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James, Alec, and Bigby take on the challenge of solving a murder. Our show music is "Liftoff" by Amie Waters.
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James, Alec, and Bigby take on the challenge of solving a murder. Our show music is "Liftoff" by Amie Waters.
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James, Alec, and Bigby take on the challenge of solving a murder. Our show music is "Liftoff" by Amie Waters.
Listen to [S2E14] Episode 034 - The Wolf Among Us by 321Backlog! MP3 song. [S2E14] Episode 034 - The Wolf Among Us song from 321Backlog! is available on Audio.com. The duration of song is 01:28:13. This high-quality MP3 track has 1083.139 kbps bitrate and was uploaded on 2 Jul 2024. Stream and download [S2E14] Episode 034 - The Wolf Among Us by 321Backlog! for free on Audio.com – your ultimate destination for MP3 music.
3, 2, 1, Dockload. Welcome back to 3, 2, 1, Backlog, the podcast where two gentlemen sit uncomfortably close, only separated by a melting ice cream cone, are on a mission to count down their video game backlog. How you doing, Alec? Fantastic, James. That was great. I love it. I'm almost done with this ice cream cone. Give me a minute. Yeah, man. Just save me the last bit of it. You got it. Have you ever had, there's a, it's like a snack or a sweet snack, candy maybe, a treat, and it's just, I think they're called just the tip, but it's the bottom part of an ice cream cone with a chocolate in the bottom of it. Have you had that? Yeah. They're like nibs or something. I know what you're talking about. I have had them. Yeah. God, they're good. My wife found them on Amazon one time, but since then, that was maybe a year or two ago, since then we have started seeing them in the supermarkets. Yeah. They are getting the idea of like, this is a really good snack. Yeah. They tend to make it into like Christmas time for me from people. They just know. I love waffle cone and chocolate combined, but not separately. So that's why I went with this really weird intro. Dude, speaking of drumsticks, we have recently found the drums, the, they're like, they're like weird, not weird flavors, but just more than just like vanilla ice cream or a standard sugar cone, a chocolate cone with a banana ice cream in it with the chocolate coating around it. I don't like banana. No. And it is so good. It is. You got to try it. I'll try it. I'll try anything bad for me once. Yeah. They have the pack that we got had all of them chocolate cones, one with vanilla, one with the banana and the one with the strawberry. The strawberry is good. Not as good as the banana, but really, really good. But anyway, what are we actually talking about here for the video games, right? Yeah. And, you know, perfect segue. We're actually talking about the Wolf Among Us today by Telltale Games. Well, hey, before we get into the bulk of it, which, yes, we are going to be talking about the Wolf Among Us. Do we want to get through our backlog builders and what we've been playing recently? Have you bought or purchased or acquired any games recently? I made it our whole span of not recording without buying a single thing. So I feel like that's a little bit of a win for me because it's always like a, you know, oh, it's like a dollar here, a dollar there or whatever. But I haven't bought a single game. I got several, actually. I don't know. I actually might have more that I didn't know that I got, but Unfinished Swan, we talked about that. It was the, you know, supposedly one of the characters, family members from Edith's family and Edith Finch escapes or something, gets out, moves away, and then allegedly went on to make a game that was Unfinished Swan. I got that just because I figured we'll probably end up playing it, right? Yeah. And Elden Ring, for reasons, it's a beautiful game. I haven't really played it much, but I did acquire it. And then Brotato, which I don't really like it very much, but it's a vampire survivor type game, like a bullet hell type one. Maybe it'll get better the more I play it and it'll kind of expand the way vampire survivors did. It just seems kind of the same, same game. Right, right. Yeah. But also, like, it's kind of hard to like, those are all the same style of game. It's kind of hard to set yourself aside, but I'll play it, obviously, more. Yeah. See? Are they, is it quick to get, like, in and out, like, vampire survivors is? Yeah. It's basically the same thing, like, same concept, like your guns auto fire for you or whatever weapon you have, but, like, all the character models look almost exactly the same. They're just like variants of a potato, like, who cares? The enemies don't really seem like they have a lot of variety visually, and the map is small. It's not like a gigantic expanding map the way vampire survivors is. It's like just a rectangle that's small. And then another thing that I want to bitch about with it is whenever you level up or complete a level, it puts you in a menu screen. It's not like you level up and then you pick a talent and you keep going. It's very, like, oh, move to stage two, and then they just give you, like, a myriad of choices to upgrade, and it's like, I want to play this game because it's very quick. I don't want to read that this drops my HP by two and this one brings up my damage by ten. Like, it's just a lot of information, and I just, like, it's the type of game I want to just sit down, play it, and then go to work. You're starting to sound like me. I don't want to read. When it's that specific type of game, like, I don't really want to read. Vampire Survivors doesn't even, like, have much of a, it's like that half sentence. Yeah. You know? So, yeah. I understand. Yeah. The certain games don't need all the filler information all the time, so I definitely get that. Have you been playing any? Do you want to talk about some games that perhaps you've wrapped your greasy hands around a controller and dove into lately? Yeah. So, Vampire Survivors, you had told me about that, so I jumped on that, played for a bit. It's real fun. I think in the last week or two, I've probably played ten days of that fourteen. You know, for a match here or there, I'll play at the end of the day as I'm trying to wind down and go to bed. So, it definitely is a really fun game to get in, play for a little bit. I've actually fallen asleep while playing it on the Steam Deck, and something will, like, wake me up enough to be like, oh, hey, I'm still holding this, and then I'll be like, okay, it's time to put that away. There's a build specifically for that, I guarantee it. Just get the garlic and you'll be good to go. Get the holy water and upgrade it, and you don't even have to move. There you go. Love it. Love it. Been playing the Wolf Among Us, finished that a couple days ago in preparation for this. Cool. We've continued to play the World of Warcraft, been playing that every now and then, and I did crack open the Jedi Fallen Order game. I played for about an hour, hour and a half, maybe. It's a fun game. I was a little hesitant to, you know, jump into, like, such a big IP that is Star Wars and worried of, like, needing to know, you know, a lot of, like, background information. I know a very minimal amount, you know, from, like, the movies and stuff. But you don't really need any of that. It jumps in. It puts you right in. It's really fun. I've been enjoying it so far, so that might be in our future. Have you played that on? I played it on the PC. Okay. Is it on Steam? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. They're going to link it to EA, to their client. So I don't know if they're going to pull... I love it when they do that. Yeah. I don't know if they're going to pull an Ubisoft or anything like that. You know, that actually, because I was watching a video a little bit ago about some PlayStation announcements. They just announced, for when this is recorded, they just announced that they're going to be bringing God of War Ragnarok to PC, but you're going to have to link your PSN account to play it. That's fine. Which, you know, great, but I worry that just like Netflix is cracking down on, like, sharing passwords and all these other ones are very, you know, anti-share things that you own in the manner that you want to share them, I feel like this is going to become more and more common and it's going to be harder and harder to share games. There is always a solution, but I really think it's a step in the wrong direction, genuinely. Yeah. It sucks because, like, you mailed me a game that I wanted to play, which is, you know, we're moving away from that. You can't just let someone borrow a game, and I really like the way Steam does it, where if you want to play that game, it basically says, like, hey, James wants to borrow, like, wants his game back. Yeah. You know? Yeah. And that's great because, dude, when I was a kid, man, there were not even rentals, man. So much of us playing games as kids was just sharing games. Yep. You know? Like, we actually, there was a kid who lived down the road from us, Jeremy. Yeah. I remember our friend Mike was more participating in