Telltale Games has announced three new titles for 2017 into 2018: a second season of Batman, subtitled The Enemy Within; the final season of The Walking Dead; and, most excitingly for me, a sequel to 2013/2014’s terrific Fables comic adaptation, The Wolf Among Us.
Batman begins (ha, ha) on August 8th, and will roll across five parts, much like its decent-if-unspectacular predecessor. The all-grown-up-Clem starring The Walking Dead: The Final Season follows in 2018, with no specific start date given; and the same is true of The Wolf Among Us 2.
Videos by VICE
I’m not about to deep-dive into the twisted narrative depths of The Wolf Among Us, but the short story, compressed to barely-there size, is basically: fairy tale characters live in the real world, disguising themselves from humans, but shit goes bad, by which I mean really, really bad.
Only, it’s great, and The Wolf Among Us was the last game that my wife and I played together, all the way through, making decisions as a pair and accepting the sometimes dire consequences. We’d finished season one of Telltale’s Walking Dead before then, but none of the studio’s games have clicked with us in the same way since—not even Game of Thrones, which she loves the TV adaptation of. (I mean, who doesn’t, I guess.)
A lot of time’s passed, then, since we last swapped a pad between us for co-operative sessions. Indeed, back then, I wasn’t even full-time at VICE, still doing this on odd days, here and there. And we played The Wolf Among Us on PS3, as I don’t think I had a PS4 by then. Professionally, it feels like a lifetime ago—but seeing The Wolf Among Us 2 confirmed gets me excited to, again, share what I do for a living with the person I spend most of my life with. That’s an overdue feeling.
The announcement video (watch it below) says that the Wolf sequel is happening because of fan demand, so, if I may: thanks, people who politely asked Telltale for more Bigby Wolf and more Snow White (graphic adventure gaming’s very own Mulder and Scully), and who wouldn’t take silence as a valid option. It’s not like you’ve saved my marriage or anything like that—but now we’ve both something to look forward to in a medium that, 99% of the time, only one of us gives a shit about.