The Wolf Among Us Episode 3: A Crooked Mile review: procedural justice

At the beginning of A Crooked Mile, we find Bigby in a pretty dark place. Literally. In a seedy, blood-spattered hotel room the Big Bad Wolf as just uncovered the big bad secret that may just turn Fabletown on its ear. With the discovery of some … unsavory photographs, Crane has just been revealed as Snow's number one fan and the lead suspect for the murderer stalking Fabletown.

What follows is perhaps the most focused episode of Wolf Among Us yet: Bigby must find Crane. But that also makes it the most procedural. There are moments of reflection, but this is the middle of a detective story, and A Crooked Mile feels a little like an episode of Law and Order (or at least the Law part) as a result.

On his way to warn Snow, Bigby stumbles into the funeral for Lily, one of the killer's victims and a troll prostitute taking on Snow's visage through the use of glamors. Bigby isn't a favorite of the Fabletown cast-offs and that reputation is in no way improved by the arrival of the Tweedle brothers trying to scare the sheriff off of Crane's trail. Not wanting bloodshed, I agreed to a deal with the Tweedles, but things still managed to break bad with Bigby and a couple of trolls taking loads of buckshot in the torso.

I can't say for certain, but it seems that things were probably going to break bad no matter which way I responded to the Deedles, which makes the choice seem distractingly illusory. I understand a branching narrative inevitably has moments where the branches run in parallel, but if the choices I make aren't having much of an impact, why do I keep making them?

I ran into a similar situation when I unwillingly split up investigative duties with Bluebeard (always nice to hear Dave Fennoy, even when he's playing a total dick) and chose between three locations to start the search for Crane. I decided on checking out the troll-managed bar first, but ended up going to the other two locations after.

Again, I totally understand the impulse, not wanting players to miss out on any content. But A Crooked Mile overcompensates, perhaps due in part to the challenge of yanking moving parts out of a mystery, which, when they're told well, have to run like clockwork.

Watching the destitution these lesser-known fables have been driven to has given The Wolf Among Us a really unsettling undercurrent of despair that's a great pairing for the noir tone. It also allowed me to continue my probably futile attempt to repair Bigby's mean-son-of-a-bitch reputation with Fabletown's least-beloved citizens.

I've talked before about the uneasy balance between violence and diplomacy in The Wolf Among Us and its still the central conflict in Episode Three. I've got a natural inclination to play the nice guy, but none of the fables seem eager to throw Bigby a tickertape parade no matter how many good turns he takes. (You know, you eat one preteen …)

At my next stop, the Tweedles' office, I ran into Flycatcher (The Frog Prince, making his first appearance) and, less happily, into an issue that popped up throughout the episode. When Flycatcher asked if I was searching for Dee and Dum, I replied that I was looking for Dee and Dum as opposed to the far more natural "Yup."