this, but we would just go to his house, like, and he had so many games because he was like 10 years older than us, and we would just, like, open a drawer and pick, like, a game or two to borrow. You know? Right. It was just so, it was just, it was amazing. It was great. Yeah. Yeah. Better times, right? In gaming. I don't know. I just, it's a real shame that we're really going to be going in this direction, and it's not going to let up. I think it's going to be more and more, you got to have an account for this, everything's going to be account bound, account locked, and we're not going to be able to really share anymore, and I really think it's going to go into, I predict that, you know, if the PS6 has a physical disk drive, they're going to start to go into, once you download it and it reads that disk and it reads that disk number or whatever, it's going to be locked to that account, and then you won't be able to share that disk anymore. I did that in the 360 era at some point. They had it where like, yeah, this was very, very annoying, so we rented Battlefield, I believe it was, and I got the game home, and I had to pay $10 to be able to play it online because it was already linked to an EA account, and this was, the intention was that you can't sell a game third party, and they'll still make money off of it if you do, which really sucked in the case of a rental because we bought it just to try it out to play it online, and you know, you don't want to, the only time you would not have to pay that $10 is if you happen to be the first person to rent it. Yeah, that's a real shame. Yeah. We ended up, I mean, Blockbuster, God bless them, they gave me the money back for it back in the day, but you know, that's just a shitty practice to do. Just not good. Absolutely. What did Bebo plan? Yeah, man, so Wolf Among Us, obviously, vampire survivors, apparently, and I got into Final Fantasy Tactics a little bit, the PSP version of it specifically because it has a more fleshed out story, new characters, and the sound is, I think, improved in it a little bit, and some of the dialogue as well, but they, I mean, I guess there's a significant slowdown issue with it because it's kind of a big game for the PSP, so people fixed it on a ROM copy. I own a copy of the game, like I do, I've got legitimate copies of it, like plenty of them, but yeah, somebody made a ROM copy and fixed it, and so I got that and was trying that out. It's pretty cool. It's fun, man. I love that game, and we have our mutual friend, Eric, who's been trying to get me to play Final Fantasy XIV online, and it actually takes place in the same universe, so there's some of those characters that are in one game or in the other. And how does Final Fantasy Tactics play? Is it like a... I don't know. No, it's like Tactics, almost like chess kind of thing. You start, it's like a huge battlefield, you can rotate it 360 degrees, and your players move on squares, and you have knights, there's all these different job classes, there's squires, knights, mages, white mage, black mage, samurai, ninja, whatever, and there is a story to it, but the gameplay is the meat of it, and you start out opposite ends of the battlefield and try to get in a favorable position. If you have archers, you probably want them high up so they can shoot downward, and then you have ranged... There's so much involved in it. If your characters die, they could permanently die kind of stuff. I guess I could have just said a primitive version of Baldur's Gate, is what I should have said. Oh, okay. Okay. So like an isometric or top-down-esque view? I got you. Okay. Cool. Yeah, it was a PS1 game originally, so it's not a beautiful game, but it does look good in its own right. I know. I'll have to give it a try. Yeah, you do, man. I think you would enjoy it a little bit, but it's, dude, what's turning me off of playing it is the amount of work that you have to put in between fights. One battle could take like 30 minutes, as it would in most of those type of games, but then you have to level your characters up and buy abilities as they level, and this is all in a minute. It's a lot of time in menus, and I just want to play, so I'm definitely not going to finish it. Okay. Gotcha. All right. Do you want to get in the meat of the episode? Yeah, man. Video games. Right on. The Wolf Among Us is an episodic graphic neo-noir mystery drama-adventure game developed by Telltale Games based on Bill Willingham's Fables comic book series, to which it serves as a prequel. The game consists of five episodes that were released throughout 2013 and 2014. In the game, the player controls Bigby Wolf, the sheriff of Fable Town, a clandestine community within the 1980s New York City consisting of various fantastical characters from fairy tales and folklore. So man, this game was not quite what I was expecting. So I wanted to just touch base on the release dates, because when I was putting our little show notes here, I didn't realize that it was an episodic release to the game. So when it first came out, you had to wait for the episodes to come out. So it started in October of 2013, and then roughly every two to four months, another episode would come out, which I thought was interesting. I don't know if I would like that if I was playing in the moment, but it's a cool concept. Yeah, I guess the idea is that was when 360-era games were a lot arcade-style. You could just download that game, and it wasn't a very big game, but you'd get the episodic releases, and then they'd probably release a physical copy of all the episodes at the end of it. Right, right. I would definitely prefer to play it start to finish. I wouldn't want to do the episodic, and I mean, I don't have enough memory, like brain memory to remember what happened. You know, I talk about this so often on the show. My time can get pretty squirrely day-to-day, and I really liked the clear lines within the episodes. I could play for an hour and a half, two hours maybe, and then just get up and walk away. And it was fully contained in that play session, and then coming back, it did a little recap, and then got you back in. So I did actually like it. I did five separate sit-down sessions to play through them. Oh, nice. You did it. You did it, man. Yeah, so it was really nice. But one other thing on our little game information section was the Metacritic ratings I found. Overall, the series did pretty well. It got an 80, but they did have a by episode rating, and I did notice that the lowest was episode four. The lowest rating was 69, but it ranged in low 70s, and then episode one and five tied at the highest for the rating at mid-80s. I don't remember episode four being particularly boring at all. I feel like it was maybe inclusive at best. You know, because I was trying to think about this a little bit, and I think it's just like basic story structure on the overarching thing. You have episode one, two, and three was kind of like your buildup, and it constantly was building up, and episode four was like a bit of a dip, and then it built up for like a nice finale in episode five. So I feel like episode four was really just a lot of like just connecting dots. So maybe it just felt a little lacking, or maybe a little boring, because it was just trying to fill in pieces, and then it finished off with a strong ending. All right, let's move down here. History with the game, or the franchise really, I had none before this. I think we talked briefly about it when we announced what we were playing last episode, but I think you were a little bit more familiar with Telltale as a company and what they did, and some of the other properties they've made games for. Yeah, so the Telltale Games Walking Dead series, I was a pretty big fan of that. I played through all of those. They've had, I mean, it was a lot. It was way more than this. I want to say maybe five times as much, maybe four or five times as many. They had all these original Walking Dead characters that they squandered the opportunity to bring them into the show time and time again. Yeah, so they were really good. The Borderlands one I enjoyed a lot as well. I did play it again more recently when we were all into Borderlands, and I didn't enjoy it nearly as much the second time. I don't know why, I just didn't. But I enjoyed this one. I liked the Telltale Games, and I feel like they were very much of that time period, like the 2013. Everybody was doing Let's Plays at that time, too, like YouTube hadn't cracked down on it or the producers of games hadn't cracked down on it really bad, so everyone had a Let's Play channel back then. So these were big in that, because they were like very, very story-heavy, and not a lot of discussion had to be actively happening. So you'd see a lot of Let's Players, the big ones, were playing these ones at that time. And then I- I thought the Borderlands, sorry to cut in, but I feel like the Borderlands one would have... No, no, no, I think the Borderlands one would have, like the art styles are very similar, so I think it would have felt like the perfect medium for what Telltale was going for. I think the Borderlands would have been like