One of the saddest stories in the video game industry this year was the closure of Telltale Games, and the way it treated all its employees, in the worst way possible. But even if it had found a way to stay operational, one of its announced projects may have never seen the light of day.
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A former staff member of the company recently spoke with Eurogamer under anonymity, explaining how the fan-requested sequel to The Wolf Among Us probably would’ve never made its way to release, mainly due to budgeting issues.
The employee noted that the game had a “shoestring” budget at best, with the company reportedly cutting corners left and right during its development. This was bad “even by Telltale standards,” to the point that the company turned it into a three-episode series, instead of the usual five-episode season layout it’s given to other releases like Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy and the Batman games.
What’s worse, poor resources were also keeping The Wolf Among Us 2 from making any progress. In fact, when Telltale finally got around to cancelling it before its layoffs, it was still quite early in development. There wasn’t even any working video from the project, as the team had just finished its concept art, along with a map pointing out events that could’ve taken place and a script for the first episode. And keep in mind that this is quite some time after the project was officially announced.
The project was already in hot water earlier this year when Telltale stated that it would be delayed to sometime in 2019. But based upon these details, it sounds like they didn’t even intend to make it available at that point, if at all. There were some difficulties with adapting to the new Unity engine, but based on the timeline with the game’s announcement, you’d think they would’ve figured a way around that. It really makes you wonder just what was happening during Telltale’s final days.
Telltale’s former employee was able to provide some background on the story, which would’ve follow Bigby and Snow “some time” after the first season instead of being a sequel with events that tie in with it.
We’ll never know what really sank the company, though stories of behind-the-scenes shenanigans and money mismanagement paint a bad picture. We hope the employees have landed on their feet since then.
As for The Wolf Among Us, unless Skybound steps in to bring the sequel to life, we’ve probably seen the last of it when it comes to video games. Shame- it really did deserve a follow-up, based on how beloved the original game was.
You can still play the original season of The Wolf Among Us on various platforms and PC.
(Hat tip to Eurogamer for the scoop!)
