which IS the best TellTale game, don't @ me.  So, I'm excited to see where this one lands compared to those two.  Let's jump in!

Review:

The Wolf Among Us starts out excellent.  From the very first episode you have an interesting mystery, a cast of deep, complicated characters, a super unique world to delve into, it seems like it is going to be something truly special.  Unfortunately, I feel like it can't maintain this momentum.  It often feels bizarrely paced, like it both is trying to reach a finale too quickly and also lagging on specific plot points too long.  It is always good, don't get me wrong, but it feels like it has a lot of immediate promise which is then kind of soured by a knowledge of where they want the story to go without a mechanism on how to get it there.  It also feels like it is always having an identity crisis with its gameplay, being a point and click adventure where you don't puzzle solve and being a visual novel where you do too much wandering around and not enough conversing.  I've often heard the Wolf Among Us called the "best" TellTale game, but I think I would much rather say it is the "most" TellTale game, it displays all of their strengths and all their weaknesses in equal measure, producing an end product that is very good, but very very flawed.  I really like it, but I also think it is the most B tier TellTale game of the ones I've played.  7.6/10

Diary:

9/16/26

Wow, this game is going by super quickly.  Like I didn't expect to be doing multiple episodes in a night, I guess I assumed The Wolf Among Us would be more in line with the length of The Walking Dead than it would be Dispatch.  This assumption is so far proving to be inaccurate, which is unfortunate for me because I'm already like "will I have enough game to make content out of?"  I probably shouldn't have committed to this game as a gaming diary before I had seen the pacing.  Especially since the Wolf Among Us' main criticism was for its pacing.  Boy am I feeling it, let me tell y'all.  But we're chilling, we're going to get through this together.  I actually really want to do this one because I feel like "Mystery" games are fun to do for the blog.  One of my favorite posts of all time to do was Return of the Obra Dinn, where I kept like positing my theories as I went along.  And also I'm just a massive fan of Chase Bridges' content, I really like the "watch me solve a mystery and be very wrong" vibe.

I want to start out by stating that I do not believe I am going to enjoy this game as much as I did the Walking Dead.  Don't get me wrong, I am enjoying myself quite a bit, this game is a very good detective visual novel sort of thing.  But this game is like entirely narrative driven without any real solid point-and-click aspects to it and I'm wishing it did have more of those aspects to it since it still shares so much of its DNA with the earlier games in TellTale's library.  Like, you have an onscreen inventory available to you at all times but you're not able to select your items, every item will just pop up in whatever context it's needed in, so it is trying to be more of a visual novel/interactive movie sort of thing.  But it also kind of disappoints at that because the pacing is pretty rough.  Like the game wants you to pin down a suspect as early as the middle of episode one, before you have even properly met all the suspects, found key evidence for the case, and haven't even gotten the full scope of the crime!  So far the Wolf Among Us seems to be like "good" at what it wants to do but it's never "great" at any one particular thing, you know?  Normally I'd wait a bit to make a judgement call like that but, a, the gameplay doesn't really change throughout the game, it's a TellTale game, and 2, I'm already 40% through.

I do however enjoy how much freedom this game gives you to shape who your detective is.  Even if that can be changed scene to scene depending on the context, the game lets you go very extreme on whether or not Bigby Wolf is a dirty cop or is clean cut.  There's this overarching theme in the game of the Fables being afraid of Bigby, of even despising him, because he is the villain to end all villains in their stories.  He IS the Big Bad Wolf, he is practically the concept of death to all of them.  Literally, when Puss in Boots: The Last Wish chose to personify death in its own fairytale world, it chose to make him the Big Bad Wolf essentially.  And so I really enjoy the freedom given to the player to either lean into that fear or try to fight it whenever it suits them.  So far the Bigby I'm shaping seems to be very patient with people but gets very sour when his patience runs out, like when he corners a potential suspect.  I'm kind like 90% of the time, if not a little snarky, but when I snap, I really snap.  Did I beat up the prisoner I arrested at the end of Act One to get information from him?  Yes I did.  Did I immediately get punished for that very thing?  Also yes.

I also just am generally appreciating seeing this world adapted by someone who isn't, you know.  Bill Willingham.  Like again, there's no getting around Willingham's politics, they are throughout the book.  Fables thinks socialism is a bad thing, it has a pro-life storyline at one point, it knowingly put in Zionist views.  This is my Attack on Titan moment, y'all, this is where I say I love the deeply problematic thing in spite of its politics.  And while some of that IS in the game, The Wolf Among Us seems to have better opinions on these things?  Like it believes a government should help people and not that people deserve to suffer because they can't provide for themselves, which is already an improvement on Willingham's views.  Although it does mean some characters are written very out of character, namely Snow White.  The audience is frequently told that Snow White is callous, that she keeps things close to the chest, that centuries of being a "perfect princess" have jaded her.  Trust me, I've seen who she used to be married to, her being jaded is valid.  But like, that's just not who we actually see in the game.  She's very empathetic and it upsets her greatly that she is drowning under bureaucracy instead of actually helping people.

Alright, so, on to the story and the mystery.  Strap in, this'll be a long one.  So, The Wolf Among Us takes place in a New York City neighborhood known as Fabletown.  Long ago, the characters of numerous fairytales fled their home in Europe and struck out to New York City, where they settled in a very specific borough.  While the area is a publicly accessible area, the existence of Fables is not public information, with many of the normal New Yorkers not realizing that this section of town is populated by immortal fairytale creatures.  The Fables are, as you might imagine, very secretive as a result of this, mostly keeping to themselves and "their kind", although fraternization between the "mundies" and them is not unheard of.  Especially since they run services the normal people want or need sometimes.

In the Wolf Among Us, you play as Bigby Wolf, the former Big Bad Wolf and current sheriff and sole law enforcement officer of Fabletown.  One morning, early in the morning, Bigby is called to the apartment building of one Mr. Toad over an apparent domestic dispute happening in his building.  When he arrives, he finds that his old archnemesis, the Woodcutter, is in the midst of beating a prostitute wearing a distinctive purple ribbon he had hired and immediately steps in to try and deescalate the situation.  The de-escalation does not work, and Bigby ends up fighting his former foe, ultimately winning after the two of them crash through the Woodcutter's window to the pavement below and the prostitute he hired sticks his ax through his head (Fables naturally heal any wounds so long as their bodies remain intact).  The woman thanks Bigby for saving her and asks to meet him later that morning after she returns to her pimp to sign off for the night.  Bigby asks some more questions of Faith, but she says "her lips are sealed", and so he agrees to the meeting, and goes home to get some brief shut-eye before being awoken hours later by an urgent knock at his door.  He opens it to see his boss and pseudo-partner, Snow White, looking distressed and telling Bigby to follow her, not ask questions, and not speak to anyone. She leads Bigby to the front steps of the Woodlands, the apartment building that her and Bigby live at and work in, where they see the head of the woman Bigby saved earlier, decapitated and lying almost as a calling card.  And so the murder investigation begins.

