All good things come to an end. But what can telltale really do with new power?
CapnJay
Banned
As we all know eventually TTG will stop making episodic games for the 360. ALL companies that make games for the 360 will. They're phasing it out so Xbox one will be the new 360 and Xbox Alpha or whatever crap the new one will be called will be the new Xbox One. it's the way the world works or we'd all still be playing nintendos and sega genesis. But what will Xbox One, PS4, and PCs be able to do [other then shinier graphics] that the 360 can't? Will TTG be able to make less linear games where choices actually severely change thingsand its not just more then one ending but one persons episode 2 might revolve around a murder mystery in frosty bay while another persons might revolve around vacation in sunny florihamaexicocun all because of different paths they chose?
Comments
I'm sure not.
Telltale tries to give all fans an amazing story and keep them in the same boat. It would be not very interesting if in episode 2 'TWD', some people stayed on the farm of St. John's, while others fought off an attack of bandits were captured.
Only first part of the fans would enjoy intrigue and character development.
They need a new engine, really. It's pretty ancient.
I'm not sure. We'll have to find out.
This is the correct answer.
The 360 is not what is holding Telltale back. Much more graphically intensive games, like GTA V, have run perfectly well on the 360, while Telltale's relatively simple games can barely keep up. I'm almost positive that the engine is to blame. Maybe it made sense to use an in-house engine ten years ago, but it's crystal clear that it just isn't cutting it anymore.
I don't see why they can't keep making games for PS3, PS4, Xbox One, Xbox 360, iOS and PC. For all the formats, it just means more money for them and more people to enjoy their games.
Wow I've learned stuff.
The more time passes, it actually doesn't mean more money for them. It coasts money to format their games for the PS£ and XBOX360, and every minute more people are ditching those consoles, and getting the newers ones (particularly since the price of the next gen platforms is decreasing pretty quickly).
But what can TTG do with an xbox one and a ps4 that they cant do with a 360 or ps3?
Moving to a new platform would be the only thing which could encourage them to make a new engine, so lots!
But whose to say if they decided to stop making games for the previous gen that their sales would plummet or decrease allot compared to when they sold games for the previous consoles? I think it's smart for them to wait a long time, the PS3 and Xbox 360 aren't dead yet and they still have many players.
They should use latest engines, like Unreal (which is free).
After watching Until Dawn interviews the developer was able to run software that allowed them to create the butterfly effect so your decisions branch off bringing in various other character traights, different music depending if you went left or right, it was all dynamic no clunky transitions etc so I think having more power will let them do more but it boils down to TT game engine which is jank at the moment.
Unreal would not be free for Telltale. If you sell a game made with Unreal, you have to pay 5% of any revenue over $3000. AFAIK, there aren't any good engines that would be completely free for a company like Telltale. I believe Unity has a flat fee, which would probably end up being a lot cheaper than the royalties that Unreal requires.
This is probably the biggest reason they're so reluctant to part with their own engine.
Telltale tries to keep their games playable on as many platforms as possible, which is why they'll always continue to use an engine that can be easily ported to both low powered and high powered devices.
Just because Telltale uses an engine that supports lower end systems doesn't mean that they don't improve them when going into the next generation (and it also doesn't mean that Telltale will always continue to support the same old devices as they improve the engine - PCs and Macs as well as iOS devices that used to be able to play Telltale's games with no hiccups no longer play them due to the gradual increase in graphics capability of the Telltale Tool). Take a look at their game for the PlayStation 2, and compare it to their current games for example:
That was two generations ago, and there's no doubt that there is a huge improvement in the Telltale Tool, as far as graphics go (as well as other places too, such as in the sound engine and control scheme). Once the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 are phased out, we'll be seeing similar improvements in their engine.
I think TTG needs to hire professional writers, i think people are more interested in the story/gameplay , then how crisp the graphics are. I don't think they need to update the graphics, i personally like the art style, but its all internal choice. Look at Watch Dogs. A good looking game, with shitty gameplay/story.
TTG games aren't triple A games, so its not fair to TTG to compare the two.
Really wish Watch Dogs was more like GTA in some ways. I can take the "reputation hit" for beating up civilians but it feels a little over the top to hack a civvies cell phone find out he's a sex offender walk up and put a few bullets in him.