an easy transition. That might be part of the reason they did it, also Borderlands has such a fantastical setting. Right, for sure. And The Walking Dead being a comic, too, it fits well, like originally a comic. And then I did read, speaking of that, I enjoyed this so much that I did read a fair amount of the comics, actually, and The Hat pretty much put the nail in the coffin for that, for me. I think this is a really well-liked comic, but I just didn't enjoy it at all. At all. I've tried to get into comics multiple times, and I think it's just a type of media that if you like it, you'll like it, and if you don't, it's just kind of hard to get into it versus like a traditional novel or something. Yeah, that's my opinion. I love The Walking Dead show, earlier season, of course, and my brother has, as far as I know, all of the comics for The Walking Dead, and I had looked through a couple of his, and they looked really fun. I read through a couple, it took me maybe 15 minutes to read through them, but yeah, they were really good, so I see the appeal. I think it's just, I don't know, it's very different from your typical sit-down-and-read kind of media. Yeah. When I was younger, I did enjoy comics. I've read the Spawn comics, some other shit, and then I did read a lot of, I've read some comics when I was a kid, never super into the superhero ones. As an adult, I did read all of The Walking Dead comics. As they came out, I read them, and I remember when the final episode, or the final comic, is there a term for that, book, magazine, the final one came out? Was it a series, a final, oh, there is a term, and I'm blanking, like, every time, edition? Sure. Yeah, sure, why not? But yeah, I read it the week it came out, so I kept up with it, and it was, I mean, in general, it was pretty good. It was really, I started on the show first, and then I got into the comics, and I enjoyed it, so I'm not incapable of reading words next to pictures. It's just that this one, I didn't like the way the story went in it. I didn't like, I didn't even like any of the characters. Like, characters that I liked a lot in the Telltale series, I don't know. I didn't even like Bigby that much. I remember he was kind of just, they just, I don't know, Telltale did too good of a job, dude, I swear. Well, that, see, Telltale gave each character a voice, quite literally, whereas the comics, you kind of have to, and even with, you know, reading any book, you have to be the one to add a voice, add your own tone out of the punctuation and things that you're seeing on the page, so Telltale, I think, has a leg up on the graphic novels themselves, being able to give each character a solidified voice. Well, it wasn't even that. I just remember the setting of Telltale felt so, like, gritty, and like the crime novel type of feel to it was so nice, but then the comics were just, like, they were just so all over the place, and just so much fantasy, like, I remember very early on in reading the comics, Bigby ends up having, like, a bunch of kids, and one of them is a ghost. It was just like, I don't know, this isn't the same type of story at all, you know what I mean? I don't care about the, like, character development of his children, sorry, but it just, I was expecting it to be kind of like he's solving problems as a sheriff, solving crimes. I wanted to know more about, like, what happens, you know, because I feel like this was set up for another season, or whatever you want to call it, of this game, so I thought maybe I'd get the kind of story I wanted, yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, perfect segue, there was, slash is, a Wolf Among Us 2. I didn't know that. So that's the thing, hold on one second, let me bring the wiki back up here, and I went to Telltale's website, and they do still have it plastered all over their site. I don't think it's come out yet. It has not come out. It has not come out. Okay, okay. So, let's see, sequel, Wolf Among Us 2, was initially, it was announced in 2017 at the San Diego Comic-Con, and originally set to premiere in 2018, and the one quote they had was Telltale had a majority studio closure due to, quote, unsurmountable challenges canceling the Wolf Among Us, Wolf Among Uses, Among Us' second season. So that was back in 2018 when it was supposed to come out, but now when you look at it, they've gotten back into it, and it's set to release this year in 2018. 11 years later, what's nothing wrong with that? You know, and that I 100% agree with. If you take the time, instead of rushing it, because I feel like... That's not why, though. No, no, I mean... They got, like, canceled, they had a lot of issues, something happened. But I feel like, yeah, if they had genuine issues, that's one thing, but there are studios out there that, when they run into challenges, they'll maybe cut corners, rush things, instead of, like, waiting and putting out a good game. Do you remember in The Butcher Shop, that you go in through The Butcher Shop, and then they've, like, they clearly have chained people in front of a desk to work on stuff? I think that's what Telltale Games did to their employees. So they got shut down. But yeah, they did, they closed in 2018. Wow. Yeah, and I think they spread themselves too thin, because they had access to all these, like, big, big, big IPs, like, War of the Dead, Game of Thrones, Batman, there's just so much stuff, and I think they just spread too thin, and they were like, you got to write, you got to write. And they had really good stories back then. And they were in, like, all these established universes, so there was so much to pull from. I think they just kind of overdid it. And there was probably some, I don't know, some other nonsense, but I do remember a lot of drama with that. And I was like, great, it's one of my, you know, a series I really enjoy. And The Walking Dead hadn't finished yet, and all we fucking wanted was the conclusion of that. Did that work them out? No, it did, yeah, but you could tell that they, like, they had to get it out. Like, that was, like, if they didn't get it out, then they, I think they would have, there would have been a murder, probably, because there were some ravenous fans for that, dude. Right, right. So I played this on the PC. Yeah, sorry. No. I have an old, like, DRM-free copy of this that I got when it first came out. Oh, cool. So I fired that guy up. So what platform, so you played it, like, on PC, mouse and keyboard? Yeah, it's on PC. I think it was through GOG. Okay. I played it with a controller, not a mouse and keyboard. So I initially started playing on the Steam Deck, and the first encounter, I was, like, not quick enough with the QTEs. I died. Like, the very first encounter with the Wizmen, we're not going to get this far as yet, but Did you not know how it was going to happen? Yeah, I didn't know what was happening. I was, like, really into the choices, and this game had, you really had to be ready for shit to pop off. So if I, this happened almost once every, at least once every episode, where I would kind of, like, rest a little bit, sit back, and just wait for the dialogue options to come up. And then a fight would break out, and I'd, like, spring to my keyboard, and hit a little bit. Yeah. So, yeah, I actually, I couldn't do it. I wasn't fast enough with the controller, so I had to switch to mouse and keyboard. No problems after that. But anyway, yeah. Let's see here. Graphics and art. I think we both really liked the art style. It was really good. It was perfect for that. And I'm a big, big fan of cel-shaded art in games. Borderlands, you know, some other games, probably. I think, I feel like Borderlands and Telltale, I don't know who started it. But these, whoever did, they really nailed it. Like on that aesthetic. Yeah, I want to say Borderlands came out a good bit before this one. I don't, they didn't invent it. No, I'm not saying they invented it, but I think for, like, a gaming art style. Yeah. Because I don't see this art style very often at all. It's really Borderlands and Telltale. I can't off the top of my head think of any other games that use this cel-shaded with, like, really bold outlines on everything. I can't really think of any else that do it and do it well. There was a game I played on PlayStation, or I wanted to play, called 13, I think it was, PlayStation 2. And it was the first time I saw cel-shaded graphics in a game. And I liked it a lot, and I would always try to rent it, and it was never available. And I still have yet to play it. But I heard it was a good game, and that's all we have to say about that. We might have a podcast that might be able to do that. Okay, I might have a copy of it that I've gotten over the years with the intention, and I never did. So, yeah. All right. Sound quality, really good. Good. Voice acting was great, too, yeah. Very good. I didn't like Snow's voice actress. I don't know if it was her actress or her personality, but she was the anti-hero of the entire thing. Let the big, bad wolf do his thing. So this is one thing. I had not looked at the cast, so I was actually curious to see if there were any names that we would