The following morning, Bigby and Snow both report to the office of acting mayor Ichabod Crane.  Yes, I know Ichabod Crane is not a fairytale character, bear with me.  Crane chews them both out, somehow believing a murder occurring in Fabletown at all is their fault, before leaving the office to have a massage to destress.  This works out excellently for Bigby and Snow, as they now have free access to the mayor's library and his magic mirror.  They scour through the tomes to try and find any hint to the girl's identity, as they still do not actually know her name, before discovering that her name is Faith and she is the protagonist of the fairytale "Donkeyskin".  They discover that her father, whom attempted to begin an incestuous relationship with her, died long ago in the old world but that her husband is still alive in Fabletown.  The duo goes out to ask questions of her husband, when they get a call from Mr. Toad.  Someone has broken into the Woodsman's apartment, and they're looking for something.  At this moment, Bigby and Snow have to make a choice on who to go first: to go to Mr. Toad who may or may not be in danger, or to meet with Faith's husband, who the Magic Mirror has shown is in a potentially suicidal situation.  I chose the former, for what it's worth.

Arriving at Toad's building, Bigby sees a figure in the apartment who bolts as soon as he sees Bigby there.  He tries to head the figure off, but when he arrives upstairs the building is a ghost town.  When he returns downstairs, he hears crying from inside of Toad's apartment that sounds like Toad's son.  The duo investigate, only to find Toad being cagey.  After some work in his office, dismantling his alibi piece by piece, Toad reveals what happened.  One of the Tweedles, a duo of "private investigators", was in the Woodcutter's apartment, but ran when Bigby showed.  Toad attempted to stop him, but the Tweedle, Dum, threatened Toad's son TJ if Toad squealed.  Having missed their culprit, they rush off to Faith's home, only to find they were too late: Faith's husband has died.  Bigby is quick to note, however, that it is clearly not a suicide, but rather a murder made to look strongly like a suicide.  The duo find the other Tweedle, Dee, hiding in the apartment and Bigby gives chase, cornering him in a lot to get him to talk.  Dee distracts the cop long enough for his brother, Dum, to arrive to assist him, knocking Bigby out.  When Snow finds Bigby, both Tweedles are long gone.

With both Faith's husband and the apartment building being dead ends, Bigby tracks down the Woodcutter, one of the primary suspects of the case at this time, to a bar he frequents: the Tip Tap.  After some tense back and forth between the bar's owner, a troll named Holly, and the Grendel, Bigby finally gets his man.  He sits down to have a chat with the Woodcutter and tries to bring him in for questioning, but the Woodcutter is panicked at the prospect.  He believes that if he's even arrested for a murder, they will imprison him in "the Witching Well".  In the middle of their talk, however, Tweedle Dee wanders into the Tip Tap to attempt to find out information on Faith.  Seeing Bigby, Dee attempts to run.  Seeing Bigby is distracted, the Woodcutter attempts to run.  Bigby can only arrest one.  For the record, I chose to arrest Dee.  Bigby books the culprit and attempts to bring him back to the Woodlands, only to discover police have surrounded the building.  He approaches, crossing the police tape, only to discover that a second beheading has taken place.  And this one is Snow White.  Thus ends Episode 1.

Episode 2 starts with Bigby in police custody, having been taken in for questioning due to his behavior.  Before he can truly talk, however, Ichabod Crane arrives to bust Bigby out, memory wiping the mundie police officer so they forget all that they saw at the Woodlands.  Crane attempts to commiserate with Bigby, stating that he truly cared about Snow as well, only for Bigby to throw in his face that he has only treated Snow as his pretty little secretary, having her fetch coffee and make appointments.  They arrive back at the apartment building, tensions high, and Crane leads Bigby to Dee who is being held in the building's basement.  When they arrive, they find another figure there: Bluebeard.  Bluebeard is one of the major antagonists of the entire Fables series, an old money aristocrat who was one of the only people who managed to maintain his wealth in the transference to the New World and as such effectively funds the entirety of Fabletown.  This has given him an unprecedented amount of control over the political state of the community, with it often feeling like Bluebeard is the one actually in charge while the mayor is just the puppet.  Bigby has been actively trying to bring down Bluebeard for years, his meager apartment is covered in files related to Bluebeard.

Anyways, Bluebeard is threatening to torture the information out of Dee, but Ichabod says that this is Bigby's purview and he should handle it.  You can handle this interrogation however you choose, but it is worth noting that the more violent you get, the more likely Dee is to talk.  But, of course, there are repercussions to that.  After getting whatever information you can out of Dee, finding out what he knows about Faith and where she worked, the door bursts open behind you to reveal none other than Snow White, alive.  If I may interject real quick, I'm very surprised that they already revealed Snow is actually alive.  I figured they would have us investigate the body first, realize that it doesn't actually match Snow, and then realize she must be being held somewhere.  Like it was obvious she'd not be really dead, she's one of the main characters of this entire franchise, but I figured they'd let that simmer longer.  Snow reveals that she had gotten a call from Mr. Toad that his son had found a body in the river and had been trying to fish it out.  She asks Bigby to talk to TJ and get his story, which of course is made a bit difficult if you just beat a man for information.  It turns out Toad was watching your interrogation through the Magic Mirror in Crane's office, concerned for how his son would be treated when questioned.

TJ unfortunately does not have much information, but he did mention that he heard the person who was dumping the body and they were a bit of a jolly fellow, laughing and cracking jokes.  They send TJ off and decide to go investigate the body of "Snow White".  As they look over the body they discover that the person in question is a troll who has had her appearance magically altered to look like Snow White.  While at first this seems like a scare tactic, the evidence seems to indicate that this was done for monetary gain, with the body being covered in marks from where the troll had been using heroine.  They find a lead on a tattoo on her leg, a holly branch.  Holly has been upset with the Fabletown government for quite some time for ignoring her while her sister, Lily, has gone missing.  Bigby and Snow decide to return to the Tip Tap to inform Holly of her sister's passing and ask her if she knows anything.  Holly is at first hesitant to talk, bitter at the apathy of the Fabletown government and cursing Snow for being alive when her sister died in her stead, but she eventually softens and tells them that Lily had been working as a stripper and escort at the Gentleman's Club "The Pudding 'n' Pie".  Snow decides to return to the office with Holly, leaving Bigby to go on to the club on his own.

