Building off of the momentum of their try at The Walking Dead, Telltale Games decided to branch out to another comic book for their next game series, with The Wolf Among Us. Working as a prequel to the Fables series of comic book, The Wolf Among Us presents a much darker and grittier take on many of the fairy tale characters we know and love from growing up. With a mix of suspense and great characters, The Wolf Among Us got off to a fantastic start with Episode 1 – Faith back in October, as you can see in our review for that episode. After some very grueling months of waiting, due to some unforeseen circumstances in the development, The Wolf Among Us: Episode 2 – Smoke & Mirrors has finally been released.
As a warning, spoilers will be at least be alluded to from the previous episode, so if you have not played it, you may want to do so prior to reading this review. As with all of Telltale’s series, the story and characters are front and center. In the first episode, we got most of the setup of the world with the lead Bigby Wolf and other characters such as Snow White and Toad. This continues into the second episode, but the cast of characters is even further expanded upon with some newscomers, as well as increased roles for a few characters who only had bit parts before.
Episode 1 ended on a major cliffhanger, which brings us to the events at the very start of Smoke & Mirrors. It was a little disappointing that everything was resolved so quickly, but it led to very interesting events that will carry a lot of weight moving forward. This brought some intriguing story elements into the mix that I did not expect to see, considering I never have read the comics. However, I will let you discover those for yourself, so I don’t spoil a fairly big twist in this episode.
This time around, you get the opportunity to visit some new locations, such as the Pudding and Pie strip club owned by none other than Georgie Porgie. I have to admit it cracked me up that Georgie Porgie would own a strip club. However, it was not all jokes as some very intense scenes go down at this location, as well as a location I will keep a secret that you go to after. This all leads to a huge revelation at the end of the episode, as per usual with Telltale.
One of my favorite parts of games like this is the ability to make your own choices, with some mattering much more than others. While none were a matter of life and death for a character like in the first episode, there were still some very big choices to make throughout that will continue to shape up your story in upcoming episodes. Your decisions from Episode 1 are also imported into Episode 2, so each person will get a different story depending on how they handled themselves in prior situations. This can mean differences in storylines or character dynamics, which you will just have to see for yourself. For those that like to be as bad of a guy as you can, you definitely have that option once again as well.
