Telltale Games now pretty much rules the point and click (or action/adventure) genre on consoles and PC. They’ve been involved with properties such as Monkey Island, Back to the Future, The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us. They are an extremely talented company that tells a pretty compelling story in almost all of their projects.
Except for CSI… that was just shit.
However, now they are entering pretty strange territory; trending towards behavior that is confusing and pretty downright stupid from a business standpoint. It’s part of a business model that they’ve followed now for many years, but there’s quite a few things wrong with how this developer chooses to put out games and you’re damn right I’m about ready to bitch.
For the uninitiated here’s your brief introduction to a Telltale Games (TTG) production. The previously mentioned “action/adventure” genre was popularized in the late 80’s and early 90’s by companies like Sierra and Lucasarts (RIP.) They were very story rich games, bringing titles like The Monkey Island series, Kings Quest, and Sam & Max just to name a few. These games were like the original fetch-quest for summing them up, but they provided myriads of problem solving, pattern recognition, and making the player actually think for once.
It’s a genre that I owe a lot of my own deduction skills to, mostly because if I’m in a room with a only a really long silly straw, and just the right alcoholic concoction, I can hit a candle by spitting at just the right angle (yes this is an extremely in depth inside joke that only Monkey Island fans will get… I’m not sorry for this.) Long story short, you didn’t often have the opportunity to shoot your way into and out of problems, you had to figure out the task at hand with literally only what was in your pockets (however unlikely the depth of your pockets may have seemed.)
Now imagine you’re in a world where that giant contraption fits into your pants
So long story short, you have games that were dedicated purely to plot, and your abilities to problem solve helped you unravel more of the rich environments piece by piece. TTG did a good job of performing CPR on this genre roughly a decade ago, wiping dust off of properties like Jurassic Park, Back to the Future and let’s not forget that abysmal CSI game that I talked about (I don’t care if Laurence Fishburne actually voice acted in the damn game… he was literally in the shortest part of that entire experience.)
I promise that will be the last mention of the horrid CSI game.
Please for the love of the god you pray to… do not play this game
So TTG did a lot to earn a lot of trust among the gaming community, mostly because they took a genre long thought dead and made it fun again. However, what has always pissed me off about them as a company is the way they choose to publish their games… it’s pretty damn asinine. They choose to release their games typically as 5 episodes, and release each episode one at a time.
These games can pretty much be referred to as “seasons” because they literally take about as fucking long as a show would to come out. The original intent was to have these games release 1-2 months apart in terms of episodes, and for quite a long time they managed to keep to this schedule. The first season of The Walking Dead was like this, each episode came out on time; it was no surprise that this game also went on to win numerous GOTY honors and is celebrated as one of their best titles ever.
Insert obligatory “Don’t tell mom the babysitter is dead” reference here
In a sense the success of TWD season 1 is a big reason why the bar is so high now for TTG that it’s expected of them to deliver each title this way. Unfortunately for fans however, this couldn’t be any farther from the goddamned truth. Their season 2 release of TWD has been met with delays, and their equally riveting The Wolf Among Us series has been met with more frustration than positivity.
To break it down for you, The Wolf Among Us premiered in October of 2013, it took them until February to release episode 2. For those watching at home, that’s almost 4 months in between episodes… which is just unacceptable for a series that had been planned so far in advance. While the episodes have been released with more urgency since then, it begs the question… why has TTG been so sporadic in their releases of their most recent projects?
“It’s ok fans… just pretend like nothing ever happened” – Telltale Games (not a real quote)
The truth is, TTG is way in over their heads.
TWD series turned them from a niche market of a studio, to a full on media/pop culture icon. For this reason it essentially caught them with their pants down and now we’re getting glitches, delays, and legions of fans who bought season passes that have to wait trimesters to play the next hour long sequence. Now I’ve fully played 6 of Telltale’s entries, so I’m in way just a pissed off critic; the truth is this attitude as a company just has to stop.
In an era where every company puts out a full product, it’s time for TTG to finally step up to the plate and just release a full damn game. If you take your time playing through literally any TTG game, each episode takes roughly 2 hours to play. This means that throughout the course of 1 game release, you’re waiting well over a year to play about 10 hours worth of a video game experience. The reason why I’m so critical of this is because it’s frustrating as a gamer to get invested into a story only to have it abruptly end until an undetermined later date.
Get used to this at least 5 times in every single TTG series
TTG has bitten off more than they can chew, with titles like Tales from the Borderlands and a Game of Thrones series both coming out in the coming year. It’s a tough spot to be in as a fan of several TTG properties, because on one hand I’m eagerly anticipating the next release… but at the same time I’m ready to lead an angry nerdy mob to find out when the hell I’ll get to continue my gaming experience.
This is not to say that Telltale deserves any physical harm, they do have phenomenal writing talent and make very responsible decisions as managers of substance. It’s just a manner of fine tuning their approach and holding up their end of the bargain for their fanbase. If you’re going to spend money with any game studio, you expect that investment to be realized a lot quicker than possibly 3-4 months at time for a sliver of return.
Will Telltale get their act together and handle the next wave of titles responsibly? Only time will decide that, in the meantime, be careful who you bed with.
Photo credit(s):
http://operationrainfall.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/telltale-games-copy.pn g
http://drh2.img.digitalriver.com/DRHM/Storefront/Company/ubi/images/screenshots/CSI6_Screen_1.jp g
http://www.plusxp.com/wp-content/uploads/BTTF-62.pn g
overweight pop culture 
