What happened to the Season 1 writers and directors?
So I heard one of them started his own company and made Firewatch
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So I heard one of them started his own company and made Firewatch
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Jake Rodkin and Sean Vanaman are the two big ones that left. Vanaman was the lead writer, Rodkin was the lead designer. They also both spear-headed the overall story of the season. They were kinda like a tag-team duo.
They left because they wanted to do their own thing. It's not that they got fired, or got fed up with Telltale, they simply had ambition that they wanted to follow. So they formed Campo Santo, and got to work on Firewatch.
They're the only two team members that really left, though. Basically every other writer, director, and designer that worked on S1 worked on S2 as well, and most of them are still working at Telltale to this day. The only other designer that I can remember that left Telltale was Harrison Pink, but that was after S2. Maybe there were more, but that's the only guy I can immediately remember.
Telltale should do everything in their power to bring them back for S3. This game has become a waste of time the moment they left.
Amen.
i remember seeing a game of the year award on ebay for TWD....,they won't come back but were just left with beautiful memories
Telltale's director of design during The Walking Dead, Dave Grossman (who was the lead designer of Sam & Max: Season One and Two, Back to the Future: The Game, Tales of Monkey Island, and also a writer on several episodes, lead writer of The Wolf Among Us, and director of writing for The Walking Dead: Season Two) also left after The Walking Dead: Season Two.
It's unlikely that Sean and Jake will contract with Telltale again as they own their own company now, but some people have been outside contractors with Telltale after leaving the company. Chuck Jordan (who was the lead writer and co-designer of Sam & Max: Season Two, and writer of all three Sam & Max seasons and Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People) left Telltale in 2010. He has worked as an outside contractor for writing since then, working on the story for "Starved for Help".
They're kill
Remembers the good old days
Jordan was also one of the four writers for Episode 2 of Tales From the Borderlands.
What's Firewatch? Is it as good was TWD Season 1?
game trailer
wait wut?
For those who were wondering why Jake and Sean left, they gave an interview with Kinda Funny (while promoting Firewatch) where they explain why they wanted to move on from Telltale and try something new. Obviously nothing bad happened between them and Telltale, but it's an interesting watch if you want to hear it straight from the horse's mouth.
[Start at 6:25]
Kinda Funny Discussion with Jake and Sean
And everyone basically wants them to come back so they can work on something old
If it's such a waste of time , why are you on a forum about a game that you don't like?
ironic
I disagree, I personally still find this game very enjoyable, if they can't get the old writers back then they should pick some new ones, regardless of who the writer is there will be people who love it and people who hate it.
I'm here because I'm a fan of the 1st season.
Isn't there some way they could make a brief return to Telltale to work on season 3 while still manage to run Campo Santo? Edit: oh well, it's probably too late now, season 3 is already deep in developing.
Season 2 had too many writers and a too small team. Maybe telltale could borrow the season 1 development team for one last game
How can a team be both too small and too big?
The only people that left Telltale between Season 1 and 2 were Vanaman and Rodkin, everyone else that worked on Season 1 stayed and worked on Season 2. Mark Darin, Sean Ainsworth, Dennis Lenart, Harrison Pink, Pierre Shorette, and several others all worked on Season 1 and 2 respectively. Chuck Jordan, while he no longer works at Telltale, has worked on both seasons of the game to an extent as well. The only real change was the addition of Nick Breckon, who joined Telltale in early 2013 and is a personal friend of Vanaman in real life. It was virtually the same exact team of people, with a few changes. In fact, Tales From the Borderlands had even more writers and designers than Season 2 of TWD (many of which were on both games), and yet people (myself included) say that Tales is Telltale's best game. For Season 2, you had:
Tales had:
God knows I'm probably missing a bunch of other people, but clearly S2 having too many writers was not the problem.
And no, they are not going to comeback for one last game, they have moved on and started their own thing and Telltale, who is doing completely fine without them, isn't going to ask them to come back, so get over it.
If you watch my video above, you will see they are happier doing their own thing anyways and aren't really interesting in going back to a bigger company. It's better to let them do their own thing if their hearts aren't fully into it anymore like they were during Season 1.
I feel like everyone just uses Vanaman and Rodkin as a kind of positive scapegoat for why S2 sucked. They're the only two that left the company, clearly it is solely because of this fact that S2 was bad.
