Tom is an expert in all things Fortnite or the latest RPG release, but is probably spending too much time on the latest EA FC game.
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At Gamescom, I got a hands-off look at The Wolf Among Us 2 to see how the game is coming along almost ten years after the initial version was revealed. The sequel has been started and restarted more than once during that time, but it seems like it’ll finally see the light of day soon.
It’s not as groundbreaking or different from the original as you might expect, but Telltale wanted to focus on returning players. “It feels like coming home. It feels familiar,” Jessica Harra Campbell, Design Director at Telltale Games, told me. They didn’t want players to jump in, only to find that the game isn’t what they’ve wanted. After all, The Wolf Among Us 2 is a game fans have been asking for repeatedly for years, more vehemently than for any other Telltale game.
Campbell has “always found the setting so fascinating, the art direction super compelling, the characters really interesting,” which is why she thinks players have been so passionate.
Now’s also the perfect time for the heyday of Telltale to return. While she says no specific lessons have been learned from the success of Dispatch last year, Campbell agrees that “players are always going to desire a compelling narrative experience that you can really embed yourself in, and it’s wonderful to see that that appetite in the audiences hasn’t diminished.”
In my time seeing the game in action, The Wolf Among Us 2 is that original experience, modernized to create a more comfortable one. The game is prettier, more vibrant, and as moody as ever, maintaining the signature art style and atmosphere that make the first game so good. Animations are crisper, camera movements are more cinematic, and key choices feel more consequential.
Telltale has also done a lot of work to ensure that there’s more depth to investigations and your impact on the story. Gone are the static scenes, instead allowing you to explore rooms and streets to pick up items and see what’s what. There’s also a smart hints system that’ll push you towards what to do without fully ruining the puzzle. Hopefully, you need to put a lot of thought into making dialogue and physical decisions in the sequel. The first game had a pretty intense story, and I expect the sequel to be no different.
While The Wolf Among Us 2 is undeniably pretty and a step up from the original game, it does make me question what was so difficult about development all those years ago. There’s nothing mind-blowing here; it’s what you’d expect from pretty much any Telltale sequel. Of course, any number of things could have been stumbling blocks, but it was interesting to speak with Michael Yum, CEO at PM Studios, about how the publisher is helping Telltale “get to the finish line this time.”
“I’ve been holding the secret for years now,” he said. “The special thing for me was like I figured out how to make it and finish the game. And so when I met with them, I was really honored, and I couldn’t believe that I was seeing, you know, an opportunity like this, and they told me a little bit about their struggles and why it hasn’t been coming out. And I told them exactly what I could do to help them finish this game.
“They needed production support, marketing support. It was almost like starting over, so I was like, “Let’s work together to create a new schedule. Let me worry about the money, so you don’t have to worry about that anymore.”
Thankfully, it sounds like development is coming along nicely. “They’ve hit all their milestones on time, and they’ve been amazing,” Yum told me. The game looks like what fans have hoped for for a long time, and it’s exciting that it’s finally going to see the light of day. I just wonder whether it’s the advancement for Telltale games that some people expected.
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