Farewell Telltale Games

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I am deeply deeply saddened by this news. No more episodic games. So many cliffhangers. So many continuations we'll never get. What happens to their franchises now? Who will buy them?

Only 25 employees remain and as soon as they finish up their work, the company is finished too. All projects from the new Walking Dead to Wolf Among Us sequel and that Stranger Things Netflix project are cancelled.

Say what you want about Telltale Games, I've never been disappointed by any of their releases. I haven't played all of them, just most of them. No Walking Dead or Game of Thrones.

I saw this morning that they were laying people off, but I didn't know they were closing up shop.

Never played as I don’t like those types of games.

Not a lot of people are fans of Telltale's later work. I enjoyed those games for the story mostly. I for one enjoyed their earlier work starting with Sam & Max.

I'm sad about it too. But, of course, business thrive and die when the market speaks and the market speaks with disposable income.

Oh well. Maybe somebody else will rise up to making storytelling-based games.

Which points out part of the problem, to be honest: The story was literally all they had. There was no "game" there. Even in alot of their older stuff it was very minimal at best.

Telltale had what I could call Ubisoft Syndrome: They found a certain EXTREMELY SPECIFIC formula, and then just kept doing that over... and over... and over... and over. And they just never stopped. Ever. The difference being that while Ubisoft's "open world" formula is predictable, there's a large variety of possible gameplay elements that could go into it (even if Ubisoft themselves is often not the ones trying to innovate with it). But Telltale's formula was ultra-stale from the very start.

There was zero variety, really. I always had the feeling that the people that worked there secretly wanted to be making TV shows or movies but had failed to break into that industry. I mean, seriously, that's basically all their games were.

And if you just make ONE type of thing over and over again... yeah, it's almost guaranteed to eventually fall apart even without the "bad work environment" bit.

The only Telltale games I played were episodes 1 and 5 of Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People. I enjoyed them a lot, even though some of the solutions were a little too cryptic. I considered getting Minecraft: Story Mode, but I decided not to; there are too many games on the Switch I want more that are also less expensive.

I never buy games primarily for the story, but I always enjoy good stories in games that also have good gameplay.

Like many, I feel bad for the people who worked at Telltale. They could see the company falling apart, but the higher-ups ignored them and nearly worked them to death. It makes you view the games in a different light; a bunch of people pulled multiple all-nighters trying to get them out on time, but that was never apparent until now. Hopefully other studios will hire them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aF35hFeXO9Q

From my own perspective, TT never had anything all that unique. It was in essence a glorified model derived from DoubleFine's Grim Fandango and other titles I forget the name of.

Their games weren't bad. Walking Dead S1 and The Wolf Among Us (of which I'm severely disappointed we won't get the sequel I was long awaiting) were genuinely decent stories with great premises. Following that, their formula became aggressively repetitive. They relied on brand recognition (which is likely how they managed to stay afloat for so long with fairly dull clichés in all of their games) so they didn't have a lot of uniqueness, and I can imagine it was this reason why they abandoned their lesser known franchises early on. The only game I truly liked was Tales from the Borderlands at that point. I just rolled my eyes at Guardians of the Galaxy and Batman, the former of which I never cared for in general and the latter which Rocksteady have been setting the bar far too high for to ever see any remote competition.

So I can't say I'm too saddened by their breaking off. It still sucks but it's not like CDPR or Valve or Criterion. If any of those fell apart, I probably would cry.

Ya know what, Coalminer's post mentioning "episodes 1-5" of a particular story/series might be another reason why Telltale eventually collapsed. Their stuff was just plain too expensive for many people.


Think back to alot of the legendary adventure games of old. For the price of ONE game... just one... you got a full, complete story, and an adventure with all sorts of loopy puzzles and events. That was what adventure games were, way back when. They were often fairly long, too, and had GENUINE challenge to them. They kept you thinking and exploring in your quest to deal with the challenges and events that they threw your way.

Fast forward to Telltale's formula. You get what is almost a movie, except chopped up into MANY parts (and which contain almost no gameplay to engage the player in the way that a game is meant to), which all must be bought seperately. Playing through a Telltale series... which again, is ONE story... is an expensive prospect. With loads of waiting between each installment of that ONE story. I'm betting this took alot of players who would otherwise be interested, and put them off, knowing that to get an entire story they would have to buy a whole pile of games.

Doesnt help that alot of other indie devs now have gotten the adventure genre going again, but in a much more creative/unique way than Telltale did. Great example: Papers, Please. That took the idea of the storytelling "adventure" genre and spun it in an entirely new direction. It kept things constantly engaging WHILE keeping the unique gameplay going at all times. You had a job to do, and over time that job became increasingly complex, with more rules and tools added to it, complicating things further and forcing you to think through your actions, and never quite knowing just what the next person in line was going to bring to you. It had characters that you took an interest in, and surprising events, and your choices GENUINELY mattered (there are many endings), as did your performance in the tasks you needed to do. And it also told it's story without hyper-lengthy cutscenes. In other words, the player did way more than just watch it. I dunno about everyone else, but I dont play games to WATCH them, and I know I'm not the only one.

And that's just one example of something that's going to take focus away from TT's stale formula that almost totally lacks actual gameplay.


Really, they were at a massive disadvantage that just kept growing as time went on. Their collapse really was inevitable. And it was a collapse they ABSOLUTELY could avoided... but they just kept taking the route of low effort.

I only played Season 1 of The Walking Dead.

I heard that these games, while terrific stories, had a number of glitches.

Such a shame. I really enjoyed their Back to the Future game.

As did I.