Recently it was revealed to the world that The Wolf Among Us 2 was still alive under the development of Telltale, but in that announcement there was a trap, since as you know Telltale went bankrupt and all its projects were canceled. That was when another company He decided to take the name Telltalte, their rights and some of the licenses they were developing, such as Batman and The Wolf Among Us.
LCG Entertainment It is the name of the company that is now called Telltale Games and that will bring us The Wolf Among Us 2. Fans can breathe easy, since the new Telltale does not want to repeat the mistakes of the previous one and has started working on this project hiring former Telltale key developers such as the AdHoc studio, which was formed by former Telltale members who lost their jobs.
AdHoc will develop the new The Wolf Among Us 2 with Telltale and it has already been dropped that the game will not arrive in episodic format. Jamie Ottilie, CEO of the new Telltale, has spoken with gamedaily.biz to give new details about this project, which will start from 0.
«The best way to respond to skeptics is do our job and make a great game«he declared. “We are really ignoring those who want to turn things around negatively, and focusing on the game. I would say that our message would be: ‘Give us some time to grow and then judge us for the work we do
Ottilie doesn't want things to fall apart and Telltale has an absurd number of employees focused on low-caliber jobs, something that killed the original company. «Our growth objective is to 30-35 people in 2020. We have partnered with AdHoc specifically to bring back the former creative team of Telltale de Wolf 1. We have hired Zac Litton, former Vice President of Engineering, as CTO to lead the creation of tools and pipelines, and Sara Guinness is our Operations Director ».
«We are currently working with several former Telltale members as freelancers and in January full-time positions will open. As we have said before, we are adopting a measured approach to growth and focus on bringing the right people at the right time in production ».
Of course, it seems that not all former Telltalte employees will have a secured position in this new company. «We focus on hiring the right talent for each function, people committed to the realization of great games like Telltale is known. But, to make things clear, We will not create unnecessary jobs in order to hire former Telltale employees. As much as we dislike what happened to that talented team, we cannot correct the mistakes of the old company ».
«We are building a new Telltale to make great games and tell interesting stories. We will hire the best people we can for each position we open and, yes, many of the people we are talking to or who we are interested in working with are former TTG employees … »
On the famous crunch, a practice that decimated the spirits in the old Telltale and that made many of the employees have to go through therapy to recover from such a level of stress, Jamie Ottilie wants to do things very differently.
«Our approach is quite simple. Hire the best people you can for each function. Give them power to do their job. Provide them with an environment in which they recognize and reward themselves for being excellent at what they do », said. «Create a culture in which people want to contribute to the best of themselves, but also recognize that they have lives in which they need to be happy. In short, ‘come to work, do good things while you're here, then go home and have a life – be happy '».
“When we talk about sustainability, we really mean the control of the workforce and the costs, and to make sure that we don't grow too fast and exceed our cash flow and financing. It also means that we are applying modern production methodologies to the overall structure of the company. We are building a small, focused and talented team internally, and we will support you by partnering with the right companies and people for each project », said.
Finally, the CEO of the new Telltale talked about the episodic development format and how Telltale games are released to the market. Until now, it is pro all known that Telltale products arrived several months apart launching in an episodic format, with which the developers were working on the fly in the different episodes of the game, something that could make the result compromised In the end, if a problem arose, something that has happened with Dontnod and Life is Strange 2, which in this case forced the rest of the episodes to be delayed.
Jamie Ottilie does not believe that this is the optimal way to work, so it seems that the game's release format will be changed. “We are creating the stories in the form of different episodes, but it has not yet been determined how they will be published. I think the important distinction here is that we will no longer develop them episodically. If we launch the game by episodes, they will all be ready before the first one arrives at the store«Ottilie said.
Finally, he made it clear that The Wolf Among Us 2 will not arrive in 2020, as they are at a very early stage of development. The game will reach consoles (we assume that the new generation), what is clear is that on PC The game will be exclusive to Epic Games Store. Jamie himself revealed in the interview the reasons: «Because we believe in what they are doing, where they are going, and why Epic believes in us and in Wolf 2».
There is still a lot of work ahead and although everything sounds very good in the mouth of the CEO of the new Telltale, it remains to be seen if the result is close to what was seen in the most awarded projects of the original study. For now, we only wish them the best and that – for the benefit of everything – they do their best.
