Some are saying they've closed, some are merely saying it's a bunch of layoffs, ...either way, not looking good. Not overly surprised though.
Can only milk the one idea for so long... As Rovio found out. In that vein, I'm surprised Travellers' Tales [maker of the LEGO <franchise> games] hasn't gone the same way.
Everyone but a skeleton crew have been let go today. Sources saying Walking Dead final season is cancelled 2 episodes in, and the skeleton crew is only there to fulfill the Netflix obligations with Minecraft before closing the doors for good.
The only things I can remember of Telltale games are basically 3D Visual Novels stuffed full of Quick Time Events. I have played the Game of Thrones one and the Borderlands one and was left with the feeling that basically it was a bit like an alien wearing a skinsuit of whatever show/book/thing it was an extension of. Fun for one playthrough, but not something that can be gone back to. Even the Call of Duty games have more replayability than that... Ah. A quick search shows they did the Sam & Max remakes and the Monkey Island remakes. I'll miss them for some of the games they did, but the episodic QTE-obsessed games I won't miss.
Yeah, they started off as an adventure company, trying to recreate the heydays of the point and click adventure, but then quickly morphed into a company that produced licenced quick time games. In the end, they were all just variations on a theme, with not enough variation between different licences and not enough there to make them worthy of replaying.
Yeah, "themed" games. But underneath they were all the same. I did enjoy BTTF (that was the first I played) but didn't get into Walking Dead, as I guess I was expecting the real characters etc. It wasn't my type of game if I'm honest, though I did get a bit of fun out of Wallace & Grommet. Sad to see them go but I guess when you are a one trick pony it will wear thin eventually.
Mm. I guess, despite attempts, the market for "remasters" of old point 'n' click games just isn't there. And a medium that initially I would have thought would have taken to point 'n' click fairly well - tablets - actually kinda suck at them.
Telltale just got it wrong hard. They bigged up "Your Choices impact the story" And as many found out .... they didn't. it barely had an impact and didn't result in saving any one. Then with "The Walking Dead" they kept killing every one you had invested in and by killing them all off you had nothing to care about and then you find your choices don't impact it .... and you are even less invested. They then just started churning titles out enmass and the quality droped as the ran their teams into the ground with buckets of unpaid overtime.... They had a good formula but they should have refined it and produced content like Detroit human which had paths and consequences that MEANT something.
As much of a despicable person David Cage is, his studio's set the bar now for 'choices matter' gaming. It's not the first game to have proper cause and effect by any means (Alpha Protocol, even something like Policenauts) but the level of depth is what we've been expecting with technology and budgets today. Walking Dead 1 annoyed me because you knew who was going to die by whether you were given a choice to spare/save them. If they survived, they would just die in the next scene anyway to avoid branching paths. Walking Dead 2 was better though, there were some choices that really made a difference. And for me at least, the last real one involving 2 people fighting and having to side with one or the other showed whether you could be groomed into doing something previously unthinkable by a master manipulator or not.
