Telltale competitors appearing. Will TT survive them?
Let's face it: until now there were no real episodic companies out there other than TT.
But things are gonna change.
Here are 2 upcoming series that use the episodic formula:
1 - Dreamfall Chapters: 5 new episodes starting from november of the famous Longest Joutney/Dreamfall saga, with choice&consequence system. It uses the new Unity engine. Trailer: .
2 Life is Strange:. From the developers of Remember Me, it's an adventure that will run for 5 episodes, each episode scheduled after 2-4 weeks from the previous. Gameplay trailer: .
Do you know any other TTG-style episodic adventure coming? Do you think TTG can lost its market supremacy when facing with competitors? What are the stronger points of TTG and where instead it can lose the comparison?
Comments
Dreamfall Chapters has only recently announced that it's going to be episodic. Of course that strengthens the comparison to Telltale's games. On the other hand, in exactly those areas of game mechanics which Telltale wants to be their very own strength, Dreamfall Chapters will foreseeably surpass Telltale's present efforts by miles.
The hubs or gamespaces are rather large, exploration is a key interactive principle, the character interaction is in the clear foreground and optional dialog lines reportedly border on the excessive. Choices and consequence supposedly present a varied bunch that seldom hits the "all important" panic button. Pacing is left to the player more often than not.
And of course, there are puzzles. As reported right now, extreeeeemely light puzzle stuff, which is a huge bummer and possibly even tiresome. A good portion of juicy challenge could drive Chapters to perfection.
can't we play both, its not like TWD is a long game. In a game drought that is so bad.
We've got Walking Dead, we are set for life.
Yeah, I think Dreamfall could land on the territory that Telltale "betrayed" (and maybe that's why Dave&Mike left).
I would play it if they put David Fenroy in it and had him play a character called. "lee Evermett.
Your making the massive assumption that both Dreamfall Chapters: and Life is Strange be will successful. When the realty is until these games come out we want know if they will be much competition at all and if a better engine or graphics was all it took to beat Telltale than why is Quantic dreams and Beyond Two Souls not already on top. lol
By the end of the day it all comes down to the story and how well they tell it.
Dreamfall Chapters and Life is Strange could both end up being better made games than anything telltale has ever created but if players walk away feeling underwhelmed or disappointed by the story than its not going to make a difference
david cage learned that lesson the hard was lol
First of all, no, that is decidedly NOT all it comes down to. Especially narrative games need to man up and be games again. I'm not content with pressing a button every two minutes to suggest that somehow I have an influence on what is happening on screen. There has got to be more.
Second, story is certainly immensely important. But when I look at TWD's Season 2, I basically see the same story as in Season 1 with a few new names. A zombie story can be quite well made, but it's only ever just a zombie story. Infection, loss, escape, a few new people are met, there's some hope for security, then infection again, rinse and repeat. As brilliant as Season 1 was, in my opinion Telltale had reached the genre's limits with it. As to The Wolf among Us, there was some great potential that the hasty episodic schedule ruined to some degree; story coherence and closure took a grave dent, story threads that were obviously planned were cut down continuously. For Telltale, the potential to tell great stories has only just been a potential this last year.
Great hopes lie within Dreamfall Chapters' story. There are some really skilled writers on this team, and I would have no doubt that they would fare objectively better than TWD and TWaU recently did. But Red Thread Games are dealing with an extreme problem to get their story rolling and new fans in the boat: Chapters is a sequel. It's the second half to a game that came out eight years ago. And the unfinished story of that game was, to put it mildly, complex. The original Longest Journey game (1999) already introduced a difficult concept of twin worlds made complicated through a heap of interrelationships. Dreamfall (2006) made things infinitely more complex by setting yet another world into the picture, perpendicular to and with rather unclear interrelations to the existing two. In this diffuse setting, a dozen story threads have been dangling for eight years, including one extreme and one exemplary cliffhanger situation. As the 2006 half of Dreamfall has unfortunately failed in all its gameplay endeavours, new players should certainly not go back and play the old thing. But they will have to know the story to enjoy Chapters in 2014-2015. An interactive, recapitulating graphic novel 'app' was supposed to ease new fans into the experience. Right now, it seems as if RTG neither has the time nor the budget to do that graphic novel right. It's... a difficult start for them, really.
