When will Fables be released?
http://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/telltales-walking-dead-game-going-gold-soon-fables-planned-for-q3/
In related news, Connors also offered me an update on the progress of Telltale’s work on an adventure game adaptation of Bill Willingham’s Fables comic book series. It’s still very much happening and it’s actually a lot further along than you might think. The recent focus of Telltale’s press campaigning has not surprisingly been on The Walking Dead, but we’ll be seeing Fables very soon. In fact, the plan is to launch the game this year in Q3.
Expect to see Fables makes its first appearance at or around E3, with another look to follow, appropriately enough, at San Diego Comic-Con in July. Connors told me that there’s still some question as to what the title will be, as Fables fall close to a certain other, familiar franchise. The developer set Fables for a Q1 2012 release in an announcement early last year (via Joystiq), but it seems that those plans have changed.
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Hopefully we'll see it around September/October.
Jurassic Park in April.
The Walking Dead in Fall 2011.
Law and Order in 2011 (they never got more specific than that).
Fables in Q1 2012.
They never said anything about King's Quest, but I assume it would've been late 2012.
And now...
Jurassic Park came out in November.
Law and Order came out in late December 2011 for iOS, just barely making the promised release year.
The Walking Dead's been pushed back to winter, and now spring.
Fables is coming out in Q3.
And now it seems likely King's Quest will have to wait until 2013.
I get the impression that the final episode of Law & Order will be released before the end of the month.
Maybe delayed to next year? I can't see it coming out before Walking Dead finishes up.
Telltale has historically been more active at Comic-Con and Pax Prime. We'll likely see news about Fables (and maybe King's Quest) there.
That's a given. They've been very quiet on that because they want to surprise us (in a good way). Hopefully by then they'll have a more concrete answer when the "When will it be launched?" question pops up from about two million places.
And no, nothing about Fable was announced there.
So... not really much of a "given" is it?
You have no bloody clue what your talking about.
Sorry, I got misread Comic-Con for PAX Prime. With that error in mind, I hope what I said makes sense.
I do hope so! It's all about Walking Dead, from what we've heard so far. I know it's their big franchise at the moment and they should be very proud of what they've done with it but Horror isn't my thing, Fantasy is.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxUEoxQZSRY
I went to PAX Prime, and the official Telltale focus was definitely on The Walking Dead rather than any upcoming licences. I'm sure they'll get their turn though!
That would make sense, but it sounds like they won't have completed episode 1 before November. I think all we can hope for is a pre-Xmas teaser trailer and the hype machine to start around the same time.
They can't tack a full blown trailer on episode 5 as a video, because that would be too much to download; and they can't render it in the Fables engine, because that would be even more to download.
But a hint or first picture, we've had that before at least in the ToMI-S&M3 transition. I think they might do something like that...
Welcome! We like people with this kind of info here.
wow, so many grammar issues.. sorry about that! I think I've grown accustomed to my iPhone just auto-correcting for me...
Vainamoinen, your avatar looks wizened.. could you tell me what TTG has done, historically? Have they waited until promotion for the physically collected version of a game dies down before sharing a release date for the next game? If the collected Walking Dead comes out in November, are you saying there might be a hint of what's to come leaked at that point? Is there a standard time between releases?
I'm new to TTG: dabbled in Jurassic and BttF, but am completely hooked on The Walking Dead.. and an avid avid avid reader of Fables...
There is no standard time between releases.
Things are changing for Telltale, and I expect a lot of yesterday's things to not repeat. But I also think that they'd rather accelerate than slow down.
What I loved about earlier Telltale games was that any franchise could be suddenly announced and only three months later you could have the first episode. Times have changed - with the simultaneous announcement of several franchises at once in February 2010, some of which have not yet seen the light of day, Fables among them.
Then there was the plan to release episode 1 of Jurassic Park while the Back to the Future Season was still running - and they cancelled that idea only days from the intended release. So we really got mixed signals here about what Telltale wants to/can do, or what "traditions" were about to be changed.
I can imagine that a definite hint about the next game can be found at the end of TWD episode 5. TWD being a comic franchise just like Fables, it would fit to place it there. Even if there isn't, the first info for the next game will probably be out VERY soon. The TWD retail versions are a great bonus, but I doubt they'll be advertised to death while new and exciting things are afoot. Things are moving forward.
...also, I expect Mike to be VERY eager to finally open his mouth again about what he's been up to these last nine months.
Coincidentally, it's the 10th anniversary of Fables this year. It would be great to see the first episode come out in December in celebration.
And they should REALLY be going with their advertisements. This sub-forum is practically dead. Where's the action!?!
This would be true in any case if Telltale were a company with one release every year, but special circumstances apply to their their episodic concept. There might already be screenshots and even videos around for presentation, but they might be held back to not get in the way of the continuous release of The Walking Dead. I also don't think we'll have a first episode by December, but don't rule out the possibility too quickly.
The Wallace & Gromit Season concluded on July 29th, 2009;
Tales of Monkey Island started 22 days earlier.
The announcement, however, had already been made and screenshots were shown.
If I really really had to guess, I'd say early March.
If the process is still the same as it was when Jurassic Park was released, future projects are developed with a small team, and then when the current game has been released, some people split off to join the next project in the pipeline and other people split off to join other future projects.
I've never been involved in developing an episodic game, but judging from experience in helping to develop retail games (to which Telltale's overall seasons are comparable), depending when it's going to be released, it's likely either at the beta stage or the prototype stage now. I'm sure they have the season arc set in stone by now, and probably have the script for episode one done (or at the very least, mostly done). As far as the game itself, they probably have the basics up and running, like the engine, and some placeholder art (or maybe even some final or near-final art if they're only months away from release). Sound-wise, Jared's likely at least got some scratch tracks done for the music. If it's releasing in the next few months, he might even have recorded the final (or near-final) tracks by now.
But I do think he probably hasn't yet started. TWD binds him in more capacities than just composer.
As far as how the team structure works at Telltale, like I said above, it was revealed during the time that Jurassic Park was in development that the team for a future project starts small and then grows once the current game finishes up.
As to why a game can still be in the prototype stage a year after it was announced to be in production, look at it this way: they have 100 employees (give or take), and they have 5 probable projects going on now (The Walking Dead, Fables, King's Quest, The Walking Dead Season Two, and Back to the Future Season Two). So, in the best case scenario, that's 20 people per team. However, the latest project (The Walking Dead) has more people on it (and so it should). So, if you figure that the current team has 40 people working on it, that leaves 15 people per team for the other projects. Now, when you consider that some of this staff includes the website developers, IT people, lawyers, business managers, and other non-gaming-related staff, that leaves the teams even smaller. So, you're probably looking at closer to 10 to 12 people per team for the future projects.