S1 hinged so much on these two guys and it totally would have sucked completely if they didn't work on it
It only got 90 game of the year rewards because of these two guys
It was only popular because of these two guys
That's also why Tales, TWAU, Minecraft and GoT are all crap
It's why Batman will suck
It's why Super Show will suck
It's why Michonne will suck
It's why S3 will suck
It's why the Marvel game will suck
It's why the other unannounced series will suck
It's also totally why all of Telltale's games prior to TWD were never popular... and sucked
It's totally NOT for other reasons than two people leaving
Besides, Vanaman and Rodkin worked on Firewatch, and while it's gotten good reviews, I don't see everyone and their mother yelling about it being GOTY yet
If these guys are the demigods that you people make them out to be, why isn't Firewatch being heralded as the best game of the year yet, huh?
I cannot be the only one here that thinks this whole line of thinking is fucking ridiculous, right?
Too many fricken writers still. Tales from the borderlands had so many writers because that was a game that needed so many writers. Most of tftb writers knew borderlands and I even think they stoked on borderlands games
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@metallicarules you need tonfrickenntakeachillpillyouaresoannoying
I think you just broke him, @MetallicaRules
What do you mean, @metallicarules you are so annoying to everyone, almost everybody takes advantage of me. I am so sick of being treated like someone's doormat.
Okay, it is just you, but please, do not push my buttons
Do you need to reply to me 3 freaking times? Just edit the original comment so my inbox isn't overflowing with your nonsense.
And the writers for TWD didn't know TWD? You think Telltale would assign a writer to a certain series if they didn't know anything about it? What, you're sick of people telling you how you're constantly wrong, yeah I would be too if I were you. You criticize others for being rude and a smart ass to you, meanwhile you go around on the Minecraft forums saying how the game sucks, or demanding Telltale bring back two people who left to start their own company. You're the one that needs to learn some manners.
I think I did too.
I'm sorry, I know I should not lose it at people. But, I just really need people to respect my opnion and just not try to disagree agressably with my ideas. Just try to stay calm, please.
But you're the one that states the opinion as a fact, or you post your opinion at inappropriate moments or when it has nothing to do with the discussion at hand. When you say how Minecraft sucks in the Episode 5 waiting thread, that's not the place to put it, you don't say why it sucks, you don't word it as your opinion, you do it to simply start controversy. When you say something like TFTBL writers knew Borderlands and TWD writers didn't, you state it as fact, but provide no information to back it up. You make baseless or fallacious claims all the time, and when someone points you to information that proves you wrong, you claim that they're disrespecting your opinion. False claims aren't opinions, they're false claims.
But I hate it when people rudely disagree with me. Just do not try to be rude about it
You aren't the only one, and the lengths people will go through to dismiss games before/after Season 1 are ridiculous.
I saw someone before criticize one of the writers for having prior been a forum moderator elsewhere before joining Telltale and using that as an excuse to why the writing sucked, but Jake Rodkin of all people first joined Telltale as a paid moderator/online community person in their earlier days.
In another case, MetallicaRules pointed out to someone that many writers who worked on Season 2 went on to write for Tales. The person dismissed that by saying that just because someone is a good writer in comedy, it doesn't mean that they should try other genres. However, Jake and Sean both wrote comedy games long before Walking Dead, which was their first drama game.
It just goes to show that people will go to far lengths to find someone or something to scapegoat.
What's also funny is how people will criticize Telltale for only sticking to popular franchises, but most of those people only know Telltale in the first place from Walking Dead or some game after that became popular because it was from the same studio as Walking Dead.
The whole point of a forum is to share your opinions with other people and discuss their opinions with each other. Here, we do ask people do discuss their opinions civilly, but that doesn't mean that people are not allowed to disagree or constructively criticize what you say or why you hold an opinion. People are allowed to say your reasoning for having an opinion is wrong, as long as they do so respectfully.
@Telltalerocks, please behave and try to keep discussion civil. People are allowed to disagree with you as long as discussion is civil. People are allowed to constructively criticize the reasoning behind why you think something just as you are allowed to constructively criticize others. However, note the emphasis on civil and constructive discussion.
Thanks.
Why do you always pick on me and not anyone else. Stop flagging my comments, some of them are standing up to people that are acting rude to me and everyone else, ever since I have came to this forum, everyone just disagrees with me and talks about me behind me back.
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Keep in mind, when I leave a public warning, that's usually after I flagged comments - which means, the offending comments are not visible.