When Bigby arrives, one of the girls, also wearing a purple ribbon, is outside on a smoke break, and welcomes him to the club.  He attempts to ask her questions about Lily and Faith, but she simply says "my lips are sealed" and encourages him to talk to the club's owner, Georgie Porgie.  Bigby finds him harassing one of his girls, again with a purple ribbon, for not dancing well enough, barking orders at her, before stopping to "answer" Bigby's questions.  He makes no pretense of trying to hide his status as a pimp, but assures Bigby that he only acts as a middleman.  He gives the girls a place to pick up clients, he takes a cut of their earnings, but the actual clients are theirs and he is not involved with the process outside of the overhead.  However, his janitor Hans lets slip that Georgie keeps a record book of his girls' clients.  After pressuring Georgie to hand it over, he complies, and Bigby finds that the night of Lily's murder she had met with a client named "Mr. Smith".  Unfortunately, Georgie is no longer interested in answering Bigby's questions about what the data in the book means, but before Bigby can leave the girl he was yelling at earlier calls him over.

She introduces herself as Nerissa and states that she was, in the old world, the Little Mermaid.  Bigby attempts to question her but she, once again, states that her "lips are sealed".  However, she finds a work around: if Bigby books an appointment with her, she can give him a room key to the hotel next door and he might be able to investigate the rooms upstairs.  Bigby agrees, and heads over to the hotel, only to see that the front desk is being staffed by a Fable, Beauty from Beauty and the Beast.  We had actually met with Beauty earlier on in the game where she was sneaking out early in the morning and asking us not to tell her husband she was doing it.  She is working this job in secret because she cannot stand seeing the Beast working like three jobs to make ends meet but knows that her working a job would hurt his ego because he would feel insufficient to provide for his family.  Beauty and the Beast are like the only couple from the Old World who is still together and in love and it's very cute.  Anyways, Beauty leads Bigby up to the room he saw Lily had booked in Georgie's ledger book and after breaking down the door, they find an apparent crime scene, with blood covering the bed and a trail indicating that someone was dragged off.  Bigby begins to investigate the room and starts to piece together why Lily was magically made to look like Snow.  Her client that night had an obsession with Snow White, not just the person but the very idea of her.  He had taken several steps to recreate the fairytale of Snow White as a form of roleplay and likely killed Lily out of his obsession with Snow.  And this man is none other than Ichabod Crane.  And that's where we end episode 2.

With all that out of the way, let's talk about who I think did it.  Now, when the game asks you who you think did it in Episode 1 before you know the full scope of the crime, it puts forward some suspects that I do want to briefly mention.  First off, the Tweedles.  I think no matter who did it, the Tweedles are accomplices.  I think either they killed the women on behalf of someone else or whoever killed the women is using the Tweedles as a cleanup crew to cover their tracks.  Technically this does mean I think that the Tweedles "did it" but I don't think that they are like the actual "suspects", I think they are cogs in a bigger machine.  The Woodcutter was very obviously a red herring and I think with the second murder, he is absolved of the crime.  He had a motivation to kill Faith, Faith was someone he hired who then attacked him in self defense and he isn't the most stable person.  But with Lily involved I think we can safely take him off the suspect list.  And Bluebeard was on there for some reason?  Like, I'm not going to say Bluebeard doesn't have motivation, especially given the Ichabod reveal, but I think saying Bluebeard did it is metagaming too much.  Like you aren't even really introduced to Bluebeard at that time, you just have to know he's a former serial killer, particularly of women.  No way it's him.

No, I have narrowed it down to three suspects.  The first I want to talk about is Ichabod Crane, the apparent murderer of Lily as of Episode 2.  What we know about Ichabod is that he has an obsession with Snow White.  He has apparently been hiring prostitutes for some time to act out roleplay of the Snow White fairytale, Lily was not a unique occurrence.  One of the clues found at the hotel room was a torn and tattered Snow White dress, but one without blood, indicating it was not harmed in the events of Lily's death.  It has just been used.  A lot.  And the game makes a point to note how much Faith looks like Snow.  It is entirely possible that Crane had been regularly visiting the Pudding n Pie to fulfill his urges for his coworker and, as time has gone on, those urges being filled are becoming insufficient.  Crane is becoming obsessive.  He's no longer okay with a facsimile, he wants the real Snow.  But he's also not stupid.  If any of these women blow the whistle, his career and, probably, his life is over.  So what I'm imagining is that the night of Faith's death, before she can meet with Bigby, she is intercepted by one of the Tweedle brother who murders her with an enchanted blade, leaving a clean cut.  The Tweedle then delivers her head to the stairway of the Woodlands to note a job done, at which point Crane can begin to do damage control.  The following night, Crane arrives for his appointment with Lily, has his way with her, and then as he goes to leave, the other Tweedle, Dum, it's important that it's Dum because we had arrested Dee at that time, steps in to the hotel room and kills Lily, dragging her body away and leaving her head at the Woodlands again, another sign of a job well done that is disguised as a warning.  Crane gets both of his hanging threads dealt with and nobody is none the wiser.

My second theory, and this is the one I'm locking in, is that the culprit is Georgie Porgie.  I think it's interesting how all the girls in his employ wear purple ribbons around their neck and all of them keep repeating the same thing when questioned.  What I'm thinking is that Georgie has the girls enslaved, and the ribbons are magical.  They make them compliant and force them not to speak about what's actually going on.  What if Faith and Lily had found a way to free themselves from their enslavement.  What if the night that Faith was going to meet with Bigby, she had already decided that she was going to report back Georgie, give him the money for the Woodcutter job, break the spell and then go squeal to Bigby about what's really going on in the Pudding n Pie.  But that somehow, maybe through Lily being forced to comply to Georgie's questioning, Georgie discovered that they knew how to free themselves and so murdered Faith, decapitating her and leaving her head in a public place as a warning to any of his girls.  And then he did the same to Lily because Lily is the only other one with the knowledge to free herself, tying up a loose end.  He then hired the Tweedles to cover his tracks, clearing up evidence that would lead back to him and handling the other loose ends.

My third theory, and this is crazy, this is an insane theory but stay with me here: it's Snow White.  I have mentioned that Snow White is dissatisfied with her current lot in life.  That she desperately wants to genuinely help the citizens of Fabletown but is drowning in bureaucracy, forced to play "pretty secretary" to a man who is too cowardly to do anything.  A man who, as we know, is violently obsessed with her.  I'm positing that Snow White discovered Crane's obsession and concocted a plan to remove him from office.  She hired the Tweedles to kill Faith and the magically altered Lily to establish the pattern that the victims resemble her, implicating Ichabod in their deaths.  At which point, with him removed, she would become the de facto deputy mayor and could start actually helping people instead of just fetching coffee.  After all, who found Faith first?  Snow White.  We cannot discount the idea that Snow was waiting for the Tweedles to say that the job is done, at which point she went to fetch Bigby to begin his investigation, trying to lead him to Crane.  It's not too out there a theory.  But again, for now, I'm locking in Georgie Porgie.