know. There was actually one that I did recognize, or I think I recognized. None of these people. Bluebeard. Oh, that's not who I thought it was. Okay. Bluebeard, I thought was, he was actually on The Walking Dead. The black guy with the dreads. He had a tiger in The Walking Dead show. Ezekiel. Ezekiel. That's what it sounded like for Bluebeard, but it wasn't him. Are you sure? I'm looking at, it says Dave Fennoy. Fennoy? He looks like the description that you just said, but I guess it's not. He does. That's so weird. Yeah, he's... Yeah. They have very similar aesthetics, especially with the dreads. Laura Bailey was in it. She's in everything, so we'll just go ahead and scratch that one. But she was a minor character, but I don't see any other names that are jumping out. Michelle Rodriguez, like the one we all know? No, not her. The baby frog, whatever that little toad's name was, I guess did one of the voices for maybe Clementine in The Walking Dead. She's like the main character. Oh, cool. I think. Yeah, that's correct. Oh, Toad Jr., Melissa Hutchinson? Yeah. And Beauty. She did the voice of Beauty, too. Yeah. Who knows? Who cares? Oh, Adam Harrington did Bigby and The Woodsman. Interesting. Because they did not sound the same, which is awesome. You get a little grit in your voice there. All right. Yeah, voice acting, really good. They were acting voice actors. For Snow, do you think it was just like the character of Snow or her performance? It wasn't her performance. I think it was a combination of her character a little bit, because she was very anti the way that I wanted to play the game. She was always saying to do the opposite of what I felt like I wanted to do. And then also, she just kind of had that, like, pompous, like, I'm going to do. It was her character. Moving on. Oh, man. Gameplay mechanics, very, very short. It was dialogue choices and quick time events. And that was it. So. With a little exploring, you could, like, walk and choose, yeah, but point and click adventure mixed with QTE. Right, right. Price is right. Before we get into the storyline, how did you plan on playing Bigby? Were you going to go, like, you know, nice guy, asshole, somewhere in between? What was your main? Somewhere in between. I didn't want to constantly be an asshole, but I didn't. I felt like he he kind of portrays himself as a character that wants to be better than he is because he OK, so anybody I don't know if anybody knows this game or series or comic, but basically it's all of these, like, fairy tale characters live in New York City in a part designated specifically for fairy tale characters. So Bigby is the big bad wolf, and he is now the sheriff of that part of town. But I like that he is the big bad wolf from Robin Hood, as well as the three little pigs. He is the same bad wolf in this. So he's not trying to be like a redemption arc type of character, but he still handles things the same way he always has with just violence. So which I don't know if you got it immediately, but I didn't. So he's the big bad wolf and his name is Bigby. Bigby. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I got that. Well, that took me into, like, episode two is when I finally noticed it. Yeah, it's so clever. It's so obvious that it took me embarrassingly a little bit longer to catch on. So yeah, we are in... So now we're getting into the story. Spoilers. This game is not... The whole part of the game, the whole point of this game is the story. So be ready. So, yeah, we're in Fable Town, it's like a little neighborhood of New York City. And then there's the farm in, like, upstate New York, which I don't know if that was ever visited in any of the comics, but it's like where the fables, these characters that are from fairy tales, can move around freely without the use of glamour, which is used to make them appear human. Some characters don't need it. Snow White doesn't need glamour because she already looks human. The Big Bad Wolf baby is already, it's like a werewolf, kind of, so most of the time he's inhuman. Sort of, yeah. Yeah. So he doesn't need humor. Excuse me, he doesn't need glamour. He doesn't need humor either. He doesn't need humor. So it is broken up into five episodes, and what I figured we could do, and I have a tiny synopsis in our show notes to keep us kind of on track, we could kind of, like, go through each episode and kind of, like, talk about those moments. Are you going to try and read all that? No, no. God, no. Okay, I was like, all right, I'm going to the fucking pen, brother. That's just to keep us, like, in the realm of the game. Okay, I like it. I like it. Okay. So... Hey, man. Holy moly. So starting out, Bigby, well, former Bigby, well, no. You motherfucker. So you initially get called to settle, like, a civil dispute, like, a disturbance between the woodsman and a lady of the night, we'll say, and this is the woodsman that was in the... What story was that? The Little Red Riding Hood. Riding Hood, yeah. So this is the woodsman, and he is in the middle of beating the shit out of a woman. So you go and get into fist to cuffs with him. I initially died from him. I got the... I think he axed me in the head because I wasn't sure how the controls worked. He likes that. Oh, yeah. That one was fun. It ends up with... The woodsman, for me at least, and I don't know how much it varied on this, got an ax in the head, and then the... From the prostitute, right? From the prostitute, right, yeah. Who we later learn is named Faith, who then we later learn, I forget when we learn it, was the fairytale character Donkey Skin? I don't remember that at all. Have you ever heard of Donkey Skin before? No, dude, there were a lot of... So I've looked up a few things. I don't know who Bluebeard is, and I looked up a couple things, like the crooked man that comes up later on, Georgie. There were a lot of very niche fairytale things, and I think that's why this series had a lot of potential to me, and maybe that's part of the reason why the comics fell flat, because it was too much to pull from, and a lot of liberties taken, because some of these were like a short poem, and they just built a character on it, so. Yep. So for those that don't know, Donkey Skin, and I'm going off a memory from the game we just played, so bear with me a little bit, but in short, she was a princess in a kingdom, and the king and the queen, the queen died, or got very sick, and before the queen passed away, she told her husband, the king, that he can remarry as long as he remarries the most beautiful woman in the kingdom, to make sure he has the best blah, blah, blah, whatever. So she dies, and the king searches high and low throughout the kingdom, and it turns out the most beautiful woman in the kingdom is his daughter, Faith, or I don't know if that was her actual fairytale name, so to hide her beauty, somebody made her a cloak out of Donkey Skin to hide her beauty and keep her away from her father, and that's the tale of Donkey Skin. Interesting. In short. You knew about this before, or no? No, no, no, I read through. This game, it had a lot of things you could interact with in the menus every time you met somebody or unlocked something, and it would give you a journal entry kind of thing. I did go back and read. Yeah, a lot of people unlocked, entry unlocked, yeah. So I went and read a couple of those, and that's where this got toked. Okay. So, kind of interesting, kind of gross. That's exactly what I'm talking about, yeah, kind of weird. So, anyway, Bigby's Knight goes on, like we said, he's a sheriff, detective, whatever. He goes on, he leaves from Faith, tries to help her out, and when he ends his night, I forget all the bits that happen, but when he ends his night, he gets visited by Snow White, who brings him back down to the front of his apartment building to find the head of Faith on his doorstep, right? And that's where the first episode ended. Did I miss anything out of that? Did we meet anybody else in that? I think we met Mr. Toad, who never stays in Glamour. Yeah, I mean, yeah, there's the Mr. Toad, maybe the little kid Toad, possibly. There's probably other characters, but I don't think it's really worth talking about at the moment. I feel like you can focus on the main parts. Right. So then that kicks off the investigation and gets us into episode two, where it's basically just trying to put the pieces together on Faith's death, trying to uncover that. So I chose and was going really hard on the woodsman being the culprit. Did you do the same? Because through some other investigations, there was some uncertainty, or let's go track down the huntsman, or I think we started learning of Faith's husband, who was like Prince from whatever kingdom she was in. I think initially, I kind of thought it might have been the woodsman. I think that's the obvious choice. I mean, she put it, this is another thing too, she put an axe in his head. We said that, but we never mentioned. It's very hard to kill a fable. Yes. So like, I don't know what it takes to actually kill one of them, but he pulled the axe out of his head and then like walked off with it. So they're not easy to kill because