Telltale needs to pledge at least two hours per episode for TFS.
There's something off with Telltale not saying anything about episode times for The Final Season. For those who disliked ANF, I would urge you not to pre-order the game until Telltale pledges a two hour range-mark. There can be a couple of minutes off-set, that's fine. But it's becoming very clear to me that they know it's not going to be two hours.
https://telltale.com/community/discussion/119510/dear-telltale-you-got-this/p5 - (Did become a bit spammy, which is what I was apart of, apologies to the user I tagged).
There was no response to this, and I don't want to call them out for not replying, but rather Telltale. The Final Season is only going to have four episodes. ANF had five, in essence it is four because these episodes were so short. Them cutting out an entire episode means that in return, they should give information regarding how long these episodes will be. One of my primary statements to Telltale with regards to the next season was and I quote:
Why are the episode times so ridiculously short? One of the main problems with ANF I believe is how there's little development of anything that's going on in the game. Episode 1, Episode 2 and Episode 5 we're extremely short to say the least. Episode 2 in my opinion, was the worst. Everything is so rushed. I remember a time when we had around two hours worth of content EACH EPISODE. Remember Season 1? Can we please go back to those episodic times? You can see how much of a masterpiece can be created IF you give your content ENOUGH time. In Season 1 episode 2, we had where you had to chop off someones leg or not, deciding who gets food, amazingly rich hubs with so much optional dialogue, we had the dairy scene which also had a TON of optional dialogue for characters, we had the bandits involved, Mark getting shot, scoping the bandit camp out, cannibals, that whole intense situation at the dinner table, saving larry or not, the car scene. Like Come on guys! ANF's Episode 2 is not even half as long as Season 1's of episode 2. There's NO reason to defend this. At LEAST one hour and fourty five minutes per episode, can we PLEASE have this as a target? You grew your team after Season 1's success, which USUALLY means more content! Does more team mean less content now...?
If at least two hours of episodic content is not happening, then this only confirms my suspicion that they aren't listening to the feedback, for those who defend having less episodic time in these games, may I ask why? Yes, I know that quantity does not institue quality, but it does flesh out the story and characters more. ANF's characters were so bland because there wasn't time to develop them, they were all given little snipets of time which wasn't enough in the end. Now that an entire episode is being cut, we shouldn't be defending this. Should we assume that these episodes will at least be two hours long? No. We should not give Telltale that trust when they released ANF in the state that it was. I will never raise my expectations above reality.
This game will make it or break it for me with Telltale. So I, and many fans that have for so long followed this series would love a little bit of honesty. 
If you know that these episodes aren't going to be within this time-range, I believe you should not release them. Do the right thing and respect your fanbase.
Comments
I second this. Telltale should strive to make longer episodes. Batman: The Enemy Within was a step in the right direction and I hope The Final Season follows.
By all means (Yes)!
@mostlypoptarts Can you confirm how long Episode lengths will be in The Final Season?
I believe that ‘A New Frontier’s’ Episode Two took me around forty-five minutes if I did not bother to interact with some of the characters. This is why I am skeptical for the last season because of ‘A New Frontier’s’ poor reception. Would I stop playing Telltale games? Who knows...
This may be far fetched but maybe 2 1/2- 3 hours sounds good to me....
LoL they are not going to pledge any such shit....even if the episodes were that long...you have to consider that each episode may just naturally be shorter. Oh sure they could pad the episodes with things like the train puzzle from season 1 with all the amazing dialogue that went with it..."Hey Ben." "Hey" I want more character development and places to explore...but forgive me if I point out that S1 did have a lot of padding that did nothing for the story but you all seem to think the length was what made it a winner.
No what made it a winner was the characters and situations that happened. As long as the writers remember that TWD is about people first trying to survive and then a zombie adventure second...it stands a good chance of being good.
Your username is so on point.
I've been complaining about this since 2014/around the Season 2 days. To me it's just a waste of breath now, all I'm doing is trying to stay cautiously optimistic about it.
