If you haven’t finished Telltale’s wildly acclaimed tragedy’n'conversation sim The Walking Dead but do want to know when season two will be released, I’ll tell you right now. December 17th! That’s when you can buy the season pass and play episode 1, for about 18 quid.

If you have> finished it and want to know a plot synopsis too, I’ll tell you below, hopefully safe from the innocent, spoiler-averse eyes of the non-finishers. (more…)

Were you aware that there had been a The Walking Dead All Out Game Jam? 120 teams were, competing in the official event over two weeks, back in September/October. Ten finalists have recently been picked, with the winner chosen by TWD creator Robert Kirkman on the 5th December. Those finalists have gained some decent loot, not least a full Unity Pro license, and a free Greenlight application. So yes, you can expect to see another ten zombie games vying for your attention on there. Blame memetics.

Amongst those finalists were Beavl, with The Narrow Path, that takes an approach that immediately grabs my attention. Yes, you’re killing zombies. But you’re also killing the humans too. And you’re in a minivan.

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Well, this all seems sort of inevitable in hindsight, doesn’t it? Telltale has more or less perfected its episodic storytelling formula, and bounteous riches are beginning to flow. And from among those glittering prizes and sparkling gem clusters, the Walking Dead and Wolf Among Us dev has – if a report from IGN is to be believed – plucked a veritable holy grail. It now allegedly has some sort >of Game of Thrones game in the oven, though exact details are still hazy. This does, however, link up pretty well with my Dan Connors interview from earlier this year, so I am cautiously optimistic about the (for now) rumor’s veracity.

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Here it is, the moment you’ve been waiting for. Ever since [SAD THING] and [OTHER SAD THING] and [MORE VERY, VERY SAD THINGS] closed out The Walking Dead’s first season, everyone’s been reinforcing their ramshackle post-apocalyptic emotion shelters – bolting on more kleenex boxes and widening gaps so they can claim it’s “just the rain” – in preparation for a second go-’round. And so, finally, here we are. In the wake WOLFAMONGOUS‘ successful launch, Telltale’s seen fit to remove Walking Dead season two from its incubation coffin. Video and details below.

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Comic-Con has probably created lots of news but, until this morning, the only information that had lodged in my brain was the announcement of some sort of Superman vs Batman film. I haven’t seen Man of Steel because my brain tries to run away from Zack Snyder films, leaving it shuddering and heaving against the back of my skull if one of those films happens to be in front of me. Actually, I quite liked his Dawn of the Dead and didn’t suffer any nosebleeds at all> when I saw it. Forget about me being snidey about Snyder though – more news from Comic-Con! This time about The Walking Dead Season Two. If you don’t want any spoilers at all, don’t look below.

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Game Informer have done a lovely thing and put Sean Vanaman (the creative lead and author of Telltale’s The Walking Dead games) in the same room as famed promiser-of-worlds, 22Cans’ Peter Molyneux. The consequence of this gentlemanly meet was an extended discussion of how Telltale have tried to up stakes on the adventure genre, writing for games in general, and some stuff about zombies: a topic on which all developers now have to pass a three-stage exam if they want to be allowed to continue developing videogames.

Watch it below. (more…)

The last time we saw The Walking Dead it was lying in a pool of blood, waiting to rise again as some sort of brain-hungry second season. The bastard game hadn’t so much jerked the tears from my eyes as attached wild horses to the ducts and had the muscular beasts run toward the horizon for a couple of hours. It’s still not clear precisely how the two seasons will be connected but the announcement of 400 Days, a new episode that will act as a bridge between the two seasons, will surely provide some answers. That’s what bridges do. There are probably some clues in the trailer below, which contains at least one character who has appeared previously.

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Yesterday, I put on my fuzzy-eared detective hat and grilled Telltale president Kevin Bruner about his company’s next big, hopefully not bad thing, The Wolf Among Us. The Fables-based caper sounds like a worthy (though unexpected) follow-up to The Walking Dead, but it’s hardly the only story being writ large by Telltale’s ostentatiously oversized quill pens. The developer also regularly creates experimental prototypes involving AI, story structures, the way players communicate with characters, and tons more. Fittingly – given the developer’s love of episodic stories – they call it the Pilot Program. Some of these “weird” ideas make it into games, but many of them don’t. Ultimately, though, this is Telltale’s way of paving a path to its own future. I quizzed Bruner about the good, the bad, and the ugly of his company’s experiments, as well as a couple other loose ends like King’s Quest. It’s all after the break.>

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To hear Telltale tell the tale, The Walking Dead wasn’t built to be a wildly acclaimed game of the year award magnet. A good game? Yes. A great story? Clearly. But not a bowling ball catapult into zombified super stardom. With all eyes suddenly on the once-unassuming developer, “that Fables game” has an incredibly tough act to follow. But The Wolf Among Us is a) about a gruff, nicotine-addicted werewolf detective and b) not about gazing sullenly out the window while protesting, “No, it’s just the rain/my allergies/this waterfall we’re standing under.” It takes place in a mad fantasy reality where anything can happen – except, um, the undead apocalypse. It’s maybe a bit different. So, where does Walking Dead’s DNA end and Wolf Among Us begin? What about Fables-specific issues like mystery-solving, a pre-established main character, wolfed-out combat, and a somewhat controversial creator? I spoke with Telltale president Kevin Bruner about all of that and more.>

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I wonder if Telltale are worrying about Difficult Second Album Syndrome, despite Fables: The Wolf Among Us actually being about their dozenth adventure game series. The rapture their Walking Dead series was met with puts them, if not actually on the A-list then at least on the waiting list for the A-list. By which I mean they’re on the list of developers who I’d say are on the list to be on the list. Maybe I should do a list of all of them., but to be honest I feel a bit too listless to bother.

The Wolf Among Us, then. It’s an episodic adventure game based on the modern-day fairy tales, Big Bad (were)Wolf-starring DC comic series Fables. (more…)