they are fairy tale things living in a real world, whatever. I sound like a weird person saying that out loud. No, they're all, and it's been said a couple of times, they're all like hundreds of years old. Yeah. Snow White at one point. Yeah. Snow White said something about like, you know, something, something after you've been doing this for like 120 years or whatever, but she was referring to just their time in New York. Right. Yeah. So they're, they're crazy old. Yeah. And it's also cool too, because they, you see a little bit later on, they kind of interact, end up interacting with like normal human people at some point. Yeah. So they're not, it's not just like a world that we don't exist in, it's a world where everybody exists and they're just hiding. So. Right, right. I guess, you said that it was Faith's head, but I think it was like disguised as Snow's head. No. So. No? You, you do, you do your investigations. It takes you to, you track down the woodsman, you can go investigate Lawrence's area. And this is one thing that the game did where it gave you choices to pick, but then later on it put a time limit on some of the choices you could make. Oh, okay. So if you were given two places to go, you could pick one, but then that means you missed out on the other. Mm-hmm. Which I'm curious to know in later episodes what you had, what you had done. But. Yeah, I think some of the big things in this game were choices. So I, I wonder if we did the same thing in certain, especially very specific things I'd like to know, but we'll get to that. Yeah. So yeah. All of episode two is, oh no, sorry, we're still on episode one. I'm so sorry because you're right at the end, there was some shenanigans. So you start investigating all that good stuff. You have, you left with Snow White to go do your stuff and try to investigate some things. And then as episode one is ending, you're going back to your apartment to kind of like, I think get some shut eye or whatever it is. Fucking sleep, dude. You get beat up by a dude with an ax. And you, um, you come up to your apartment building and it's surrounded by police. And I initially was thinking, oh, they, they didn't take Faith's head out. They just left it there and they went and did their own thing. Right. But they, Bigby gets up there, uncovers this, what I assumed was going to be Faith's head and he uncovers Snow White's head. And that was like, what the hell? Really good cliffhangers and like ending points on every episode. Yeah, it definitely worked well with an episodic release schedule every couple months. Yeah. They did a good job with that for sure. So then you, what he, he's taken in and questioned by the, that's how you, that's when they show you that it's a fantasy world living within the real world because you meet like real police and they question him. And I guess like then you, Crane, like wipes their memory. Yeah. Yeah. So episode two starts out, you're being questioned by the Mundies or Mundanes and Ichabod Crane being the current mayor is trying to like keep this under wraps. He does wipe the memory out of everybody in the police station so they can't know what's going on. And then that's where they start looking into now Snow White's death and Faith's death, which then leads you back to the Woodsman at one point and also leads you into the strip joint, the Puddin, what was it called? The Puddin and Pie? Yeah. The Puddin and Pie by Georgie, who is just a royal piece of shit. Wow. He didn't even look like a piece of shit, man. He seemed like a nice guy. Let's see. They had, who, who were some of the girls? They had the Little Mermaid was stripping, not the Little Mermaid that we all know, but another one. Yeah. She even says like, I guess the Little Mermaid, did she ever have a name, Ariel was her name and what we know, but I guess she had a different name and this may be because of Disney. Not to get informed. Possibly because of Disney. But yeah, if anybody knows, Nerissa was the name that they used here. So but they, but yeah, she made a comment of like, you might know me as the Little Mermaid. So yeah. Want to go like super into it, because I feel like we're just going to discuss the story front to back if we do it. And it'll take as long as playing through the whole game. Well, no, something big happened in episode two, was we get a new suspect on top of the woodsman. It was Georgie? No, it was, it was a crane. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Well, also Georgie, because he seems like a piece of shit. Yeah. You can't not be suspicious of a guy with face tattoos who works and owns a strip club. Yeah. Yeah. You find out that crane is maybe in love with Snow White and maybe paying for sex from somebody who's supposed to look like Snow White. Right. So Snow's head ends up being a glamoured head of a troll. Yeah. Real fun. And he was getting it on with a glamoured version of Snow White. And there were pictures and all this, all this stuff. It was, it was like, they didn't hold anything back. Like this was, I think, rated M. I mean, there were, Nerissa was topless. There were tons of posters and stuff in that area. The picture of crane where they, he took a picture of himself doing things with Snow White or the quote unquote Snow White. He like, it was him laying on the bed and like his hand up her dress. And that was the picture. I don't remember that. Yeah. Like they went like, they weren't fucking around with it. So it's cel-shaded, all it's cel-shaded glory. So yeah, that's going to bring us into, oh, but then, so that was, this was weird. So it kind of, it's happening a little out of order, but about halfway through episode two, we find out that the head was glamoured because Snow White actually comes back and she was fine. So it wasn't actually Snow White. It was a glamoured one. She's back. She's like, what the hell's going on? And all that good stuff. So let's go down into episode three and move along here. There was some, there was one part I was trying to see what you had done and trying to see where it was. Flash up the strip club. Yeah. I did that. I was doing every, I gave him like an incremental, yeah, I think the last, his, one of the signs I broke up and then I think like a drink machine or there was some piece of equipment I knocked up. I obliterated his like record player and DJ equipment. Yeah. That one. Yeah. Let's go a little bit further. Did you get in a fight at the bar with the woodsman and the big white monster guy? Grendel, I think his name was. Yeah. I liked Grendel's character model a lot when he became the Grendel. That was a really cool looking creature. It was. Yeah. I did get enough, a little bit of a scuffle with him because that's kind of the way I played it. Cause it seems like, and he has the reputation for it, but it seems like Bigby just solves his problems with violence. Kind of. Yeah. He always resorts to violence. So I tried to play his character that way too. I, uh, I ripped his arm off. Oh shit. I don't think I quite went that far. So, so then every scene with him afterwards, it had his sleeve wrapped up on itself cause he was missing an arm. That's pretty mean. Yeah. So I, I. He seemed like a good, genuinely good guy actually. With, with Bigby, I like, I started out kind of gruff every time I met a new character. And then as the, as I got more interactions, I got a little softer with each one individually. Yeah. Remind me to never shake your hand, rip my fucking arm off. So the woodsman at first and that first encounter, I mean, it was just no holds. I was going for blood truly. And then every time I met the woodsman, it got a little softer. And then by the end of it, we were friendly. Um, so the first encounter, yeah, the first encounter with the Grendel, he's like, Oh yeah, we're going to fucking fight now. So cool. I'm going to try and kill you. And I ripped his arm off. It was dope. I wonder if you'll grow that back eventually lore wise, because like even the mirror that breaks, they said it will eventually repair itself, but you don't know how long it takes. Oh yeah, I wonder, uh, let's see here. We met Tweedledee and Tweedledum who were like hired hitmen. I liked their characters because the name Tweedledee and Tweedledum implies stupid and maybe muscle like, like they are in this case, just the muscle of the operation, no brains at all. They look like it, they act like it. And I just think that that was a very good interpretation of it in a crime type setting. They're just like the mafia, like knock around guys. Yeah. Did you investigate their office? Yeah, a little bit. Yeah. You had the option to do, um, the, to the, the, the D's or the Tweedledee's office. I think Cranes. And the Bluebeard went somewhere else. Yeah. Bluebeard went up to Cranes area. Yeah. That's what I went with. You went with Bluebeard? Or were you with Tweedledee? Tweedledee and Tweedledum. Okay. Yeah. Did you read all their stuff? Cause they were like, they had two, they had two office desks facing each other and there were intake and outgoing mailboxes, like letter things, and they would write themselves notes back and forth. No, I don't remember that. So one, I forget