Naturally when you get greedy and try to spew out as many games as you can each year to make more profit off of one successful game, the quality is gonna drop for future games.
Then I suppose I should rephrase, I would like at least an eight-hour range mark for The Final Season. I would be okay if an episode was one hour and thirty minutes if a different episode accommodated more. The train puzzle was certainly boring, and I wouldn't add puzzles like this into the TFS. But the dialogue in the hubs in where you could talk to these characters is precisely what I'm looking for and is what Season 2 and ANF lacked without question.
The length is what added it to be a winner and I really enjoyed the dialogue moments you got inside these hubs. I would find it as a good excuse to extend the time you have in each episode, but I would probably prefer more time being focused on the story now that there are only four episodes.
Optional dialogue doesnt really take anything away from the story. On the contrary it could make the story better with more in depth character development.
But knowing TT they are probably too lazy so they just either do optional dialogue choices and rushed story or no optional dialogue and more thought out story.
Personally, I don't mind if an episode is under two hours if they do it right. If the balance between action moments, plot progress and character development is right, I'm fine with 1,5 hours as well. There's always an option for a sixth episode.
fifth*
This season only has four episodes.
I wonder why there are only four episodes; they must be in a hurry to conclude Clementine’s story.
My bad, I wasn't aware of that. Fair point, but my point still stands though. It's all about the story in my opinion, not necessarily about the length of each episode. Quality over Quantity for me. And they have a lot to make up for after ANF in my opinion. Quality should be their focus right now.
The Lead Writer said that 4 Episodes is the necessary length that the Story requires. I don't mind as long as Clementine gets a fitting conclusion to her story
I too hope for 2 hour long Episodes. Longer Episodes means more time for us to spend with Clementine and more time for the story to develop. Hopefully they are 2 hours long
This optional dialogue is important though, in season 1 it was used to tell the survivors your secret of being a murderer if you saved Carley (i think it's dumb that you can't tell them if you saved Doug). Not only that, but you know where it says 'remember that'?. Well those 'promises' are fullfilled in these sections most of the time. Also, you're getting to an idiotic stage now, it really isn't hard to program optional dialogue scenes. There are like 4 potential dialogue options, and depending on which one is selected, the character they are interacting with replies with a recordeed voice line. It's simpler than the compulsory dialogue choices, as there auren't any 'remember that's for those segments.
Not quite sure what u mean with the 'remember that' but i agree with you that the dialogue is important and adds a lot to the game.
Every episode is 1000 hours long. By the time you are done playing The Final Season, your friends and family will have moved on without you. Earth will be obliterated. The sun will begin to fizzle and die. Humanity will be but a blip on the ever-growing timeline of life itself...
(In all seriousness though, it's too early to tell what eps 2-4 are going to look like, time-wise, but know that I'm here reading your feedback and passing it along. And I think you'll be happy with the first episode - characters, setting, gameplay, dialogue, combat and YES... length.)
Sounds like TFS has lots of replay value then?
I'm glad you are reading our feedback and hope you produce an outstanding game.
Please take your time, do not rush with the game. Go with your gut and avoid massive rewriting
Thank you very much for the communication. It's nice to see forum member opinions getting passed around.
Telltale seems very confident this time - that's a good thing. But only time will tell...
You mean - only time will telltale...
So far so good I'm not hearing lies and such like I did in anf days but I'll stay skeptical on everything telltale says about this season...especially the length.
My Hopes have risen beyond time and space!
I am super excited for The Final Season. I know that you guys at Telltale will make me and everyone who believed in you be proud of trusting in you guys. Thank you so much for coming on to address this. It is a pleasure as always 
Please continue to keep up the fantastic work!
I'd like to thank you for coming out with this on behalf of Telltale, and I apologize if I seemed 'forceful' when making this OP, just a little suspicious with how things are going on atm. I'm going to take your word on the episode length for EP1, I just hope that the other episodes will be the same or something close to it.