9/18/26

Y'all, I'm so good.  Like I'm so good.  They haven't revealed the culprit quite yet, I'm still at the end of episode four, but man is my prediction looking to be correct.  Like, I don't think it was the most amazing detective work I could've done to put together the ribbons all the women working for Georgie Porgie were wearing were enchanted, the girls literally seem to be unable to talk about anything related to the club and their activities.  But like, everything is lining up for it to be Georgie, even with other revelations that have come out in episodes 3 and 4.  I'm so confident in it that I'm not even going to do the "posting my suspects and theories" this time because I only have one more episode left before the ending.  I am just fully locking in Georgie Porgie as my culprit for who killed Faith and Lily and sending it.  I need to do more mystery games, I forgot how good this felt.

That being said, low key?  Kind of feeling like the game falters in this section.  I think that TellTale's adherence to the episodic format, while it sometimes worked out and created games with an engaging "prestige television"-esque structure, also kind of meant that a game that might not have a story that can be told over five distinct episodes.  Sometimes a game just has a story that would work best as just one thing rather than five things that become one thing.  And I think Episodes 3 and 4 kind of show that problem, as Episode 3 felt like it was padded out to focus heavily on chasing down Crane and trying to arrest him even though it became pretty clear halfway through the episode that Crane was uninvolved in the murders, he was just guilty of other crimes.  Episode 4, meanwhile, felt much the opposite, it felt too fast paced.  Like, we just found out who is the actual head of this conspiracy (again, not the murderer, I'm still locking in Georgie Porgie), the Crooked Man, a mob boss who has been lurking under every unsavory business in Fabletown for years, and spent a single episode tracking him down.  It's a bit unfortunate, the Wolf Among Us really feels like its high point was episode one.

That's not to say this section was bad, just that it seems like the Wolf Among Us has a really strong start to the mystery and it doesn't know what to do in the middle point.  But this section still had some really cool stuff in it.  It was very action heavy, they typically include a fight scene or two in each episode because Bigby is kind of a vigilante, you know.  He is the Big Bad Wolf and won't hesitate to bring that side of him out if the need arises.  Snow White even asks him point blank in this section: does he actually like it?  Does he like having a reason to be the wolf again.  And it's something that even if you tell her adamantly that no, he doesn't like it, he only does what the job requires, neither Bigby nor Snow seem to fully believe it.  Anyways, I think combat in TellTale games can be kind of hit or miss for people because rather than developing a proper combat system, they choose to operate on quick-time-events.  And, you know, people don't like those universally, and/or don't have the reaction time to do QTEs for a number of reasons.  There's a reason why one of the most common accessibility features in modern gaming is turning off QTEs.  But I think it's kind of fun having a visual novel-y point and click game that has a lot of brawling in it.  It gives the Wolf Among Us a pretty neat flavor.

We also got an interesting look at the actual social and economic situation in Fabletown.  Like in the absence of Crane, the entirety of Fabletown, both the rich and the poor, are in a tizzy.  Bluebeard, representing the upper class of Fabletown, is furious about Crane's sudden absence and his being the prime suspect in the murder, stating that Fabletown is now run by an unelected official (Snow White) who has yet to prove that she has the community's best interests at heart and, if anything, has actively soured relations with the people.  Really I think he's just mad that Snow is harder to control than Crane, as she has, you know, a spine.  Meanwhile, we see the consequences of how ineffective the government has been at helping people, see why the Crooked Man has gained so much influence.  Crane has been ignoring people's requests for aid for literal years, pocketing much of the money that he is given to aid the community for his own twisted needs.  This has led to a community in shambles, work is scarce within Fabletown and the community's isolationist policies have discouraged the Fables from seeking aid outside of it.  Everyone is broke and is only getting broker.  And a broke community does whatever they need to do to survive.  As such, a lot of people have ended up in the pocket of the Crooked Man, a loan shark who bleeds them dry and then, when they can no longer make their payments, magically enslaves them to work at his many businesses.

That being said, I do wish that the flavor text that we are given was treated as information that Bigby retains.  Like, when you enter a room, you are allowed to scan as much or as little of that room as you want, and the more you scan the more information you're given.  For example, when I went to the Tweedles' office I found a file they had on Beauty which had a note from Georgie stating that the Tweedles were to keep a close watch on her and, when she inevitably couldn't pay back her loan, they were to send her his way to become one of his girls.  Interesting bit of info.  Something that Beauty would probably like to know about to get her to talk later on when she's stonewalling Bigby about the nature of her loan.  If we had, I don't know, a functioning inventory we could pocket that information and then later on use the info.  Instead it's just something that Bigby overlooks because it's just flavor text, all it might do is unlock a niche entry in the game's glossary/lore guide, the Book of Fables.  I don't know, I guess I just wish this game was more of a point-and-click again.  Or heck, more of a detective visual novel, given how much it has in common spiritually with like Ace Attorney.  Instead I often feel like I'm just playing a choose-your-own-adventure book sometimes where there's a bunch of paths leading to one specific ending.  And I like CYOA books, I just want more from this game.

Alright, so, Episode 3 begins with Bigby rushing from the hotel we ended off episode 2 at to find Snow before Crane can get to her.  This results in him arriving at Lily's funeral, a place he is absolutely not wanted by any stretch of the imagination.  Understanding this fact, he stands in the back, tries to stay out of trouble, and wait for Snow to finish her duties as the one taking charge of this funeral.  In the brief moment they can have a chat, Bigby tells Snow the broad strokes about Crane, sparing her the details until they can talk more at the office.  Snow returns to the funeral to finish the rites, when the Tweedles descend upon the scene, holding two shotguns to Bigby's back.  The brothers state they don't want any trouble, but that they have a vested interest in making sure that Crane is still able to run free for the moment.  They give Bigby an ultimatum: drop the Crane case and continue his snooping elsewhere, or they'll put as many rounds into him and everyone at this funeral as they can before they stop fighting.  Bigby doesn't agree, and the Tweedles shoot Bigby, Holly, and the Grendel before running off.