which was which, but one of them, I read the letterhead and the most recently received letter was no dumb, I don't like dogs. And then you look at the other guys and the other, his initial response, his initial letter was I'm thinking about getting a dog for the office. And it was just little shit like that. That was, it's pretty funny. Yeah. This game had so many little things that you could really miss them. Yeah. Once you got the answer to move the story on, it kind of just let you move the story on and you didn't have to keep investigating. Oh, let's see here. We met the Jersey devil as well. Another very cool character model. Yes, I did like that one. It looked like, and I don't know the lore of the Jersey devil, um, but there's, I think a, Oh, there's like some folklore thing of like, Oh, I forget where in one of the Nordic countries, I think of this motor or some mother, this, yeah, the spirit of like the deer head and the, it comes to your door and the, how you get it to go away as you offer it beer. I can't, I can't remember what it's called, but, um, it reminded me of that. There's a movie called, I think like son of Loki or something like that. And it kind of reminded me of that. I think that's what it is. Oh yeah. Motor. M O D E R. The son of Loki. The ritual was the name of the movie. But if you look it up, it's really, really, really creepy looking. I think I might've sent this to you before, but it reminded me of that. It's like this large elk looking thing or a large like deer, but it's head and stuff is kind of, kind of looks like it's made of corpses, human corpses. Like it's, it's antlers very much like arms. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I thought you were talking about. That's also very much what it reminded me of. And I don't think the Jersey devil has anything to do with that, but it's going to bother me. Uh, deer skull, Netherlands, maybe like, like when to go possibly when you go. So yeah, when I saw that, that's what I immediately Googled, but yeah, when to go does a North American Algonquin speaking tribes. It was basically a, when to go, if you look at what a picture of that is, that's pretty much what it was. Yeah. Uh, there's, I can't remember. Anyway, there's, there's one in involved beer. Anyway. Um, let's see, we went down what a fucking rant that was. Sorry guys. Um, what were some of the other choices or, or notable moments? Bloody Mary got involved. So interesting character, um, the first encounter with bloody Mary in the alleyway, as you're trying to like get craned in for questioning, she attacks or gets in your way and Tweedledee and Tweedledum also get involved and there was a fight with them. How did that end for you? I got shot a bunch by them. And then I eventually bloody Mary got Bigby with a silver bullet and took him down. And then she, uh, beauty, beauty, Snow White gave up crane in order to save Bigby. What is that? Were there, were there, were there any other casualties in that scuffle? For you? I don't think so. I ripped out Dumb's, uh, throat and go, no, both Tweedledee, as far as I, if I remember correctly, they both lived, you were a little more violent than I was, he's a sheriff, not a murderer. No, like I was trying to play it like situationally again, every time I met somebody, you know, there were, there were obvious, um, exceptions to this, but it kind of like, it was a gradual relationship that I was experiencing. But every time the dumb twins were involved, they were always hostile. So it was always hostile back at them. There was no like, Oh yeah, you know, whatever. Um, so I grabbed one of them and I beat them all to hell. And then it's like, you can either drop them or you can kill them. Yeah. I, I ripped his fucking throat out. It was gruesome and I loved it, but I was thinking of like, you know, in the moment Bigby's had this, like, he like leveled up and had this like really intense transformation because he's been like human, really strong. And then like a hybrid werewolf where he just gets a little bit of like woven features and then it fully went into like, he's almost fully gone. There's really no man left. Right. So I was like, in this intense moment, he's going to, he's going to go bloodlust all the way. You went from wolf boy to werewolf. Yes. Yes. Um, so then after that, it becomes, uh, the kind of going from like local business to like a bigger, badder thing in the background of this, uh, crooked man who's been like pulling the strings of the criminal organization in this fable realm, um, a weird looking dude. He was like all ugly and looking the whole, I was kind of hanging out, but not really. Yeah, definitely. And he was very well spoken to and very polite, which is like always kind of a nice trait of a creepy villain. You know, somebody being super polite and calm, no matter, like it's, it's a, it's an intimidating characteristic for a villain, I think. Yeah. So you encounter him after healing from the encounter with a Bloody Mary, get to his lair. Another fight breaks out, of course. And did you injure Georgie in that fight? Do you think, yeah, I think that's part of the story. Yeah, I think it is too. Um, which I, I meant to mention this earlier, but I'll mention it now is I think when I first started playing, I was thinking, and again, this is a, what, 10 year old game now, 11 year old game. Um, I think because of like coming off the heels within the last year or so of like Baldur's Gate where there are so many variables, you can truly change the story all the way through with like impactful changes. And I, I know that's not what this was, but I think when I was playing initially, I was like, Oh yeah, this is, James and I are going to have a vastly different experience. And that's not really what it was. It was, I feel like a lot of the time you make a decision and it just says like, Tweedle D will remember that. Yeah, I was noticing like very rare and it didn't derail it, but I would have a certain reaction or, or give a certain response to somebody and yeah, I would say like, Oh, they remember that or whatever, but their response next, there would be some buffering time. I think where they were trying to cut in another response based on what you chose and they might remove or add dialogue depending on your choice. And you could kind of see those like built in edits and how I expected a certain response of mine to go eventually got to where it made sense, no matter what I had picked for how I spoke to this person, if that makes any sense. I feel like in most cases, the end game was the same. At the end of each episode, they did show you like a comparison breakdown of what other people generally pick. Right. So that was kind of cool. There were some where everybody just picked the same fucking thing. It was pretty nice. But I guess that's also just the human condition that we all, there were a couple I got and I was thinking about, yeah, there were a couple of ones that I chose where it was like, Oh, you in 10% of the people did this. I have like really unique choices on the whole. I can't remember any of them specifically. I was probably probably, it was really frustrating because it only showed three out three things per screen. So I think a ton of screenshots on it. Anyway, so yeah, the dialogue was, I noticed that I would love for them to do this kind of story, but like, get a crack at what Larian did with Baldur's Gate, whether you could G like really have a different kind of story based on your choices. Like maybe if telltale enough, yeah, but either way, the thing is, if they do like in this case, if they do episodic releases, you can't make a decision that breaks the next game, you know? Very true. Very true. All right. So we're getting really close to the end here. There was, they dove into like Beauty and the Beast story. I didn't really like any of that. It would just felt filler-esque. It was really just to give more context to the end game. I do want to say, how about them? I just, I'm sorry. I thought it was funny how the Beast was so fucking insecure about his relationship. And you would probably expect that if he was like an ugly guy that was turned handsome later on, you know, because he was, he never wasn't a beast in this, but then he became handsome, but he's, you know, married to a beautiful woman. And he was at one point like the ugly, hideous beast that we all know and love. And he was probably very insecure as a result of that. Yeah, I just thought it was kind of funny. He really didn't like Bigby for, I think, multiple reasons with him being the big bad wolf and everything. But they had very similar traits physically. Yeah. And I wonder if there was some insecurity there with like Beauty starting to... This guy will fuck a beast. I mean, this is over. Yeah, yeah. My wife will fuck a beast. Maybe she'd fuck a wolf too. Yeah. I really think there was a little bit of that too, because there were some... Yeah, possibly. Especially when Beast was like starting to transform a little bit and be a little bit more bestial. They looked kind of not the same, but they had very similar attributes. Like they could be brothers. Yes. Like in a