If it's not... There might be consequences, Telltale.
Season 1's episode lengths were long due to the amount of game-play we were given, even if sometimes it was drawn out, it was worth it and it certainly did add to the story with the optional conversations we could have with people and learning extra things about them and this is something we've not had in a Telltale game for many years (at least the ones i have played).
And yet she couldn't type the username properly at the time lol
Ha i'll believe that when i see it. Unless it's anything that closely resembles season 1, i won't be satisfied.
They were also confident when they said Ties That Bind was SOOO big they had to make into 2 parts. They were also confident when they said how the 400 Days characters would play a huge role in Season 2...yeah that really happened didn't it (sarcasm)
To be fair, there is evidence and statements that those were indeed the case/plans to some extent around the time they said them, but things changed.
Well... if I recall correctly they said "it was so big it had to be split into two" a few weeks before release. Why would anyone would cut a whole one or two hours (presumably) or change huge things so close to release?
Was it? I honestly don't remember.
Anyway, given even Ms. Hutchinson expressed surprise at how short the episodes were after she played them, I can only assume those cuts were indeed made very late in the finalizing processes.
That was the pre-CEO-change TellTale Games. Are you really surprised by this? Consider that fans were able to render the slaughterhouse interior, the slaughter house was reused for background purposed at the junkyard, IIRC there were cut lines in the game files associated with the cut content, several other game file stuff fan unearthed, what DabigRG said about Melissa Hutchison reaction to "Ties That Bind: Part 1", and other things I forgot to mention. Old school TTG made their games "live" up until the last minute. I bet with TFTBL, that last minute was very literal a la submitting-homework-at-11:59PM last minute.
I strongly agree with the OP, this needs to be the main focus going in for each episode. To ensure it's at least 2 hours, MINIMUM. As TFS for Clementine, I'd expect them to go all out and make it their longest game ever over the shortest amount of episodes, but that's just me being overly optimistic.
I've been recently replaying S1 with the newly acquired knowledge about all the cutting room floor cuts and I just can't wrap my head around it. No game should have to consider cutting scenes that are vital to character development. Ben, Jolene, Lee's flashback about his wife are just a few of the many.
IMO, ANF could've been awesome had they just taken their time and combined the original plot with the latter. It could've been about revenge and restoring the idea of a 'Team Family' much like what was originally the fabric of the TV show's 'Atlanta Five'. ANF simply needed to be longer, perhaps like MCSM S1 was handled.
As excited as I am for TFS for Clementine, I can't help but remain tepid until E1 arrives. I'd rather not get my hopes up. I'm aware of the unofficially addressed "Road To Survival Leak", Jesus 'possibly' returning is bleh. If anything, it does make me curious as to if they've been pulling a Gimple to mislead us this entire time about not having any backstory [Finding AJ/McCarroll Ranch, the Garcias & VA settlement]. Why spoil anything?
lol I've been playing the games this long, it's been a part of my life for years, and like I'm gonna not buy the final season just because the episodes might be short?
But the fact that we're only getting 4 episodes is worrying, then again, maybe it means they will be fairly packed 4 episodes. But I doubt it.
Lol, I just noticed that now.
i agree the episodes should be 2 hour long in lenght althought i would make an exception for that in case Telltale does a multiple pathway episode like the season finale of the enemy within where only one scene remained unchanged thoughtout the entire episode.
I'm not worried, but then again walking dead has been super inconsistent with episode lengths sometimes for the better or worse, but they really do seem super supportive this time around. I'm one of the few crazies who greatly enjoyed ANF, but it of course had its flaws one being length and lack of exploration. I think 100-120 mins is the least I'd ask for, but I'm even feeling this time around with the extension on exploration we could see a 2.5 hour long episode.
Dont defend them dude! The worst thing anyone can do is say a certain thing will be seen in the game and then they change their minds last minute. I do not think that’s fair at all