I hated the fact you couldn't shoot civilians, you couldn't shoot while driving, the music in my opinion sucked, It was a complete and utter let down . This is the last ubisoft game i will ever buy. There was zero blood in the game, why. I want my games to show realistic damage, if i shoot someone in the head i want to see the battle damage. I don't want to see someone who is looking like they are sleeping., it ruins the immersion.
If all else fails, people can compare this (Telltale Texas Hold'em from 2004)...
to Telltale's more recent titles...
I think their writing is great, TWAU and TFTB as great examples, it's there engine that makes everything horribly linear no matter what you do (see Rhys and Sasha romance in borderlands). Life is Strange and Until Dawn has highlighted this for me recently (and i'm fairly new to the interactive story genre) but if telltale can't add dynamic relationships and story elements to their games then they will be quickly left behind and this seems engine related more so bad writing (GoT traiter aside :S).
To be fair you're supposed to be a vigilante. GTA games have you playing criminals and sleeping dogs has you undercover so random acts of violence wouldn't be uncalled for. it just happens that there are some criminals aidan doesnt feel taking his night stick to would help i guess.
In a game described as open world, i expect freedom to come with it. I hated the fact that you would fail stupid pointless missions because istead of "knocking" out the guy , you shot him. So stupid.
This so much !
You make it sound like the Telltale Tool is unique in this regard. Unity supports every single one of Telltale's current platforms, and more.
The fact of the matter is that the Telltale Tool has far worse performance with worse graphics than other games. Its utterly disgraceful for a company the size of Telltale to have these types of problems. They're doing it to save money and/or so they don't have to spend time changing their dev cycle. Simple as that.
The increase in graphical fidelity does more to support the argument that the Telltale Tool isn't cutting it anymore. I can play their old games on my PC without any stuttering, but not their newer games. I can also run much more complicated games, like The Witcher 3, just fine. That tells me that their engine can't handle the more detailed assets they're using these days.
Since the Telltale Tool is in-house, they can use it to port to new platforms easily, which they couldn't do with a 3rd party engine like Unity, as they'd have to wait for the engine's developer to add support. Telltale sometimes hits the ground running with new platforms if they get the support of the company before release (as they did with Sony and the Vita). This would not be possible without their own in-game engine, as the support would have been quite late, as Vita didn't get a Unity port until 2014.
They do need to optimize their games across platforms as their games don't run as well on some platforms as they do on others (they've had problems with this since the Sam & Max days), But, a new engine is not the answer, as no engine is plug and play across platforms, as they'd still need testing and optimization for each platform (for example, see the problems with the PC ports of console games by even the AAA developers), and that's never been Telltale's strong point. , There's even less of a chance of getting those optimizations if it's an engine that the team is not intimately familiar with.
With the terrible reception the Walking Dead Vita version got, they would have been better off waiting. I recall reading quite a few reviews calling it laggy to the point of unplayable. I'm really not sure what the point of getting it out to so many platforms is if they quality is terrible. Other than profitability of course.
Did you ever try contacting Telltale support? If your computer is beyond the minimum specifications of Telltale's games, and there is stuttering, there's a possibility that there's something else going on there rather than the engine, since stuttering is not normal with Telltale's games on PC platforms that exceed the minimum specs.
Even if they did wait for Unity, they'd still have to wait for the build to come out, then for the team to get up to speed on Unity. And then there would still be optimization issues as the game just doesn't automatically run on Unity for every platform flawlessly out of the box. If they don't do the optimization on their own engine that they know like the back of their hand, they certainly aren't going to do it on an engine that they don't have intimate familiarity with. if they switched to Unity, the development time between episodes would be even longer since the team doesn't have over 10 years of familiarity with that engine, and it would be even harder for them to make the necessary optimizations.
What they need to do is work on optimizing the code they create of and using the Telltale Tool, and they do seem to be doing that, although, admittedly, they do need to do more. They are getting more stable as they're going on (there were a lot less problems reported in the support forums for Tales from the Borderlands and Game of Thrones than The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us, so it seems that they're slowly improving).
Telltale keeps growing, so hopefully the influx of staff will keep going to the development side to make sure that the team gets even more optimization support in the future (this is a catch-22, as they need time to optimize, but people get mad the longer the episodes take to get released). Hopefully they'll find a happy medium that lets them do the right amount of optimizations for what they deem an acceptable amount of development time (they don't have a company as big as Square Enix behind them, so they don't get the liberty of getting a big publisher's Q&A department in addition to their own like Life is Strange does, but there should be a nice middle ground that they can find for a mid-range developer),
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