The Wolf Among Us' flaws
The Wolf Among Us is often heralded as one of the greatest games of the past decade, for its excellent writing and characters. But did Wolf have any flaws in its writing? Anything lazily done, anything you thought could've been executed better, maybe something too cliche for your liking?
I know that Wolf isn't flawless, but I never see any criticism of it.
Tagged:
Sign in to comment in this discussion.
Comments
I didn't like the way Snow answered all of Bigbys effort at the end. Even Bigby couldn't talk with her. I think the ending was a little poor and at least Snow could thank Bigby. I would love it if they kissed.
I made an account just to say that Bigby's wolf senses are defective. For example, when he goes to Toad's apartment, the only blood he can smell is on the poker (from what I can remember, he says he smelled it from the door), even though the blood on the wall and on Toad himself are much closer. Toad probably hadn't started bleeding yet, but he was smashed in the head hard enough for blood to be on the wall.
However, Bigby sometimes has to put objects right up against his face to smell them, like with Snow's hair. There's also the beginning of the game where Toad calls Bigby a "furry pricked gobshite", so if his dog hearing worked properly Toad would've been quite literally kicked full force into the door. Lmao My grandma's hard of hearing and she would beat my ass just for calling her stupid.
Jack didn't actually go anywhere as a character in the story.
You can meet him in Holly's bar when going to tell her the bad news, then he turns up at Crane's place if you go there first and can make some sort of agreement(I don't remember what). Then he turns up in episode four as well as it's preview working for Jersey and it seemed like he was in over his head and wanted to get out of his business after being spooked somehow. Yet when the episode itself happens, he just gets forced to wait for Jersey to show up alongside Bigby and leaves before the fight with Woody.
It's almost like he was aware of the murders or even participated in a deal related to them, but wanted to make things right when he realized what he was helping with.
So this isn't a critical issue so much as just a peculiar choice in storytelling given the tone, but the Killer's identity?
So, I don't have an too much of an issue with Georgie being the killer or any of the stuff that comes of that, but it was an odd genuine surprise. Now it's not because the answer being "pimps kill hos" is that much of a let down or anything and the killer being someone you were interrogating the whole time is kind of a commendable twist in and of itself, but I feel like the issue here is, well, it's Georgie.
Being somewhat misled and/or seemingly spoiled early on and ahead of time, respectively, give me a plate of minor factor in that, but really just looking at the story for what it is, Georgie being revealed to be this brutal killer you've been looking for throughout the game doesn't quite match up. Throughout the story, Georgie was a recurring s*** heel who Bigby interrogated, punched, and interacted with throughout the story to somewhat humourous effect; he seemed more like a recurring cog in the machine who was extrinsically connected to the case, but was ultimately just that-- a cog.
The reveal that he's the one who killed Faith is not only handled in a matter of fact manner(to the point I earnestly thought it was a joke), but but it evolved to involve handling the background reasonings in an oddly dramatic fashion. While I'm entirely fine with me a major antagonist had a new sympathetic even tragic motivation behind them, the discrepancy here is that Georgie at no point ever really invited us to take him seriously. And while majority of the tragedy is in fact orbited around Vivian rather than Georgie himself, we still go from having a happily accented pawn on the side yell fruitlessly at having dropped his radio after idly heckling a stripper about not doing her act right and badly lying about a suspect before casually getting shoved aside by Snow to arguing now in depth again to the crooked Man in order to fulfill their dream and pleading with Vivian that he didn't mean it after she commits suicide.
It's just generally kind of a mood whiplash and that's regardless of whether they were the appropriate culprit for the story.
Well the point is for it to kinda be bigger than just Georgie. The "killer" in the end is really the Crooked Man's entire crew. Everything that happens happens because of these criminals. Like you said Georgie is just a cog, yes he killed them physically but the operation and the leader the Crooked Man is the real reason they died and in turn just as guilty. Everyone who had a part in running that criminal underworld is guilty of many crimes. It becomes less about who the murder is after episode 3 as its obvious its Crooked Man related- at that point it just comes down to shutting them down.
But at the end of the game Nerissa admits not everything she said was true. She "knew" the Crooked Man ordered it, but it was really an educated guess, she had no proof. (Which is why I honestly kinda hope Wolf 2's story kinda becomes a continuation of the scraps of the Crooked Man's empire as the player is very obviously not allowed to know what truly happened and just has to believe what they are told. A pretty interesting story could come out of a "We need to take a second look at this" later on in a sequel.
Oh don't be mistaken, it's not who the killer is being a problem so much as the elaboration behind it being kinda weird.
You raise an interesting point though, since the Crooked Man is built up to be this major figure with numerous operations that are touched on/acknowledged, but don't get much time spent on most of them. And with him either dead or magically imprisoned, it would be interesting to see what becomes of all that.
A few points on motivation and behavior.
For me it was a bit strange that Wolf & Snow are only investigating the murder, and other acts of aggression just go unpunished: the first scene with Woodys attack on Bigby, than the fight with Gren in the bar, Tweedles. I mean why they don't get arrested and there's no notion of any trial or punisment for these crimes in the story? Every Bigbys opponent have had started the fight first (and in a rather brutal way) and could have been arrested for it. And the lack of any consequence makes you wanna show less mercy in future fights.
Also it's a bit hard to get the limits of their "immortality" - an axe in the head is ok, but a shot from a shotgun for Holly (a huge troll) and Gren (a huge grey monster) is suddenly a big deal.
Another thing is why Bigby doesnt have a gun? Instead of taking shots from Tweedles he could just shoot them.