 Linus Tech Tips coverage of PAX 2013 is brought to you by Western Digital, Intel, and SteelSeries. So we're here with Nick Herman, co-director of A Wolf Among Us, also The Walking Dead, and apparently A Million Other Things, is that correct? Uh, yeah, I guess. We make a lot of games. If someone said it, it must be true and it's on the internet, right? Sweet, yeah, oh yeah, totally. A million games. So give me the, I guess, give me the 30 to 60 second pitch for why you want a gamer to invest in the experience you guys are delivering here. Yeah, I mean, with The Wolf Among Us, we sort of, you know, we're following The Walking Dead, and I think a lot of people are sort of putting the pressure on us to make this good, and I think we, instead of, you know, taking this really dark and really serious, I mean the game actually is really dark and serious, so what am I saying? We wanted to push it in a different direction. It's not, it's not about, you know, it's, there are two different characters, right? Two different stories. Lee is, you know, a story of sort of redemption and sort of being someone's savior, and this game, I think, is a little bit about redemption in the fact that Bigby Wolf, who's the sheriff of Fabletown, you know, he used to be the big battle wolf, and now he's sort of in charge of protecting everyone, and it's sort of up to the player to figure out how they want to do that. Like, the problem with him, he's got all this power, right? And you have to choose whether or not using that power is worth it, and if, when you do, how that affects, you know, the people around you and what people think of you, and I think that's really interesting. And, I mean, with this game, too, you can look at the art, and it looks so different. The game feels different. It's a different story, so I think people should just be excited for something new, and yeah. Now, I played a 10-minute demo of it here in the booth, and the thing that I noticed more than anything else is looking from my screen to the guy next to me is we were playing the same 10-minute demo, and he had completely different stuff on his screen. Whether it's down to an option in the combat or whether it's down to driving away in the car versus falling out of a window on top of the car, it felt like the choices I was making were having a huge impact on how the story was progressing. I mean, you guys obviously have a branching structure to it, but are there, you know, 101 endings, or is it pretty linear? Yeah, I mean, I would say it's closer to the Walking Dead. I mean, with Episode 1, we don't have, you know, 40 endings, but I think a lot of the things we're playing around with are just giving the player more choice more often, letting them sort of choose how they want to play on more of a micro level a lot of the times, and something we're playing with, too, is sort of the sense of time. So even in the demo, when you're talking to Mr. Toe downstairs, you can leave the conversation early in favor of sort of getting to figure out what's going on, or you can sort of drill them a little bit more and get more information, and that comes into play in a much bigger way later in the episode, too. Fascinating. I mean, speaking of sense of time, the combat felt very frantic, felt very urgent, but didn't feel very punishing, because whenever I made a mistake, I was able to go back to about three to five seconds ago and get a do-over. So what does that say about the experience you guys are trying to deliver here? Yeah, I mean, with the combat specifically, it's really about, I mean, we don't want to punish people for not being able to play an action sequence. I think most people play our games for sort of the narrative and the characters and the story and getting to make these decisions, and yeah, I think it's really about, in the fight sequence, just sort of creating your own story. I mean, now we have this branching fight sequences really just to let the player express themselves more, like I was saying, more on a micro level, and even if you get the shit kicked out of you, it's still fun to watch, right? It's still something, it's an exciting experience, and there's only a few death states in that fight, but it's really about creating a narrative. I mean, one of the things I noticed is, during the fight, okay, so when you're talking to people, you really have the option to be a total asshole or to just be very passive or to be very helpful. You can go one of, even in the fight, you have an option to throw them and you can decide what to throw them against. How does that affect how you're building yourself out as a character? Yeah, I mean, it's funny that there's a couch you can throw them into, and a lot of people are like, well, I threw them into the couch because I wanted to be kind of soft on them, but they just sort of read into it more than we even expect sometimes, and that's sort of the fun part of it. And I think in that fight specifically, we're sort of just teaching you the mechanics, but later on, there's going to be ramifications for how you treat people in those types of situations. That's absolutely very, very cool. I really enjoyed the demo and I'm really excited to see this when it's available for me to buy. Yeah, well, yeah, it'll be available early or late September, early October. Yeah. Sounds great. Thank you so much. Thank you. We're here with Pierre Charette, lead writer of A Wolf Among Us, at least episode one anyway, hopefully episode two, assuming things go really, really well with this one. Tell me about how challenging is it to write for a character like Bigby Wolf when the character or the player gets to make a lot of the decisions and you just kind of have to make sure that everything makes sense, regardless of what they do. Luckily for us, Bigby comes from fables, the Bill Willingham comic book. He's a dynamic enough character that the range that you have with him, the way you'd want to swing this character emotionally, whether you want to play the role of the enforcer, the law abiding sheriff of Fable Town, or you want to be the guy who kicks a door in and gets answers. All that still fits in with who Bigby is and allowing people to sort of choose who their Bigby is, is still possible, even with a character that many people know and love. Okay, so I mean, if that's not the big challenge of writing for a game like this, then what were the things that you were sitting around the table or discussing or sitting at your desk tearing your hair out, figuratively? That's where it all went. That must be where it all went. So tell me what was so difficult. It was definitely giving the game and giving the Wolf Among Us an identity that is different and sort of sticks out from what The Walking Dead has done. Not trying to relive the same beats, not trying to have similar characters. It's its own thing. It's based on fables. It's a fantastical world and just being true to that and giving it its own feel and atmosphere and tone and dialogue was probably the biggest challenge from a writing standpoint. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you taking the time, Pierre, and hey, good luck. Thanks, thanks. Nice talking to you. So guys, don't miss any of our PAX Prime 2013 coverage. 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