((I((First of all, no, that is decidedly NOT all it comes down to. Especially narrative games need to man up and be games again)))))
For Dreamfall Chapters and Life is Strange Yes the story is what it comes down to because they are not games bases on a comics, movies ,or tv shows that already have a huge fan base and if the story sucks don't expect people to stick around for the other episodes (well maybe some will for dreamfall since it a sequel to The Longest Journey)
oh by the way telltale strength is not "episodic gaming" this is is a myth
telltale real strength is that it has benefited from triple A companies abandoning licensed games over the last 10 years and leaving telltale as the go to company that movie studios or comic creators go to get games based on their property made.
put it this was way Dreamfall Chapters could be the best game of 2014 and it will still get crushed in sales by both game of thrones and tales from borderlands because they are games based on popular and well known license lol
It's pretty interesting to see other companies adapting the gameplay style of Telltale considering how much of a niche company Telltale used to be. I'm certainly looking forward to trying those titles. As much as I like the story in Telltale's new games, I agree with Vain that immersive gameplay is also important, so more gameplay variety and interpretations of the choice/consequence system will be cool to see. If even more games adapt this play style, it might even act as an incentive for Telltale to add additional gameplay elements and/or more notable consequences to choices.
I don't think a few choice/consequence games as competition will be a big obstacle for Telltale, but I hope that Telltale becomes incentivized to add more distinctive gameplay. Telltale is doing pretty good so far with their acquisition of more mainstream franchises, but I think they have exaggerated beliefs as to how casual players might feel alienated by gameplay that extends beyond dialogue selection.
That being said, I think that most people won't be too concerned about gameplay for these titles as their only exposure to the choice/consequence will be Telltale's newer titles with streamlined gameplay. If another developer can push the story telling medium forward and innovate the choice/consequence system by creating a gameplay style that focuses on gameplay and story simultaneously, I hope Telltale takes notice.
I don't get why Telltale isn't looking into multiple gameplay difficulties depending on what fits the franchise.
If they made a "cinematic" mode with their current gameplay style and 60/90 minute episodes and also added an "adventure" or "immersion" mode that contained more gameplay and longer episodes (again, depending on what fit the franchise and story), I think that would be the best of both worlds for Telltale. Wallace and Gromit, Tales of Monkey Island, and Sam and Max: The Devil's Playhouse were all good examples of titles that had great gameplay and still managed to have a cinematic presentation as well, so I imagine it wouldn't be out of the question for Telltale.
This. I think that having 2 modes would be good, but it's a production problem (it's almost like havind 2 products to arrange, to test, and to trim). The hubs are perfect, as I know the objectives but I can lay around a bit. I'm with you when you say that it must be true to the source material and I add it has to be coherent with the pacing of the game too. From this perspective TWAU was such a waste of potential investigative sections: the only one is the Toad "framing" one in ep.1, and I missed a good old map option where you can go in different places questioning people.
I also think that a better release schedule is also important: the "Life is Strange" team advertised that they'll release each episode every2/4 weeks. When I played TWAU ep.2 after four months I didn't remember anything.
BTW "Life is Strange" is made by Square Enix, not an indie dev.
It could become a really big competitor for TTG.
I hope in a quality escalation!
Yeah, I think that is pretty cool! Some of Telltale's appeal comes from their franchise selection so I don't see Telltale being too concerned. However, as I said previously, I hope the gameplay elements in competing games encourage Telltale to step up their act in terms of new gameplay elements.
Also, not that I'm a Doctor Who fan, but weren't rumors going around that an alleged survey was questioning what people would think of an episodic Choice and Consequence Doctor Who game on mobile systems as well?
Even if these games end up being more popular, I'll still always be a die hard Telltale fan.