Telltale Games was shut down last year, and with the studio's closure, numerous projects were supposedly cast into the void. The Walking Dead's final season was spared limbo when it was revived under Skybound Games, but as for projects like The Wolf Among Us 2 -- which was confirmed to be in development before Telltale was shuttered -- the future was completely up in the air.
We write "was" because Telltale Games is reportedly on the cusp of being reborn. According to Polygon, the studio's assets have been snapped up by LCG Entertainment, and it plans on continuing the developer's work. This new studio will be headed by two fresh faces: Jamie Ottilie and Brian Waddle, both of whom have experience in the video game sphere.
In an interview with Polygon, Ottilie says that the company now owns the rights to licensed properties such as The Wolf Among Us and Batman, which means that they could potentially be brought back. "We’re still evaluating, but we definitely want to continue some of the stories," said Ottilie.
As for the cancelled Stranger Things adaptation, Ottilie says that the rights were returned to Netflix, so don't go expecting that one to suddenly spring back to life.
For fans of Telltale's output, this should be pretty exciting news. Ottilie reckons that Telltale had a "viable business", but it was brought down by "market conditions" and "some scale choices" made by the studio's management. Indeed, it's believed that Telltale essentially worked itself into the ground, taking on way too many projects at once and oversaturating its own market. "I like games that tell stories and I think our industry should have a company that specialises in narrative-driven games," Ottilie continues.
What do you make of this? Would you like to see Telltale's style of game be revived? Make some especially tricky choices in the comments section below.
[source polygon.com]
Comments 30
Great news, but I hope they start working on original IPs.
Would love to see a Tales from the Borderlands 2 though.
Really enjoyed TWAU so I'd definitely take another. I'm leaning much more into these kind of short, narrative-focused games these days. They're a welcome refuge from the glut of 50+ hour openworld/rpg games that have saturated the space (imo).
Pretty happy about this.
I hope they make Game of Thrones Season 2.
All I want is Wolf 2 please. Just please finish that story.
New engine please. Begone the stuttery mess of TFTBL and some of the other games.
Wolf among us was incredible.yeah cant wait.word up son
I NEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEED Batman Season Three.
The biggest surprise is that THQ Nordic aren't involved (yet)
I'm glad to hear the current games are safe and future titles may come.
I’m really confused by this headline and that one on Polygon. It doesn’t sound like there will be a new version of a company named Telltale Games, but rather that their projects are being revived under a new company banner. Is that correct?
Thus: “Telltale Games Projects Being Revived by New Company”
The Wolf Among Us 2, please
This is great news. I think they released too many games before. It was just too hard to keep up. Less releases/more variety in game play is the way forward
I hope the staff that couldn’t find new jobs are rehired, they’re the real ones that missed out, not the fans.
This won't be Telltale. All of the original developers are gone. This is just a couple of guys who bought the name.
They made some superb games and I hope the core team is back because I don't think it's going to work otherwise.
Bigby ist the only one that must return! I think Batman, borderlands and the walking dead, while great, have enough other outlets for fandom.
While I'm happy that people will hopefully have thier jobs back I have concerns. One of the people who is behind the save worked on the Duck Dynasty game and the less said about that the better. The main concern however is if they will actually learn any lessons from before. That episodic gameplay is dated, to focus on one project on at a time, not to spend time making a netflix version of a game, things like that
Fantastic News! Hope they can keep the quality up or improve it and the manner of releasing the games.
I loved Telltale games but this article is right, they released so many, so quickly that even I got bored of them. A couple of games a year MAX with higher quality animations and engine, which run for maybe 6 episodes minimum per "game" would be good. Having each episode run a bit longer too would also help. 4-5 hours I'd say is a sweet spot. Also, finish one before starting the next or have minimal overlap. Don't work the new employees into the ground. No-one deserves that stress and imagination and creativity wont thrive in that environment either.
Also--- forget Batman. I'm not entirely convinced anyone really cared for it. TWAU was much more unique. Batman's been done to death.
@Fight_Sora_Fight If it happened, I'm sure it'd be totally new characters seeing as BL3 is moving the Rhys character forward on it's own.
@Alexface Exactly. At times, you had 2-3 Telltale games on the go at once and were desperately trying to finish one before the next one came out. It created fatigue in the genre and by the time I was trying to finish TWD Final Season, I was totally out of gas for these games.
Less-- with more investment in real decisions, story and engine technology would go much further.
Quality over quantity.
Good to hear, I always liked Telltale games, and I miss them now they're gone. Well, all except 'Tales from the Borderlands' that is, I still loathe it. I don't understand what people liked about it.
This is very similar to the Atari revival. It's Telltale in name alone run by people who have experience in mobile gaming. Do not expect anything of note to come from this.
And the old Telltale employees that are coming back are only contractors. Not full time employees. That's a major slap in the face.
People are going to hate what I'm about to say but... okay.
That's it, I never felt anything special about TellTale games... games.
Cool for those who love those games but to me it's just. meh
Noclip did a very good documentary video about Telltale Games and how poor management run the company into the ground and stifled creative development. Although it sounded like they were just starting to break the mould a bit with Stranger Things.
As others have said this is just IP purchase, Telltale doesn’t exist anymore and only time will tell what new developers can do with the properties.
I agree they worked on too many projects but the games just did not sell in big enough numbers. I do not see how that will change. I enjoy the walking dead but thats done now.
@Pompey71 Didn’t realise that! Been staying away from all Borderlands 3 news, as it’s one of my most anticipated games of all gen.
I will reserve judgement till the games come out. Yeah they got the I.P. but does it mean the games will be Telltale quality or are there guys looking to just cash in on Telltales popularity?
Don't get me wrong I hope they deliver the games we want but I have been down this road to many times.
Well this is probably good news. (Kinda surprised there isn't an article about this on NintendoLife too.) I kinda figured that someone would buy their assets up. I wonder if they are gonna try rehiring a lot of the old staff? If it's entirely new people then what is the point?
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