Back in August, I was fortunate enough to get a chance to talk with Nick Herman, Co-Director of The Wolf Among Us (Telltale Games). I honestly didn’t need to know anything about this game to figure out if I was going to get it. I made up my mind when they announced it. Telltale has such an intelligent and beautiful way of telling stories, that they have no limits. If you don’t know much about the comic book title Fables do not fear…The Wolf Among Us is set ten years before the comic ‘begins’. However, you diehards will appreciate the tip of hat to some of your favorite places and characters. I came away impressed playing through the demo with the utmost confidence that Telltale has another hit on its hands.
Why did you decide to do The Wolf Among Us?
We picked this up at the same time we picked up The Walking Dead. So, we’ve been actually working on this game since we we’re working on The Walking Dead. Our first primary focus was just getting the art to look as beautiful as the comic. This is a prequel, so we had an era to play with so we could push it sort of darker, different colors. I think a lot of the fun with that too is we have these vibrant colors with this really dark story and these really messed up characters. We love the comic book. It just full of amazing stories and interesting perspectives on characters you thought you knew.
The art style is kind of like The Walking Dead, but with a better color palate. What kind of style would you call this?
I think we just have an amazing art team and amazing source material. Like I said, the first thing we did was let’s get this looking like the comic and push it from there. If you even look at the shadows, we have got some awesome tech. It draws it like it would in the comic. Like the shadows invert the detail maps and flip the colors. Everything looks awesome.
And you worked on The Walking Dead game too, right?
I was a director on episode four and Lead Cinematic Artist on episode two.
What would you say is the biggest difference between these two games, as far as gameplay?
With the action scenes, we decided to push choice a little bit more. It’s really about telling your own story. It seems so funny but people really read into that stuff. With this game I think we tried to just give the player more micro interactions. We learned on The Walking Dead that everyone reads into everything in different ways so we allow you to explore that.
A lot of the things we are playing with too is time in this game. Even in the demo, there’s some really light interaction with Mr. Toad…you can choose to just go up the stairs at a certain point. You have to make decisions in this game like ‘Do I want to investigate the scene? Or do I want to move on, I think I know everything…I’m just going to barrel through it’. But, a lot of the times there are ramifications for choosing one thing over the other.
How drastic does that shape the story though?
It’s all sorts of degrees of branching. In the demo, it’s more like relationship stuff but later on in the game for sure there’s some stuff where you basically have to choose between the case or a relationship. You are going to screw someone over, and you can only be at one place at any given moment.
More branching than The Walking Dead?
We are still telling the same stories, but it’s really down to what you want to focus on. Do you care about the investigation or are you more of a people person? I think with Bigby too his issue is that he used to be the bad guy and now he’s sort of in charge of protecting everyone. Are you going to do whatever it takes to make sure everything is cool or are you going to try and be political about things and manage it that way?
Is this title episodic in nature as well?
Yep, five episodes.
How long is each episode to play through?
We like to have the episodes playable like after dinner, before you go to bed. Like two, two hours-ish. Depending on how thorough you are.
Kind of like a movie.
And that’s the idea, when we come out episodically its sort of like you are waiting for the next episode. I really like to encourage people to play as they come out. A lot of people wait until the end but I love the in between, when you go to work or whatever and be like ‘Dude, I played last night. What the hell?’ and you can have a conversation with people.
Do you have a forum where people can talk, discuss theories and what not?
Oh yeah. The thing with our development style too is we read that and we are working on the next episode while everyone is playing the first one. So, we are always taking it into consideration. It’s sort of how get things really fine-tuned. We know if Bigby and Snows relationship isn’t hitting for people, we got to make sure it hits the next episode to make up for that.
From the press release:
The season premiere episode of The Wolf Among Us, titled ‘Faith,’ will arrive for download worldwide this Friday October 11th on Xbox Games Store for just $4.99 US. A Season Pass option is available for the first time on Xbox Games Store for Telltale’s new series enabling consumers to purchase the rest of the five episode series (Episodes 2-5) at a discount for $14.99 versus the $4.99/episode price. Episodes 2-5 will also be available for individual purchase as they release on Xbox 360.
The series will also launch worldwide on PC this Friday October 11th, available via the Telltale Online Store, Steam, and other online digital distribution outlets as a Season Pass that includes entitlement to all five episodes as they release. The Wolf Among Us can be pre-ordered now for a 10% discount up until the time the game launches this Friday.
The Wolf Among Us will also premiere on PlayStation Network for PlayStation 3 in North America on Tuesday October 15th. The PlayStation 3 version of the game series will be available for consumers to purchase as individual episodes for $4.99 USD or as a Season Pass for $19.99 which will include episodes 1-5 as they are released. A release date for the title on PlayStation Network in Europe (SCEE) will be announced as soon as it is confirmed by our 1st party partners.