Fairy Tales and Werewolves and Telltale Games oh my!

I’d been meaning to gush about this, actually. And after seeing the Fairest spinoff at the regular geek store I go to, I had planned to make a post about Bill Willingham’s Fables this week (it was either this or talk about my pop music taste, and believe me…you did not want that). Imagine my pleasant surprise that timing agreed with me, ’cause the Telltale Games trailer of the newest addition to the company’s franchise was released yesterday!

My sister had told me that Telltale Games was making a new set of graphic adventure games (a sort of choice style interface). When she mentioned it was fairy tale-themed, I had already become intrigued, since, you know, I’m a little obsessed with fairy tales. And when I saw the main page for The Wolf Among Us? Suffice to say it took a lot of willpower not to get up and squee that Bill Willingham’s series was being turned into a game. And by the company who did such a fantastic job with Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead series, too!

For those unfamiliar with the Fables series, a brief summary:

Fairy tale characters have been forced out of their environment (the Homeland) by the menacing Adversary. In order to survive, they make their way across the magical portal to live in a New York City community, what they come to call as Fabletown. There, these characters attempt to live a normal way of life, or, at least, what normal can get when you’re suffering a fairy tale complex. It’s not peachy keen, either, especially when evidently, not everyone fits in (heck, they have to ship the more animalistic characters upstate to the Farm to better hide their identities).

The beginning of the series pretty much introduces us to some of the problems in trying to adapt to Fabletown. It’s obvious not every fairy tale character escaped to continue their happily ever after. Prince Charming is a renowned cheater, Snow White is divorced, Beauty and the Beast are suffering from their cursed romance–and doing so with meager income, and the reformed Big Bad Wolf (aka Bigby) has been charged to keep Fabletown safe. Hard to do when half the characters in the town are a danger to themselves.

The series is published by Vertigo, which is an imprint of DC Comics. Vertigo has also published The Sandman series, so, um, that’s already plus points in their favor. But I won’t digress (Neil Gaiman and his Sandman take are completely different squeeing fests altogether…).

I love Fables, though admittedly, I have not had the opportunity to read all of the spinoffs that emerged due to the popularity of characters and storylines (and I think I might have stopped reading after issue #82 because I was still depressed over one of the character deaths). I definitely have to pick up Fairest at some point, though, solely because I think the Fables women are fantastic in their own right.

So yes, kind of excited how Telltale Games will pay homage to this fantastic series. From what I saw on their Facebook page, it looks like Willingham is pleased with the direction that the writers are heading with the game. The fact that Bigby is the main character is even better, seeing as he’s one of my favorites in the series. And if it’s anything remotely close to The Walking Dead? Count me sold.

See the trailer here!