Back at the business office, they find the place is a total wreck.  Crane had smashed the Magic Mirror before running off, taking a piece with him so the group couldn't repair the damaged mirror on their own and would instead have to wait for it to heal itself.  This is obviously not ideal as the longer they have to wait, the further Crane can run.  However, they are in luck: Crane's librarian, Bufkin the Flying Monkey, did overhear Crane make an appointment with a witch for 2AM.  They are also not in luck because the Fabletown government doesn't have a working knowledge of every illegally operating witch within the community and Bigby is currently out of leads.  And it's just before midnight, meaning they have a little over 2 hours to follow literally any leads they can come up with.  With very few options, the group ends up entrusting Bluebeard with an investigation into Crane's apartment, whilst Bigby runs around the city.  This proves to be a bad idea as Bluebeard just destroys evidence, evidence that potentially links him to Crane's fraud, but Bigby finds the address of the witch regardless, an Auntie Greenleaf.

Arriving at Greenleaf's apartment, they initially find her glamoured as her daughter who was murdered at some point before entering the new world.  After some investigating and some pressuring of Greenleaf, who taunts Snow and the Fabletown government for being ineffectual and classist, she lets it slip that Crane took a magical artifact from her that, when it was enchanted, would dispel other enchantments but has long since stopped working.  He absconded with it to the Pudding n Pie, trying to break the enchantment on Georgie's girls (called it) and get them to testify to his innocence... at least in the murder case.  When Bigby and Snow arrive at the club, Crane confesses to defrauding Fabletown and his obsession with Snow, but is adamant that he was not involved in the murders.  Regardless, Bigby books Crane for the crimes he confessed to, and they walk him out, only to get cornered in the alleyway outside the club by the Tweedles and a mysterious new woman.  This woman is the key enforcer for the Crooked Man, Bloody Mary, and she doesn't take too kindly to Bigby trying to take her boss' property.  Bigby transforms fully into his wolf form to battle the three, taking down the Tweedles despite their repeated shooting of him, but when it's just down to him and Mary she deal with him easily.  After one single silver bullet, Bigby goes down and Mary prepares to land the killing blow on him with the Woodcutter's enchanted axe.  But Snow stops her, begging for Bigby's life, telling them to just take Crane.  The Crooked Man, who is watching this from the shadows, agrees to these terms, and Mary welcomes Snow and Bigby to the fold.  Because they just made a deal with the Crooked Man.  He knows when and how they'll break.  He owns them now.

Episode 4 begins with Bigby being patched up by the Fabletown Doctor, the only member of the community who isn't a Fable, Dr. Swineheart.  He's just like.  A normal human Doctor.  He served in a normal human war.  He's just good at his job.  By the way, it only occurred to me in this episode that I think the Wolf Among Us is set in like the 70s?  Like maybe that's a thing in the comic too and I just forgot, but the Wolf Among Us is set in a time period where people were still regularly using landlines and payphones and hotels had physical keys they would give you instead of cards.  I digress.  Snow watches as Swineheart tends to Bigby's wounds and talks about how last night was not a declaration of war, it was a revelation of a war that had long since been going on.  She makes it clear: under no uncertain terms will they play the Crooked Man's game.  They need to fix Fabletown and, to do it, they need to believe in what it was designed to be.  And that means sticking to their system in order to fix it.  Also she wants to ship half the population upstate because the rules say that non-human passing Fables must remain in glamour at all times, if able, or be shipped upstate and she's not going to tolerate it anymore.  Making it real hard to root for you, girlie whirlie, but I guess this is Willingham's fault at the end of the day, he made you like this.

Returning to work hours after almost dying, Bigby arrives at his office to find Nerissa there.  She wants to attempt to speak to Bigby even though her enchantment will not allow her, attempting to do something akin to what she did at the club where she leads Bigby in the right direction without technically doing anything wrong per the spell's rules.  It doesn't work as effectively as it did before, but Bigby manages to confirm his suspicions about the enchanted ribbons, although Nerissa reacts violently at the prospect of taking it off, as if something bad were to happen if she did.  She is obviously unable to say much more to help him, but she does lead him to a specific train of thought: "if you want to find the Crooked Man, stop running around checking every shady business in town and start looking at the people you call friends".  This leads Bigby to remember something Beauty said about her job, that part of the reason she took it was to pay off a debt to the Crooked Man.

He heads upstairs to confront the "happy couple", who are none too pleased to see him, but their involvement with the man in question and point Bigby to two key leads: a pawn shop downtown owned by the Jersey Devil and a Butcher shop where deliveries from the Crooked Man come in and out of.  Side note, this episode really made me hate Beauty and the Beast, like, much like every Fable they're struggling financially but it's not in the same way, the two of them just think they are owed expensive things because they were once rich and so they keep getting themselves further in debt to pretend they are.  Like they want Bigby to murder the Crooked Man to "make it all go away", something he's against because while he will get violent when he needs to, his job is not to be an assassin.  Especially now that Snow has taken over and she wants things done by the book, to see real justice dispensed as a way to show that she and Bigby are serious about running this community right.  He walks away offended, saying that he doesn't do hits, but "they might be in luck, their problem could be solved anyways if things keep going like they're going".

The player is here given a choice on where to investigate first, the butcher shop or the pawn shop.  I chose the pawn shop, and when you arrive, Toad is trying to pawn Faith's donkeyskin coat to make enough money to cover his glamours.  The cashier, Jack Horner (who in the Fables universe is treated as every Jack from a fairytale), is refusing to play ball because "who would want a donkey skin coat", and also because the shop is, you know.  A front.  So they do very little real business.  Toad leaves in a huff, realizing that his life is falling apart and it's very likely that him and his son are going to be sent upstate to live at their facility for non-human Fables, even rejecting money that Bigby offered him to cover his glamours.  Funny aside, Bigby keeps finding Crane's cash he pocketed across this game and every single time he does, the player is given the option to pocket it themselves, so Bigby is just carrying like $2000 in rolled 20s on him at all times.  Bigby turns his attention to Jack, who refuses to answer any of his questions, stating that while the pawn shop IS a front for the Crooked Man's loan lending operations, it has basically 0 involvement with the man otherwise.  This lie is blown wide open when Bigby investigates the display cases and notes that one of them used to contain the Woodcutter's enchanted axe, meaning that Mary must've come through here is she now has it.  Horner, cornered, tries to talk his way out of Bigby's questioning by saying that he genuinely doesn't know anything about the seedy underbelly of the shop, that he only works part time and if he has questions he should come back later when his boss arrives.  His boss then arrives, tailed by the Woodcutter who is looking for his axe, claiming someone stole it and pawned it.

