Yesterday was my birthday. I don't make it an altar of self-worship like some people. I actually had to look at my wiki page to find out how old I was. It wasn't the number I expected, but whatever. Who gives a shit™.
So if you are, yourself, Birthday Agnostic partially because you think the rotation of celestial bodies might be sort of an arbitrary way to measure experience, and also because putting people out on your behalf because they remembered or didn't remember or feel bad for not remembering or whatever the fuck, you might not like it when today's wholly automated, absolutely synthetic engines of "fellow feeling" pump your phone full of nominally thoughtful bullshit at all fucking hours. But don't worry, I got the medicine. It's similar to what you might put on a cut, except you put in your mouth, and you use way more.
I think The Wolf Among Us is probably going to edge out The Walking Dead for me, purely in love terms. I don't really have a problem with The Walking Dead, which proved the model beyond a shadow of a doubt. In fact, I love it. I pushed it on you from day one. But Wolf turns up certain knobs on the formula, with potent effects.
Gabriel says Wolf's second chapter is TOO SHORT, in all caps. That's possible. I think they're all too short. The right length for me, when I'm sitting down, is to be told the entire story at once! But having felt the invigorating benefits of the episode format, energizing benefits like that of the mangosteen(?), I gotta let them do their shit. And being a mystery - not merely mysterious, but situated in the literal genre - means that you think about it more when you aren't playing it. If you were to right click on my forehead and open up the task manager, you'd always see a little stub of my consciousness working on it, one or two percent at a time.
The Walking Dead is very stark, realistic, and purposeful. You're supposed to feel all of it and it's supposed to be real. I don't know what combination of team, experience, and subject matter resulted in it, but Wolf is expressive (and allows expression) at the camera level that is so intentional, so mindful of the experience, that it hauls you in by your corneas.
(CW)TB out.
