RIP Telltale

[Rev+]

They didn't quite do adventure games exactly the way I'd have liked (bugger all puzzles) but they did keep the flame burning when the genre was dead.  I don't mean nearly-dead there, I mean fully dead.

Walking Dead 1, Tales From the Borderlands, and the Wolf Among Us are stone-cold classics if you the format and genre.  The Sam & Max games aren't bad either.

It's an absolute shocker that Walking Dead will - it seems - just be suspended after the second episode of its final series comes out next week, and never conclude.  Maybe that's for the best though, we can just imagine that Clem finds a rollercoaster or something and has free rides for eternity.

[popcorn]

I have all the sympathy for the people who've lost their jobs - I've been there, in that industry - but I think they made poor games. They displayed no understanding of anything that made the LucasArts classics work, which is weird as it was founded by ex-LucasArts staff. They are the greatest perpetrators of the "CHOICES WITH CONSEQUENCES" fallacy I'm always bleating on about here.

According to Twitter rumour, the first Walking Dead was the only Telltale game that made profit. It was the last game by them I bought, too. I can't help but wonder if the design turned off enough people that it was only the core fans who came back for more.

[bgmnts]

I hope their staff find nww jobs with other developers but not that arsed about them going to be honest.

Minimal gameplay, no real puzzles, inconsequential decision making, they ran like shit and piss poor graphics.

I reckon better developers will carry on the interactive story games and hopefully do better with it.

Saying that, I will admit that the first Walk Dead series was quite a moving expereince.

[popcorn]

I wonder if it was licensing all those IPs that did them in. Batman, Back to the Future, Wallace and Gromit. I have a feeling that the customers of those games were Telltale fans rather than Batman fans or whatever, and that therefore the IPs might have essentially been expensive set dressing.

The initial success of Walking Dead might have come from interest in the unusual combination of adventure game with a horror setting, rather than the IP itself - that's why I bought it at least, and I fucking hate The Walking Dead.

[Kelvin]

It's quite a shock really. They always projected an image of being quite a successful company, by putting out so many games, developing that new engine recently, and just acquiring so many high profile properties. The news that all those games, bar two, were complete flops is baffling.

Why didn't they try to adjust their model, rather than just ploughing on making games in the exact same way, almost to the point where it had become a joke how formulaic they were?

[colacentral]

Because they had no imagination and hoped they'd win the lottery with the right IP.

It's an insult to adventure games to describe them as such - they don't even come close to playing in the spirit of real adventure games. They are essentially those poorly animated graphic novel films but with inconsequential dialogue options. I always have felt they weren't getting enough of a kicking for wasting the opportunities they had to make something good, and besmirching a genre that most kids today will know nothing about.

[Phil_A]

I went off them after they sneered at the idea of ever producing any Loom sequels.

[Replies From View]

I never hated Telltale games, but they weren't a patch on the LucasArts ones they were building on.  They were pretty much just 'press the correct button to trigger the next cut scene', weren't they.

On that level if you think of them as fancy Ceefax/Teletext games they're a lot better.

[Replies From View]

Because they had no imagination and hoped they'd win the lottery with the right IP.

It's an insult to adventure games to describe them as such - they don't even come close to playing in the spirit of real adventure games. They are essentially those poorly animated graphic novel films but with inconsequential dialogue options. I always have felt they weren't getting enough of a kicking for wasting the opportunities they had to make something good, and besmirching a genre that most kids today will know nothing about.

That said, Doctor Who was crying out for anything approaching the Telltale quality in 2010 when it did its own crappy adventure games.

[Bhazor]

The majority of their stuff was pretty bad. The kind of writing nobody would take seriously if it wasn't a game but because its a game everyone cuts it slack for some reason.

That said Tales of Monkey Island was far better than that shite 3D Monkey Island game. I also do have a soft spot for the Strong Bad game as it was basically the only game they ever made that had actual puzzles in it.

[Z]

Ach, that's a bit of a bittersweet one. They had employees who were probably more than capable of making really great stuff but the structure of the company was fucking terrible. The ones of those who hadn't already left will, creatively at least, probably be much better off now.

[Beagle 2]

I wonder if Limmy feels bad for ripping the absolute piss out of The Walking Dead last week? Which was very funny, although I too really enjoyed that first series. The Wolf Among Us just seemed a bit silly, and Game of Thrones was an active shiter.

[The Boston Crab]

I keep going over and over this in my head, wailing and gnashing my teeth, and thinking why, why, why, this whole horrible situation could have been easily avoided if they had just made better games.

