By: Tyler Miller
If you haven’t heard by now, Telltale Games is closing down. On Friday, news broke that the company had let go all but 25 of their developers. All of the future projects were cancelled, and the remaining team members would be finishing up their Minecraft: Story Mode project for Netflix. This means that unfortunately, episode two of The Walking Dead: The Final Season will be the last one made for the series and we won’t be getting to see the conclusion of Clementine’s story.
I feel tremendously bad for the developers that worked there who found out so suddenly that they no longer had jobs, and would have to scramble to figure out what they were going to do for work. A Twitter thread from former Telltale narrative designer Emily Grace Buck paints a picture of just how bad all this is, and it’s depressing to be quite frank. No matter what people may have thought about Telltale’s games, their employees should have been treated better than this. Fortunately, the industry has rallied behind them and is doing what they can to help get these developers a new place to call home.
Like most people, I didn’t really know about Telltale until they hit the big time with season one of The Walking Dead. I had heard of their Back to the Future and Jurassic Park games, but never played them. I just wasn’t interested in them. But when The Walking Dead came out to critical acclaim, my interest was piqued. A game where your choices can affect the story, and the story is apparently really good? I just had to give it a shot. So I took the plunge and fell in love with the game. The characters were written well, the story was emotional and kept me on my toes, and I felt like my choices really made an impact. Things such as who I was friends with, lies that I told, and split second decisions that I was forced to make would change the way that certain scenarios would play out, something that was incredible to me at the time. Sure there were games that had already come that applied the same idea such as Heavy Rain, but this was the first one I had played.
The Walking Dead was an amazing game when it came out, even if it had some technical issues. It was so amazing that it won numerous Game of the Year awards across the industry, beating out AAA titles that many would have expected to win the award. With The Walking Dead, Telltale showed the industry that adventure games were not a dead genre and could still be enjoyable in an age where first-person shooters and action games ruled the landscape and were coming out all the time. They showed that a game with no online multiplayer could be a game that people actually wanted to play. Above all else, they showed that story was still very important in games, and that gamers want a great story in their games. Telltale had made an impact.
After the release of The Walking Dead, I followed many of Telltale’s subsequent games. The Wolf Among Us was a title that I had a great time with. The noir theme was refreshing and the mystery of the story kept me on my toes all the way through. When I reached the conclusion of the game, it kept me guessing as to where things would go next in the story as it was so clearly set up for a season two. It was also open ended enough to function as its own one and done season, but I wanted more from that world. It’s a shame that we won’t be getting that.
Tales from the Borderlands was another series that I played and I found myself enamored with it. Not only was it funny and charming in a way that only Borderlands could be, but its story was great as well, something that couldn’t really be said about the mainline Borderlands series. It felt like the choices mattered more than they ever did in The Walking Dead or The Wolf Among Us, something that I was a big fan of. Never did I ever think I would get emotional over a robot that was an enemy in Borderlands 2, but boy did Telltale subvert my expectations. I never thought that Tales from the Borderlands would get a second season, but I would’ve loved another one for sure. This series was definitely my second favorite one that Telltale worked on.
Then we come to Batman: The Telltale Series. I’ve only played season one, but I really liked it. The changes that they made to some classic Batman characters were interesting, and it was fun to see Telltale put their own stamp on the Batman universe. This series was definitely the most buggy of any Telltale game that I’ve played, but it was still a fun time with a good story as always.
The one series that I’ve stuck with though from the start has been The Walking Dead. This series has had my heart ever since season one and it’s earned my loyalty. I’ve played each subsequent season except for the spin-off based on Michonne, and I’ve found each season to be a great experience. Sure there have been things that I wasn’t that big a fan of with season two and three, but the stories they told were great and memorable ones that hit me hard emotionally. Over the course of all these years, it’s been a journey to see Clementine grow and evolve from a frightened little girl, to a hardened survivor and caring protector. I’m sad that we won’t be able to play through the end of her story, but I hope that we at least will be able to find out how it was supposed to end.
I’m going to miss Telltale Games. The team over there was very talented and clearly had a lot of passion and love for the games they made. You can see that they wanted to tell good stories that would resonate with people across the world in some way shape or form, whether it be through tears, laughter, or anything in between. You can complain about there being a formula to their games, how their engine wasn’t the best, or that there was never any real player choice, rather the illusion of it. At the end of the day though, the games that they put out were great titles with a great story, and they’re going to be missed. I sincerely wish the best for all of the former employees that worked there and look forward to experiencing some of their work in the future.
TheComfySpot 