dark room, she would confuse one for the other. One was a little more hairy. Yeah. And I just want to say one was a little more horny, because he did have horns. There you go. All right. Moving on. Sorry. Moving on. There was one last confrontation with Bloody Mary, which was really fun. Yeah. Because her whole thing was like mirrors and all that, and her like... It was like larger than life, man. Like that whole part was just like, what the fuck? And then I realized what was happening. Yeah. Yeah, that was pretty cool. So Bloody Mary, that's the one, you say her name so many times in the mirror. She comes out, blah, blah, blah, whatever. Her unglamored form was like this monstrous like woman figure with like shards of glass and mirrors sticking out of her and bleeding everywhere, and it was very creepy. But there was this big fight with her and Bigby, and there were hundreds of reflections of her within that, of course, which then caused Bigby to have the final, final transformation to literally become a massive wolf, a big bad wolf. And you got to fight her off as a wolf, and it was real fun. All quick time events, but I think it was really fun and really cinematic. Well, don't leave out the fact that he won the fight by huffing and puffing. Oh, that's right. That's why I was like, oh, this is what's happening here. He became like the three little pigs bad wolf where he like huffed and puffed and blew everything down, and, you know, it was just like ridiculous. Very, very fantasy. Oh, man. I'm trying to think, were there any other big moments? I do want to ask, what did you do with the frog and the pig? They went to the farms. Yeah, okay. Yeah, I'm surprised you did that, but you are a genius. Initially, I tried to be like, oh, let's try to figure something out. But Toad kept getting break after break after break. We gave him money. We tried to help him in multiple instances. And I was trying, towards the end, I was really wanting to fight for it because I was kind of frustrated because little Toad had to go too, and he didn't have the glamour because of big Toad. So it's not really his fault, you know, and that really frustrated me. But, yeah, they went to the farm, him and them and Colin, the pig, that we haven't talked about. Yeah, so that's a good – I didn't like Toad at all. I never liked his character. You eventually are forced to make a decision whether you're going to send him to the farm to go be a frog forever or live in the city. He wants to stay in the city. He tries to convince you that it's a better place to raise his kid than raising his kid on the farm. But he's just that guy that tries to play the system. He accepted money from you to go buy a glamour, didn't buy a glamour. He's just that guy that tries to talk everything. And then if you try to call him on it, he tries to make you feel bad about it and guilt trip you. He's just that – everybody has met somebody like that in real life, and they're the fucking worst. So I was happy to send him. Honestly, I mean, his son didn't seem to care. When it came down to it, his son wasn't like, oh, you know, I love my shitty little New York apartment. His son – actually, maybe it was a better setting for his son. His son collected bugs. He had a bug collection and stuff. You're going to find more of that in the farm, probably, than you will in New York City. Yeah, I – one other thing. Sorry, talking about his son made me think about this. At one point you had to question TJ, Toad Jr., about when Lily, the ogre in glamour form, got dumped in the river. Right? And at one point he said that he heard somebody laughing. Or no, somebody was saying, stop laughing, but nobody was laughing. Were they alluding to some character being involved with that? I don't know, man. There's a lot of open-endedness to this that I think you would see in the next season that we never got. Right. We don't really know what the plot was of the bad guys. We don't, yeah. And that's huge. They never revealed their motive. They just – there's a secret society of people that are doing something bad, and that's all we know, and that's all we're ever left with, and it's been 11 years. Right. So there's a lot of loose ends, I guess is the term. I was thinking, like, Matt Hatter might make an appearance, like something like that. Oh, yeah. But the fact that he didn't hear laughing, so there was no character that was laughing, I was thinking if it was the Matt Hatter in every depiction we've seen him in other media, he's typically very giggly and stuff. So it might not be him. It could be like Cheshire Cat kind of thing with a big grin, a lot of options if they were going to pursue something. But you're exactly right. We didn't get our second season. Yeah. I also want to say, yeah, well, yeah, that's, yeah, there's so much to pull from because they're getting, like, fairy tales they've never even heard of in my entire life. Yeah. The thing I really liked that I felt so bad about everybody was Colin the pig. He's one of the pigs that the big bad wolf blew his house down. Yep. And now he's a homeless pig, and Bigby has opted to let him live and sleep on his couch. Did he stay at the inn for you? I sent him to the farm. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. He was like the other version of just somebody who, like, he's a pig, dude. Like, they're lazy by nature, you know what I mean? So, like, he's not going to go out and work and get a job to be able to pay for his glamour to look like a human. He's just a lazy pig. And he was taking advantage a little bit of the situation, I think, in letting, staying at Bigby's apartment and sleeping on his couch. But he also, Bigby is the direct cause of him being homeless. Very true. In his fairy tale. That was just, stuff like that was what made me want to read the comic, was because I felt like they pulled so elegantly from these tales that we've heard of and put it in such a real-world spin. And that's why I was stoked about reading them, and I hated them. Yeah. But I sent him to the farm because he's a fucking pig. But, I mean, nobody would bat an eye. Dude, this game was behind the times. It's only in the talk. It can be fun. Yeah. He smokes cigarettes because he was a pig that smoked cigarettes. But you know what, man? 2024, there's white women out there with pet pigs that sleep on their couches. So they love it. So this game was behind the times. It was. Or ahead of time, I don't know. We kind of glossed over the crooked man, but he was like the big bad in the background, blah, blah, blah. But we get to sentence him to stuff. Yeah. How did that go for you? Well, I didn't lock him up forever, but that was the plan. And then he got, what, turned into a bird. What? What did you do? You killed him. Oh, yeah. I ripped his head off. Yeah. Oh, okay. Well, yeah. So there was the solution was to make it so he could never hurt anybody. So they had the witch, auntie, whatever her name was. Yeah. Greenleaf. Yeah. She turned him into a crow and put him in a birdcage. So he just became somebody's pet bird, which could potentially cause, like, a second episode or a second, you know, season. Because he did become something else. And, you know, that's interesting. Because from what you had mentioned before, with doing, like, if Larian got this idea or whatever, doing episodic releases would be really tough. Because if you killed a character or blah, blah, blah, it might not all be cohesive. So I had the option to kill the crooked man, and I did. So it wouldn't make any sense for him to return later on. Right. But then there were other people involved in his little ring of crime or whatever. Right. Maybe there was somebody bigger than the crooked man. Or maybe it's just a completely new thing, and they, you know, I don't know. Well, I do want to talk a little bit about it, because there is a trailer. And I've seen some characters they're going to talk about or going to have in there. Fuck it, let's talk about it now. Just real quick. I watched the trailer before we hopped on to record. The Tin Man and the Scarecrow from Off to See the Wizard, that one. Okay. They were in it. And the Tin Man apparently is a big brute, which, real fun, because I think his whole thing was, you know, the lion was courage. What was the Tin Man's thing? Brain. A brain or a heart. One was a heart, one was a brain, one was courage. I can't remember. Doesn't matter. Anyway. Oh, wait, the Scarecrow wanted a brain. Yeah. The Tin Man wanted oil. I think it was he wanted a heart because he didn't have a thing. Also, Tin Man had a gun in that movie. Look it up. Okay. Just a straight-up gun. Wait, in the trailer? No, sorry. So in The Wizard of Oz from, like, the 50s, he had a handgun, like a revolver, in the movie. Yeah. And it was, like, one scene randomly. It was very, very funny. Nobody ever noticed it. And it's been, like, on all the TikToks of, like, oh, did you know he had a gun? Anyway. But, no, in the trailer, they showed a woman that I couldn't quite tell who it was, the Scarecrow and the Tin Man. And, also, they gave Bigby a really stupid fur-lined coat. I hate it. Out of everything I've seen, I think of the trailer, the