Bigby wastes no time questioning the man, who is the Jersey Devil, but not only doesn't get any answers out of, the Devil seems almost amused that Bigby is even here.  He taunts the wolf, welcoming him to "the family", explaining to Jack that the sheriff and the new mayor are already under the "boss' thumb".  He refuses to give up any information about the Crooked Man and instead mocks Bigby for "chasing his tail", that the murderer of those two girls is still out there and he's done jack all to actually find out who did it.  A fight breaks out in the pawn shop, with Bigby finding an unlikely ally in his former foe as they both try to take on the Devil.  It looks as though it is a lost cause, but Woody finds his axe and they manage to gain the upper hand, almost killing the man.  The Devil tells Bigby what he knows: the Crooked Man isn't found, he finds you.  His base of operations is never in the same place twice, always moving, always at a different location, like magic.  Finding him will be nigh impossible without the magic mirror, as Crane was the only one who ever knew where to look for him, and with Crane absconding with the last piece of the mirror, now nobody will be able to find where he is.  As Bigby and Woody turn to leave, the Devil taunts Bigby, saying that he failed.  He'll never find his charge and he'll never avenge those girls.  He's lost.

Bigby and Woody say what may be their final goodbyes, leaving off not as enemies but as friends for the first time in centuries.  Bigby then decides to hit up his second lead, the butcher shop, knowing it's unlikely he'll find anything of note as his appearance at the pawn shop is bound to get back to them.  After intimidating the butcher, he leads Bigby to the backroom of his operation and finds a drug lab operating within it.  The Crooked Man had been keeping people chained up in the back of the Butcher's shop, forcing them to make illegal magical items, most notably glamours.  It's here that we see the full scope of the plan come into place: people in Fabletown often require magical items to maintain their jobs and their livelihood.  But the official channels are often prohibitively expensive to the populace of the community, who are only getting poorer and poorer.  The Crooked Man offers an alternative, cheaper, older school glamours which change your appearance into a person you invoke.  He sells these glamours to people, but keeps asking more and more in return, until it bankrupts them.  At which point, they take out a loan at the Jersey Devil's pawn shop to cover their expenses.  But these interest rates keep going higher and higher, at which point the Tweedles come knocking.  They offer you a deal.  Work for the Crooked Man and the debt will be paid down in due time.  But the debt is never paid down and, eventually, you encounter Bloody Mary, who threatens your life.  Now desperate, you return to the Tweedles who point you to one of the "fine establishments" the Crooked Man runs, at which point you will have an enchantment put upon you and enter a life of servitude, either working for him in his drug labs or hooking at Georgie's club.  All the while, the Fabletown government is unable to do anything to assist you, as thanks to Crane's addiction to molesting Snow White, he has drained all the town's coffers directly to the Crooked Man himself.

Luckily for Bigby though, a drug lab isn't all he finds back here.  In their hurry to abandon the lab after finding out Bigby was coming, they accidentally left Crane's coat, likely thinking it held nothing of significance.  Fortunately, it did, as Crane was carrying the last shard of the magic mirror on his personage, meaning Bigby can now return to the office and use the mirror to find the Crooked Man's hideout.  After some bickering with Bluebeard, who is deeply upset by Snow White claiming the mayoral desk without an official election, and Toad, who is demanding money to repair his building while Snow is demanding he be sent upstate, they repair the Magic Mirror and find out why the Crooked Man is so hard to pin down.  The Devil was not just saying poetic nonsense about the fluid nature of the Crooked Man's base, it literally moves, using magic to appear in a different doorway every few minutes.  Discovering this, Bigby runs off to finally confront the boss at the center of this whole operation, making it just in time before the door moves again.  

Unfortunately, the Crooked Man was already aware he was coming, as Mary is able to detect mirror magic given who she is and sent a welcoming crew: Tiny Tim.  Side note, until I saw the Crooked Man himself, I thought this was going to be the reveal.  That Tim was the Crooked Man and that his disability is why he was "crooked".  Instead it's just a mind game, trying to seed into Bigby's head that the Crooked Man isn't the true enemy here, that Fabletown needs him as much as it needs Bigby or Snow.  That he "helps people", and that whatever happens after is a consequence of their own failures, not his.  Tim leads Bigby to a room full of all the co-conspirators, the Tweedles, Georgie, the Devil, Mary, and, of course, the Crooked Man himself.  Our episode ends with Bigby lighting a smoke, prepared to confront the man at the center of all of this.

Now, as stated at the beginning of this section, I am locking in Georgie as our culprit.  I think that, despite the involvement of the Crooked Man, Georgie is the one who actually murdered Faith and Lily.  So I won't go over any other suspects or theories.  But I do want to amend my theory to adjust for the new information in episodes 3 and 4.  Here is what I am suggesting:  Faith and Lily had gotten into financial trouble and, with nowhere left to turn, had sought help from the Crooked Man.  It was not long before they ended up being unable to pay and so, without any other options, they "joined" the Crooked Man's operation, becoming strippers/prostitutes at Georgie's club.  During the day they would be chained up in the back of the butcher's shop, crafting magical items for the Crooked Man to peddle, and at night they would hook, trying to pay off a debt that would never truly go down.  All the while being forced to do so by the enchanted ribbons around their necks, which insured compliance and that they wouldn't talk.  And, as we've seen with Nerissa, they seemingly can't just take them off, as her reaction to the suggestion was violent.  

However, the girls, being so close to the magical operation, eventually start thinking that they maybe could break the enchantment.  They could use their work to free themselves from the influence and blow the whistle on the whole operation.  So they silently start plotting, amassing knowledge of enchantments and swiping a magical ingredient here or there when nobody is looking.  But, unfortunately, it all gets back to Georgie that his girls have found a way to fly the coop.  Furious, Georgie orders the girls to remove their ribbons, or removed them himself.  And just like the old fairytale about the girl with the green scarf, it immediately caused their heads to fall off, killing them and leaving the incredibly clean cut.  And then he ordered them to be left in a very public place as a message to his other girls.  But, how did he find out?  I think it was Nerissa.  And I think that's why Nerissa is so keen on helping us even when the magic does not allow her.  I think it is guilt.

When we went to investigate the strip club in Episode 2 or 3, Bigby found a photo of Faith, Lily, and Nerissa together.  Implying they were close.  I think that the plan was actually that all three of them would escape together, that they were as a unit going to blow the lid off their operation.  But, Georgie noted Nerissa acting strange and forced her to squeal.  At which point, he killed Faith and Lily and, while keeping Nerissa alive, is choosing to punish her by making her work five times as hard.  Nerissa was, after all, the Little Mermaid, and in the classical version of the fairytale her legs come at a horrible cost: she always feels as if she's stepping on glass.  And the very first time we meet Georgie and Nerissa, Georgie is forcing her to dance.  At the time it seemed like Nerissa was just new and Georgie was instructing her on how to dance, but all other evidence points to Nerissa being a long standing member at the club.  I believe that it's her punishment for trying to defy Georgie, she's allowed to keep her life because she told him about their plan to escape, but she now will work harder than all his other girls and experience that endless pain for daring to think of defying him.

