Outside of the disastrous number of job losses that resulted from the collapse of Telltale Games in 2018, one of the great tragedies of that fiasco was that we might never return to Fabletown, the gritty, magical setting at the heart of The Wolf Among Us.
So it was a poignant moment when, on this day in 2022, the trailer for The Wolf Among Us 2 dropped. It showed the fallen Sheriff of Fabletown, Bigby Wolf, in anger management, some moody lighting, and the Scarecrow from Wizard of Oz hitting a bong before Bigby barges into the apartment shared between him, the Tin Man, and what we can only infer is Dorothy.
It looks great, especially with the clear advances that Unreal Engine 4 makes on the original Telltale engine. In this fairytale noir setting where the play between shadows, contrast and lighting is so important to setting the mood, the new technical makeover really shines.
I guess you could say it's *ahem* lupin' good.
The trailer was part of a 30-minute reveal event, during which TellTale CEO Jamie Otillie and Nick Herman (co-founder of co-developer AdHoc Studio, which is made of pre-2018 Telltale alumni) got to tease a little bit of the story.
Six months on from the events of Season 1, Bigby is suspended from his Sheriff duties and taking anger management classes. Snow White is the new Deputy Mayor of Fabletown, and her need to carefully play the political game inevitably clashes with Bigby's more forceful, turn-into-a-werewolf-and-tear-shit-up approach to rooting out corruption. We also know that Bigby teams up with an NYC police detective who takes him on to help in a case that doesn't quite smell right.
Oh, and at some point Bigby gets tangled up with the Oz lot, as the trailer shows.
Voice actors Adam Harrington and Erin Yvette will reprise their roles as Bigby and Snow White, and chimed in during the event about the kind of character development we can expect.
"Players will be able to explore more about Bigby than they were able to in the first season, really let him branch out into the bigger world, figure out what he thinks is right and wrong, what he thinks is good and bad," said Harrington, before Yvette added pointedly "... versus what somebody tells him." So it looks like things will get pretty fiery between Bigby and Snow.
Like the first season, Wolf Among Us 2 will be spread across five episodes, but fans who can't wait to be chewed up and spat out by the dirty old town of Fabletown will have to wait until 2023 before they start rolling out. A more specific target hasn't been set yet: Ollie said Telltale will "ship it when it's right instead of when we need to."
