The Rise and Fall of Telltale Games

In 2012, Telltale Games found itself in the spotlight for taking an already popular franchise and creating an original story around its premise. I'm referring, of course, to The Walking Dead.

With almost no actual gameplay, Telltale managed to create something loved almost universally through its engaging story, strong character development, and beautiful soundtrack, among many other things.

What came next? Yet another masterpiece one year later, solidifying The Walking Dead Telltale series as one of the most beloved franchises in gaming.

(Additionally, a quick acknowledgement of the less popular yet still great game):

Telltale is at its peak. Everybody knows they can tell a great story, and everybody is eagerly waiting for season 3 of the Walking Dead.

However, Telltale executives have now achieved immortality and decide to put The Walking Dead in the refrigerator. Instead, they want to see what they can expand to with their new power.

Thus beginning the decline.

Somewhere in 2014, Telltale coughed and out came this, about which nobody ever has or ever will talk about:

Among the 6 people who actually played the game, reviews show a clear decline in quality, scoring 20-30% lower than other episodic Telltale Games, but let's look into more recent projects.

I'm going to focus primarily on 2015-present, as problems start becoming more blatant and consistent.

As their only game in 2015, Telltale evidently poured their heart and soul into a game that was sure to sell.

It sold, and with every copy sold, a small part of Telltale's soul sold alongside it. Telltale saw an opportunity to get lazy with trying to build a great story knowing that the target demographic would likely overlook it. Somehow, it came out decent, but it also enabled a steep decline in standards for games to come.

As much as Telltale's Batman disappoints me, Telltale deserves credit for getting more creative with their mechanics to make a proper batman game, and the animations are done well enough for it to be considered 'fun'. The problem is, batman is the only franchise where you can distract your players from the lackluster, shortened, inconsequential, unsatisfying plot with a few flashy fight scenes and iconic characters. The entire illusion of your choices making any difference to the outcome of the game is completely shattered as it becomes more and more obvious that the only thing your choices affect is what immediately comes next, and has no discernible lasting impact on the outcome of the story.

Now we're at the very end of 2016, and it's finally here, the game that everybody has been waiting for for four years. Surely they've still got it in them to tell a great story, they just have to build off of the strengths of the last two games, right Telltale?

"lmao no", replies Telltale.

I don't even know where to start with this game.

Telltales Games presents a lazy, uninspired, and cliche story that was anything except relatively interesting. With no more capes, the focus is back on the storyline, and now that Telltale's soul has been entirely depleted and distributed among the masses, it is shockingly pathetic.

The game starts off with an entirely new set of characters, of which Javi is main protagonist. Some hoped to play as clementine, but instead, we see her later on.

Javi is actually a decent character, which at least makes the game bearable as you care about absolutely nothing else to any noteable degree while the game moves at breakneck speeds since the duration of each episode has been sliced in half, yet the plot still somehow drags along as the player becomes more and more jaded, waiting for the next quick time event to remind the player that they're actually supposed to be awake. There isn't any need to give any thought to the dialogue options you choose, since you don't care that much about the character you're talking to, and you already know it will all hop right back onto its linear path no matter what you choose. The atmosphere that created such an immersive experience in the first two games is absolutely gone, as Telltale somehow manages to nullify any effect the soundtrack could have as it awkwardly attempts to evoke any emotional investment from the player into what is actually happening.

I hoped it would eventually get better, but it didn't. Clementine is reduced to less than a side character, as she moves along with your group like a ghost, giving her input every once in a while, and serving as a sort of love interest for the most unlikable character in Telltale's history, disgracing clementine's character, which had been developed over the entirety of two games.

None of the characters are properly developed, which ruins any emotional investment you could have had. Character deaths are just sort of thrown in, with Telltale's effort being proportional to how much the player actually cares about the character.

One character that really bugged me was Paul "Jesus" Monroe

While he is a 'cool' character, I don't find him very believable. The way he interacts with other characters and the environment around him makes it feel like he actually is, as his nickname suggests, some kind of omnipotent being that's just there to be a badass. That's great and all, but it removes what little tension the game actually has whenever he's around, and doesn't seem very appropriate in a dystopia like the Walking Dead.

Was the game terrible? No, it's not terrible, but that doesn't make it any less disappointing for Telltale to diminish such a beloved franchise with something so mediocre, falling into the same category of disappointments as Mass Effect: Andromeda. This game is a victim of an awful pattern that Telltale has created, and I believe it's resulting in people moving away from Telltale as they sell less and less copies until another company comes along and reinvigorates story-driven, dialogue-based games. Until then, Telltale will pump out more and more seasons of their other projects until they either get their acts together or completely fade into obscurity.

(And regarding Telltale's GoTG, though it seems to be getting slightly better feedback, I think it's quite humorless, uneventful, and lacks the charm that made the movies successful.)

Let me know what you think, and if you enjoyed a certain series more than other series from Telltale.