Spoilers
ahead!
So the
second episode of TellTale’s magnificent cartoon point-n-click adventure ‘The
Wolf Among Us’ has been out for some time now and I finally got around to
watching an LP of it. While the player’s decision has a heavy influence on the
developing story, I’m assuming certain aspects remain the same. Still, I will
focus on the conclusions in the very end of the episode and throw out a few
wild guesses as to what they might mean.
As you know
from watching the second episode (or will know now from ignoring my spoiler
alert), the body of Snow White found at the end of the first episode is
actually not Snow herself, but instead some random troll lady covered in magic
(aka ‘glamour’) to make her look like Snow. The murder site is quickly
discovered, where someone seemed to have re-enacted the classic fairy tale from
the brothers Grimm, with a half-eaten apple, a pretty dress and flower petals
all around symbolising the glass coffin. Serving as the big cliff-hanger for
the episode, the sheriff discovers an envelope below the bloodied bed with
several pictures of ‘Snow’ sleeping on the still-clean bed and then one
photograph of Crane (a sort of mayor of all the fabled characters and boss of
Snow White) groping under the sleeping Snow’s skirts with a disgusting smile.
Crane himself watches the discovery via the magic mirror and proceeds to smash it.
End of episode 2.
Now of
course the case is clear as day, right? Crane had a thing for Snow, but being
the weirdo he is, he paid a hooker to act out his fantasies with her instead…
until he murdered her in rage for not being the right woman. Someone needs to
stop him!
But hold
on! Ignoring our meta-knowledge that they probably won’t reveal the true killer
at the end of the second episode (of 5 or 6 parts all in all)… why would Crane
bother to sever the troll’s head, dump it in front of the apartments, proceed
to hide the body in a river but forget to clean the room? Why on earth would he
leave some pictures of him at the crime scene? And for that matter: who took the
picture of him getting intimate with the troll? Certainly not himself.
Another
thing that bothered me was the ‘coffin’. The troll was asked to lie down on the
bed, surrounded by flower petals. Apparently that’s where she died, given all
the blood on the bed. However, the circle of petals was only broken at the foot
of the bed, indicating that the body was dragged off here. But how could
someone (especially someone as weak as Crane) chop a woman’s head off without
her struggling and thereby destroying the ring of petals? Wouldn’t the bed or
mattress be destroyed where her neck was if he had chopped through her throat? Or
did he drug her somehow just to go through a careful operation removing her
head without touching the surroundings?
Also: if
Beauty was working as front clerk while the troll got slaughtered in the hotel,
why didn’t she recognise Crane when he walked in? Was Crane using glamour to
hide himself, as well? And why would he want to draw attention to Fabletown by
dropping severed heads on his own doorstep, just to bail the sheriff out with
more expensive glamour?
I’d say the
pictures are just a distraction. Fair enough, Crane’s a pervert and has a thing
for Snow White. Doesn’t really prove anything. However, someone murdering
fables and then conveniently leaving proof at the site of the murder all
pointing at Crane so as to send the sheriff on the wrong track sounds like a
good strategy. What appeared to me as the single-most valuable piece of
information we got in this episode was TJ’s observation of one person dumping
the troll’s body in the river and then ordering a possibly second person to suppress
their laughter. I can’t really think of any classical fairy tale characters
whose laughter is their prime feature, maybe apart from Rumpelstiltskin. So
this shall be my guess until I get more information in the third episode. Any
objections?