I want to leave y'all with something very funny that happened when I returned to the office after getting the final mirror shard.  So, The Wolf Among Us is a very glitchy game, there are a lot of graphical bugs here and there and characters will just jump around inside scenes.  TellTale was already, when this game came out, stretching itself super thin to try and meet demands of their award-winning, revolutionary game formula and the work suffered for it.  Anyways, so when I got back to the office in Episode 4, a dialogue option popped up where every option was "this choice is blank".  Confused, I clicked an option, and jumped partway into the scene.  Another dialog option popped up, and I was thrown to a different part of the scene.  It kept doing this just, jumping around from dialog to dialog, no continuity, until the scene zooms in on Snow White's shoulder, then zooms all the way out to a bird's eye view, gives me five blank dialog choices in a row, and then stops all talking and lets me move about the office freely with the camera permanently stuck in a bird's eye view of the scene.  And I was stuck there, because the scene was broken so I couldn't move onto the next scene or progress the game in any way.  Thankfully it fixed itself by reloading the checkpoint so this wasn't a problem and instead just gets to be a funny thing that happened.  See y'all for the finale.

9/19/26

My assessment that The Wolf Among Us was at its best at the start continues to be accurate because like, man, this episode was not it fam.  I will say, I'm still the best, I got so many of the details right.  Missed a couple, didn't predict how the enchantment actually worked and I certainly didn't predict that the key moment here would've been one of the girls gaining leverage on Crane which set off all the alarm bells, nor that Nerissa sold them out of her own volition out of a hope that they could cool down for the moment and the trio could try again when less heat was on them.  But I did definitely get the culprit and much of the mystery correct so shoutouts to me.  Not the hardest thing I've ever tried to solve, regretfully I have attempted in the past to solve Danganronpa, a series that has mysteries so poorly constructed that you could never solve them until about 75% through the yap session they call a trial, and that's after like most of the suspects have just proven their innocence.  But still, always good to end off on a win.

Speaking of yap sessions, the trial was the worst part of this game by far.  So no matter what pathway you take, someone will have to stand trial in the game's penultimate chapter.  Either you bring in the Crooked Man to have a fair trial for his numerous crimes against Fabletown or Bigby will have to stand trial for being a vigilante and not being someone the people feel comfortable protecting them.  I had the former scenario, most people seem to have as well.  So, the problem with TellTale games, right, is that sometimes they do just have characters act against what their characterization and their previous decisions actually are in order to move the story along.  Take for instance in the Walking Dead where characters who Lee has slighted repeatedly will randomly trust him again just because the story needs to be pushed forward.  But the trial is probably the worst instance of this in any TellTale game I've ever seen.

Like characters will not only act against their best interest in the context of the rest of the game, they will flip flop during the trial, just fully change their opinions on a dime to push the trial forward.  Beauty and the Beast wanted Bigby to murder the Crooked Man in cold blood, suddenly they hear him talk about what he's done for the community and they're suddenly unsure about if he's really that bad.  Characters will hate Bigby one second and then unquestioningly stand by him the next, only to then flip flop back.  It's like having all these characters in the same room but also needing the story to be pushed forward creates this issue where you just have to pretend like the room is full of characters that you've never met before in order for this to make sense.  I already was feeling less into this game than I felt like I probably should be but the trial just cemented this as thoroughly B tier TellTale game to me.

I will say, though, I really enjoyed the boss fight against Bloody Mary.  Like, I was kind of expecting our final confrontation with the assassin to be her maybe using her supernatural powers to her advantage as she tries to gun down Bigby and he tries to get the drop on her.  I was not expecting us to go to a metalworking factory that would have tons of reflective surfaces, leading to Mary being able to create hundreds of copies of herself to physically overwhelm Bigby, forcing him to transform more and more to deal with the onslaught until he finally chooses to let loose and fully transforms into the Big Bad Wolf.  And the Bloody Mary design is just sick, most Fables have a more human design and then a design that is more in line with what the mundies believe about them, but Bloody Mary's is just a work of art.  She's covered in like glowing Satanic tattoos that constantly drip blood and shards of glass stick from her in random places.  She has these soulless black eyes and even her teeth have turned to glass.  It's sick.  Best design of the entire Fables series mayhaps.

And I do want to applaud the ending for choosing to be ambiguous in a way that is clearly never meant to be followed up on.  I'm actually kind of worried due to the fact that like none of the people currently working on the Wolf Among Us 2 are people who worked on the first game, since TellTale went bankrupt and the current TellTale is just not the same company anymore.  And also the company that is made of ex-TellTale devs and made the best TellTale game of all time, Dispatch, was on the project, then left the project.  I'm worried that the people currently making the Wolf Among Us 2 will refocus the mystery onto this ending because people were demanding this ending be follow up on.  But nah, the ambiguous ending is never meant to be followed up on, it's just meant to be a very simple noir ending that leaves the player and Bigby questioning what's actually true and what's not.  It also gives Bigby an interesting choice, he can chase this lead, continue being "Detective Wolf", or he can let it go, go back inside, start helping Snow get this town back together and be "Sheriff Bigby".  It's a very interesting question to leave the player on as a major theme of this game is "who is Bigby Wolf, is he a police officer protecting this community or is he a monster looking for any excuse to snap".

Alright, let's talk about episode 5's plot.  So, Bigby arrives at the Crooked Man's hideout to find his entire suite of goons are present, all with a firearm close by.  What we are left to assume in episode 4 is that we're about to have a showdown.  Instead, the Crooked Man assures Bigby that his goons all being here is just insurance.  He truly wants to talk.  See, the Crooked Man has a proposition for Bigby.  He is willing to hand over Georgie, no strings attached.  After all, Georgie was the one who killed Faith and Lily.  He is to blame for their deaths.  The Crooked Man is just a business man, and if Georgie is testifying that he gave the order to kill them, then Georgie only misinterpreted what he meant.  Bigby can have the "real culprit", get his guy, and dispense justice for Fabletown.  And the Crooked Man can continue his rather lucrative working relationship with the government of Fabletown and his business with the people who live in it.  There are just two problems: Georgie is refusing to play ball, and Bigby won't leave without the Crooked Man and all his goons in cuffs.  As you might imagine, this doesn't sit well with the Crooked Man, and he orders his goons to deal with both of them.