[Mister Six]

That first Walking Dead season had some of the best writing of any game I've ever played, and were dense with incident and plot. The early episodes even had actual puzzles and stuff.

Sadly the main writers all fucked off after that one and the second season was abysmal. Didn't bother with them after that.

Still, though. Shame the fans won't get to see how that story wraps up.

[Twed]

I keep going over and over this in my head, wailing and gnashing my teeth, and thinking why, why, why, this whole horrible situation could have been easily avoided if they had just made better games.

Hah, exactly.

I enjoyed their Sam and Max remakes, but even they are disposable. The studio then turned into the 2010s embodiment of 1990s shit licensed games.

[Twed]

I never hated Telltale games, but they weren't a patch on the LucasArts ones they were building on.  They were pretty much just 'press the correct button to trigger the next cut scene', weren't they.

On that level if you think of them as fancy Ceefax/Teletext games they're a lot better.

They probably would have ended up with the Bamboozle license eventually

[Ferris]

I liked them - played them with Mrs Ferris and it was our equivalent of staying in and watching a film.

That said, I did an entire run through of The Wolf Among Us (which had an error in its opening theme music) just pressing circle for all decisions. It was pretty much exactly the same result as my previous playthrough so the choices are really not all that meaningful. Once you realize that, the veil is removed.

Edit: Thimbleweed Park was good. Was that one of theirs?

[popcorn]

Edit: Thimbleweed Park was good. Was that one of theirs?

No.

[The Culture Bunker]

The Walking Dead (season 2, I think), Batman and Tales from the Borderlands came up on PS+ over the last few years. I guess they were fine, never really got the impression my choices had any real meaning. I think if I'd paid more than a couple of quid for them, I might have felt ripped off. 

[Z]

I keep going over and over this in my head, wailing and gnashing my teeth, and thinking why, why, why, this whole horrible situation could have been easily avoided if they had just made better games.

a combo of better games (especially not fucking up the biggest brand they got their hands on with GoT, that seemed to do away with an awful lot of their goodwill) and not very reliably giving away half their back catalogue in Humble Bundles regularly.

How many people here have ONLY played Telltale games from PS+ and Humble Bundle releases? They were definitely operating on some kind of dodgy economics there of very rapidly devaluing their releases whilst bumping up the quantity of new ones to make up for it.


I look forward to hearing the articles about how awful of a workplace it was are gonna emerge in the next few months, there was already plenty of crappy sounding stuff about.

[madhair60]

Enjoyed TWD Season 1, Tales From the Borderlands, Batman and Minecraft. Puzzle Agent was lovely.

[Bhazor]

Remember when their episodic games were actually episodic and sold one by one? I do. Why? Because I've got thirty five of the fucking things in my Steam games list.

Back to the Future, 5 listings.
Hector, 3 listings.
Sam & Max, 12 listings.
Strong Bad, 5 listings.
Tales of Money Island, 5 listings.
Wallace and Gromit, 5 listings.

[Consignia]

I look forward to hearing the articles about how awful of a workplace it was are gonna emerge in the next few months, there was already plenty of crappy sounding stuff about.

The writing has certainly been on the wall for a while. I remember reading an article in the last year on Eurogamer (which I can't find right now), which detailed how shit the management were, and how awful the working conditions were. Wouldn't be shocked if there were even more.

[Noonling]

God its such a relief to find other people who don't care for Telltale.

[popcorn]

I really thought when I posted up there with my criticisms I'd get the usual replies of people telling me I was playing it wrong etc.

[The Lion King]

I enjoyed the first two seasons of the walking dead, although watching Limmy's recent playthrough has really brought to light how inconsequential the decision making really is. I think I was always aware of it but it seems so much more apparent when watching someone else play.

[BeardFaceMan]

Dragons Lair for cunts.

[bgmnts]

This is worse than Sean Hughes' obituary.

[The Culture Bunker]

I enjoyed the first two seasons of the walking dead, although watching Limmy's recent playthrough has really brought to light how inconsequential the decision making really is. I think I was always aware of it but it seems so much more apparent when watching someone else play.

It's a problem with a lot of these kinds of games. "Life is Strange" seemed to sell the idea better than most, but then reduced everything (as happens) down to a binary choice that either prevents all your decisions anyways or makes them irrelevant. 

[Consignia]

It's kind of hard to make your decisions matter in a linear episodic storyline. To make them truly matter, they'd have to have massive story branches for each decisions, and make things different accordingly. You can almost do that within an episode, but they always have to end at the same point.

To really do the decision thing correctly, you really need to ditch the episodic approach.