parts I didn't like were the one that Bigby was in, because I didn't like the new character model of his clothing. Oh, I see. It reminds me of the murder jacket from The Walking Dead. Yeah. All right. Back to this game. There was an epilogue. So, yeah, I've heard this enough. You got a bird. You did talk about him being a good talker and very well-spoken. There was, when he was defending himself, at one point, I got a little blurb of, like, the Crooked Man is, like, winning over the crowd. And he was, like, starting to get people on his side. So, very, very good talker, but didn't work. There was a little epilogue where we find out that Narissa was the cause of the whole thing. I honestly don't remember exactly how they did it, but basically, she did a thing, tried to make it better, and then everything spiraled out of control. Yeah. She kind of, like, set this whole chain of events off. Oh, going back a little bit. Go on. No, sorry. Go ahead. I was going to say, and she also set off the chain of events by placing the body with Bigby, because she felt like he would be the guy that would actually try to fix it, instead of just sweeping it under the rug. Right, right. So, it's all her fault, every bit of it. I wanted to bring up that I liked the scene that eventually you and the woodsman end up beating the shit out of someone together. The Jersey Devil. The Jersey Devil, yeah. And then afterwards, like, you guys are just standing out there together, and, like, you guys somehow make peace, you know? I remember when I played, I asked him if he was okay, and he was like, you know me. And then walks away, and it's like, yeah, you guys are never going to be, like, that good. But it was cool to see. There was definitely, like, character development, that they're always going to be against each other, but there's also, like, a mutual respect, I think. I liked the dynamic of those characters a lot. Also, the woodsman mentioned at some point that he never intended on saving anybody when he found them. He was like, you know, he's like, I've always been a piece of shit. He said, like, he was going to, like, rob the granny. His original fairy tale. Yeah, and he, like, showed up and was like, oh, maybe if I save them, I'll get a better reward than if I just take their money. I don't know. Like, I like how none of these characters are really good. Even Snow has some kind of, like, really dark past that they briefly mention. She was really upset about all the crane stuff, and it, like, really hit even harder with her. Well, it was also about her, in a way. True. True. I mean, that can't feel good. One thing I was going to bring up, how did the scene with Georgie, after he got injured, and what was the girl's name? What was her name? I don't remember. No, it was the girl with the, well, it was the original with the necktie thing they had, the ribbon. Yeah, I don't remember. The girl, it was her ribbon. I just can't remember her name. Vivian? Yeah. Vivian. Yeah, so it was Vivian's thing that was making it so all the women couldn't talk. Her ribbon was removed in my playthrough. Yeah, same. Did you do it, or did she do it? She did it. What about you? Okay. I was thinking about grabbing it, but she did it. I refrained, and then she did it herself, which is also when I finally, it finally clicked in 100% that there were parts of this that were always going to happen. Right. No matter what you did. Let me ask you this. Georgie, when he was definitely going to die, he showed you. He was, like, intestines hanging out. He was hiding it. What did you do then? Did you just let him pass away? I sped it up. I helped him die. Yeah, so I thought maybe we're going to, like, mercy kill him and be nice about it. I don't know how he would have done that. No, dude, the big bad wolf just reaches down and rips his fucking guts out. Yeah. I thought it was going to be, like, a civil mercy kill, and no, it was just brutal, dude. He went for the brutal noodle, you know? Oh, my God. Man, what a game. It was gritty, man. I don't want to sound weird when I say this, but I liked how violent the game was, like, in the storytelling. Yeah. It was just, you know, it's based around fairy tales, which are not, I guess, like, the original fairy tales. Maybe they were a lot darker than Disney makes them seem, but we have this impression that it's all, like, cutesy bullshit, and they really went in on the dark, like, grit and the, like, gore of this environment. I was really, it was such a good setting that I tried reading the comics. Dude, all, like, almost all, probably almost all of those fairy tales, the original versions, were, like, extremely dark. Very dark, yeah. Like, the, like, Cinderella and the evil sisters, they, like, to get their feet to fit in, they were, like, cutting parts of their feet off. At the end of it, they left the stepmother and possibly the two sisters to, like, have crows pick their eyes out and stuff. Right, yep. Yeah, all the, I think it was by the Grimm brothers, wrote a lot of them. I have one of the books that has, like, all the fairy tales. They're wildly dark. They're crazy, the original versions. So it's probably the versions that they went off of more so than the... I think it was a good mix. I think what they went on, I think, was good. It wasn't Disney, which is what I was happy about. It wasn't all sunshine and rainbows. And it was also original. They didn't go with, like, the Grimm brothers fairy tales that, you know, you were talking about. They came up with their own original version of it and went forward with it. I liked it. Heavily inspired by, which is always pretty good. It was weird. I remember when I read the comics, I was trying to explain to somebody what I was reading and I was like, dude, I sound so fucking weird. You know, it sounds more interesting. Out of context, it's hard. Super hard, yeah. Because everybody has, like, the version of the story that everybody our age knows is the Disney one. So to explain that, like, you know, there's a... Like, Narissa the Little Mermaid is actually a prostitute. Like, it just doesn't... You know. They're like, this is not for me. Man. So you got anything you want to add after? Anything else you want to discuss? I like that we talked about the choices because that's a big part of the game and there are some that heavily impact the story. I think we nailed the big ones with the characters. Yeah. I can't think of anything specific, but I do... I will say, I just... I want to... I want to play more of the Wolf of London and I want to dive into some of the other Telltale games. Okay. So I'm definitely interested. I don't know... And it didn't even have to be for the podcast. I'm interested just to play them. Yeah. I don't remember if I have any of the other ones. I don't think that I do. Hmm. I wonder if... How bad they are on Steam right now. Like, price-wise? Yeah. I don't think they'd be too bad. They're not... They're hardly... Is this a video game? I think it's... It's... No. Well, it's a subcategory of a video game. I think it's an interactive... Story. It's more of like an interactive film or an interactive story. Yeah. So you get to pick what part of the show you're watching. You know? Right. It's on the outskirts, I think, of being a video game. But I think it qualifies. Man, the Delta Walking Dead is $50. Wow. It is... Though, it's boasting over 50 hours of gameplay. And it is a very... Really? It's over 23 episodes. Yeah. They even did, like... Holy crap. Four seasons. I told you it was a lot. I thought it was five seasons. But yeah, four seasons. And then a 400 days. And then one specifically about Michonne, which I don't think I ever played. Oh, shit. Oh, so it actually followed characters from the show and all that? From the ones that we all know? Some of them. It was kind of weird, yeah. I remember Jesus specifically was in it. And then that's when I was like, okay, this would be perfect for them to introduce the characters from this in the TV show. And they never did. And they never did. And I was very disappointed about that. Did you go to the... You went to the butcher shop or did you go to the pawn shop? Butcher... Wait, what? I did both. You did both? I did both, yeah. Went to the butcher shop. Oh, you're right. You're right. Then I was told about the pawn shop. Yeah, you're right. Sorry. I thought the butcher shop was going to be a lot more fucked up than it was. All right, everybody. That's going to do it here for us. Next episode, we're going to be joined by the gentleman over at Smashing Game Time. So, be sure to check that out. We're going to be discussing the game What Remains of Edith Finch. It's a really good episode. Be sure to stay tuned for that. Other than that announcement, we are done here. So, check us out, 321 Backlog, anywhere on social media. You can find us. We have a link tree to make it easy for you. If you want to show us some support, we would greatly appreciate it. Thank you so much for listening. We've got merch. We've got coupon codes. We've got everything. If you want to show us some support, we would greatly appreciate it. Take care. We'll see you next time. Bye. Bye. .
