The Wolf Among Us Episode 2 Review

Note: this blog has been migrated to Medium, with the articles here available to preserve permalinks. Please see this post at https://medium.com/@ianrbuck/the-wolf-among-us-episode-2-review-3901281a0924

It's been quite a while since the first episode of The Wolf Among Us came out, but I didn't mind much because the holiday season was right in the middle of that wait, and Assassin's Creed IV happened. On the other hand that cliffhanger was killing me.

This episode played quite differently from the first one. In Episode 1 the player was confronted with several binary choices that were clearly presented as important moments. Episode 2's choices were much more dynamic, taking the form of "how far are you willing to go to get the information you need?" situations. I prefer this new approach to player choice because it is less gamey and doesn't take you out of the scene to make your decision. They were pretty tough decisions too, because I was trying really hard to redeem Bigby but at the same time I really needed to solve the case. And some of the other characters pissed me off.

Another difference is that there are fewer fights in Episode 2. I suspect that this depends on the choices you make, but the way I played I only had to fight one person.

The focus of Episode 2 is gathering information and following leads, but it hardly ever had me looking around a room for clues. The information was usually gathered in conversation with other people, oftentimes in some form of interrogation. In terms of actual story, not much new happened; it was mostly piecing together what had already happened.

That said. the very end left us on another cliffhanger, one that will almost assuredly have a large impact on the story moving forward. I can't wait for Episode 3, and I hope they don't make us wait four months this time.

EDIT: you can now read my review of Episode 3.