The Wolf Among Us 2 Is An Old Dog With New Tricks

Platform:
PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC

Publisher:
Warner Bros. Interactive

Developer:
AdHoc Studio

Release:
2027

It’s been a long road to Bigby’s next adventure in The Wolf Among Us 2. In the 13 years since the first entry, Telltale has died and come back to life, and the specific branch of adventure games it gave rise to has seen many iterations come and go. So now, in 2026, The Wolf Among Us 2 has a somewhat-appropriate air of mystery surrounding it.

In a behind-closed-doors, hands-off play session I got to direct — by choosing which verbal responses Bigby would have in certain scenarios — I saw what shape The Wolf Among Us 2 is taking. It’s familiar, sure, and maybe wouldn’t surprise you. But a lot of work under the hood has me surprisingly optimistic about how this Telltale, made up of newcomers and former Telltale creatives alike, is re-approaching the 3D adventure space.

Telltale’s Zak Garriss and Jess Campbell walked me through a segment they said is later on in The Wolf Among Us 2’s first episode. Fabletown sheriff Bigby, or the Big Bad Wolf, is still acting as a hard-boiled detective for the Fables living in New York. As a liaison for the NYPD, he gets roped into a series of murders alongside the regular human (or “Mundie”) Faye. The situation appears to involve the supernatural, possibly even a Fable, and we dropped in as Bigby met up with Faye to look into a new lead.

This tip quickly turned into a trap, as the two are locked in a hotel room by a magical barrier. After Faye’s attempts to escape are met with a shocking blast back into the room, Bigby (or rather, the player) has the choice to tell her it’s magic or not.

Telltale’s branching dialogue options, neatly colloquialised as “X will remember this,” were a stylistic choice to signify decisions and consequences. The Wolf Among Us 2 doesn’t ditch that – I saw several choices that could potentially affect later conversations – though I didn’t get too much of a sense of exactly how. More novel to me were the potential diegetic changes, like how certain characters might receive information or offer hints.

Puzzles are delightfully obscured. Bigby and Faye can search for clues to the esoteric rhymes and bindings keeping them locked inside their newfound apartment prison. Little hints of potential leads and visual indicators lead to deductions, and it seems like there’s as much room to solve it yourself as there is to have Faye help you out, flavoring her and Bigby’s relationship the whole way.

The Wolf Among Us 2’s greatest evolution might be under the hood, though. Rather than using Telltale’s original engine, the new Telltale is using Unreal Engine 5. Garriss told me the team is using a custom renderer to create the visual look and feel of The Wolf Among Us inside Unreal Engine 5.

“We’re not trying to reinvent that,” Garriss says. “We want to honor that. We want to bring it, maybe, to a more vibrant life in certain ways.”

Another subtle but notable shift is the way in which Bigby moves around. In The Wolf Among Us 2, Bigby moves a bit freer; more like a third-person action-adventure title than a traditional adventure game. Bigby walks around the room in full motion with a camera that can go over his shoulder, which feels like a sharp contrast from the more point-and-click feel of locomotion in the first game. Again, it might seem like a slight modernization at most, but it’s an easy example of how the team is incorporating both new concepts and backgrounds from their work since The Wolf Among Us 1.

“Now that we’re in these spaces that are more free-roam exploration, there [are] concepts that they couldn’t fully play with, that now we can,” said Campbell.

This means an inventory system, optional assistance for puzzles, and other quality-of-life upgrades that should make The Wolf Among Us 2 feel a little more in conversation with modern games. And while Bigby’s new adventure is still broken up into discrete episodes, it will be a singular release.

Returning to my demo, this is where The Wolf Among Us 2 can still build a rollercoaster of tension, similar to a procedural television show. As Bigby and Faye slowly uncover the truths hidden inside the apartment they’ve been trapped in, and potentially even a lead on what particular Fables we’ll be dealing with (attentive fans have likely already made the connection from the recent trailer at Summer Game Fest), there’s a gradual build to the sudden unveiling of these truths. The Wolf Among Us 2 still retains all the drama and mystery you’d hope for in a noir-styled fairytale murder-mystery.

One point the team was a little cagey on was whether any choices or outcomes from the first Wolf Among Us would play into the events of The Wolf Among Us 2. The latter takes place six months after the former, and one might assume — or at least hope — that any major outcomes from the first could be reflected, in some way. Garriss notes the complexity of the situation, but does say that Telltale doesn’t want to avoid it.

“It’s about finding the elegant way to bring in those past experiences, in a way that will […] surprise and delight players,” Garriss says.

When I asked whether Telltale is planning any continuity between choices, having them carry over from 1 into 2, Garriss told me “maybe,” and that the team will announce more on that down the road.

It does seem like this iteration of Telltale is trying to narrowly thread the needle of expanding upon the beloved original while forging its own path, and in my brief glimpse, it’s succeeding. Even as a somewhat-involved observer, I was a little disappointed to see the demo come to a close; I was invested in Bigby’s new troubles, the murder-mystery at hand, and the evolving relationship and tensions between Fabletown’s sheriff and the detective out of her element, Faye.

If the result is a spruced-up, enhanced new murder-mystery for Fables fans, that’s already a promising outcome. But Telltale’s early showing didn’t just clear my internal bar; it quickly became one of the games at SGF I couldn’t get out of my brain. In an era where adventure games are flourishing once again, I’m hopeful for the modern Telltale’s take on one of its predecessor’s most well-regarded works.