A fight breaks out, leading to both CM and Georgie escaping into the night.  Bigby gives chase through the streets of New York, using his "werewolf" form to quickly navigate through the rooftops so he doesn't lose the two vehicles.  However, he comes to an impasse, and must choose one to tail immediately.  In my playthrough, he chooses Georgie, arriving back at the Pudding n Pie to see Georgie and his girlfriend, the hostess of the club Vivian, trying to treat his wound.  Georgie, seeing Bigby here, is furious, believing that he's fallen for CM's lies, but Bigby is quick to point out that even if CM was the mastermind behind all this, it is Georgie who actually carried out the murders.  Georgie who kept these girls enslaved at his club.  Georgie who should be on trial for at least the murders.  After some back and forth, Georgie reveals a very important piece of information: even if he wanted to free the girls, he couldn't, as doing so would require him to kill the woman he loves most.  The way they got the enchantment to work was by copying the one that was on Vivian's own ribbon.  Vivian, as it turns out, is the girl from the story of the girl and the ribbon (I said girl with the green scarf before, same basic premise, girl can't take off her neckwear because it's holding her head on).  The only way to truly break the enchantment is to kill her.

Vivian, realizing why Georgie did what he did, reveals everything.  Originally, the ribbons weren't supposed to be malicious.  No one was supposed to be kept as a slave, not really.  It was supposed to just be a gimmick.  The girls would willingly submit to the ribbons and the only thing they would keep a secret was their clients.  "Discretion is our guarantee".  But then the Crooked Man got involved, and he realized what the girls could be used for.  He demanded more and more of Georgie, and Georgie got further and further in with him, until he was fully in his pocket.  And before they could even realize what they were involved with, the girls they had originally hired as a cute gimmick were now slaves to the Crooked Man.  Vivian is unable to live with the guilt of what she did to all these girls, all the suffering she has caused, an willingly takes her ribbon off, ending her own life and breaking the spell on the rest of the girls in the club.  Bigby attempts to arrest Georgie, but he's too far gone, the fight back the CM hideout has cut straight to his intestines.  He won't make it through the hour, much less to testify when they catch the CM.  Bigby can only do the kind thing for him, and put him out of his misery.  With his last breaths, Georgie tells Bigby where to find the Crooked Man now, and begs Bigby to give him 10x what he got when he finds him.

Bigby follows the trail to a metalworking factory near the water.  After dealing with his final enforcer, Mary, as mentioned before, Bigby corners the Crooked Man.  CM gives him the same speech, he's just a businessman, he didn't know what his associates were doing, he wishes to speak to the people directly to clear this whole matter up.  Bigby decides to arrest him, to have him stand trial, to do things the "right way".  The trial goes about as well as you'd expect, the Crooked Man using many of the things I've noted about the state of Fabletown against Snow to try and win over the people.  That it is a place that has abandoned its people, has left them high and dry, while they sit in their ivory towers and comfort.  That he has done for them what the Fabletown government has not.  That his involvement in the murders is hearsay.  Eventually, though, Bigby and Snow win people over to their side.  There's just one problem: the matter of tangible evidence.  The only thing Bigby has is the testimony of a dead man, after all.  Nothing else links the Crooked Man to these crimes.  Bigby should carry a tape recorder.

Luckily, Nerissa arrives as an eyewitness.  She was there the night Georgie was given the order, she saw it with her own two eyes.  And thanks to Vivian, she can now speak openly about it.  This is enough to finally persuade the residents of Fabletown, and justice is served.  The Crooked Man will be thrown down the Witching Well, to spend all eternity falling.  As he is about to be thrown down, he gives a prophecy.  That Fabletown will only get worse.  Nothing can change, nothing is ALLOWED to change.  The people will get poorer, and when they do, they will wish that he was still around.  And with that, he is dealt with.

The next morning, Bigby returns to work to see what the Crooked Man said apparently coming true.  The line outside the Business Office is longer than ever, the downfall of CM's operations causing many people to lose their jobs.  Snow is drowning in paperwork already, carrying a stack of files a foot high and saying that she needs to talk to Bigby "later".  And as Bigby walks away, Bluebeard, the wealthiest person in Fabletown, walks into Snow's office.  As if nothing had truly changed.  Obviously, change wouldn't be immediate, but still.  As Bigby exits the Woodlands, he spots Nerissa, who admits that she lied to them.  She wasn't there that night when CM gave the order.  But it didn't really matter.  She had to do something.  As mentioned at the start, Nerissa actually sold out the girls and their plan to escape of her own volition after finding out Faith had pocketed leverage on Crane, thinking that she could keep the CM from doing horrible things to them if she got ahead of it.  Instead, Georgie killed Faith right in front of her, and said Lily would be next.

Unable to deal with causing the deaths of the only family she had known since coming to New York, Nerissa planted Faith's head on the front step of the Woodlands for Bigby to find it.  So he would start on the case, so Faith and Lily wouldn't be forgotten.  Nerissa tells him that he did good work, and that she trusts that him and Snow will make this place better.  And as she walks away, she says something that makes Bigby pause. She leaves his head swirling with questions, the most important being: was she actually Nerissa?  Or was she Faith, and Nerissa's head was the one found on day one of this case, glamoured to look like Faith's.  After all, the timeline is pretty tight, don't you think?  And they never did finish analyzing Faith's head, nor did they find her body.  Which, if she were Nerissa, of course they wouldn't.  A mermaid who returns to land would turn to sea foam if they tried to return to the sea after all.  The player is left with one final choice: chase "Nerissa" and be Detective Wolf, or let her go, return inside, and be Sheriff Bigby.

The Wolf Among Us is a very solid mystery story.  It has a very unique and interesting setting, lots of well written characters, a clear understanding of what makes gritty noir work.  I enjoyed the story of this game a whole lot.  I think that while it does have some pacing problems and does have some serious narrative speedbumps, it is excellent with regards to its story.  I think the biggest problem I have is that I just wish it would commit to what kind of game it wants to be and how much it wants to be that kind of game.  The Wolf Among Us feels like it desperately wants to be a Lucas Arts-y style point and click adventure game, its ingrained in its DNA, but it lacks proper puzzle solving, an inventory that has a usage, any measure of player freedom.  It, at times, feels more like a visual novel than anything.  But it's too much of a point and click to just be a visual novel, it has too much player interactivity and too much proper gameplay to really fit that context.  It feels confused.  And like I said, it comes out to feeling like a Choose Your Own Adventure book where every choice is leading to the same ending.  When it is good it is great, but it is too messy to be excellent, and I think on the whole it is a very middle of the road TellTale.  7.6/10