Summary of Q/A's given on JDRF Wolf Stream with AdHoc
Nick Herman wants more branching and interactive action scenes, like they set out to do with season one before budget issues
Wolf Season 1 was more adventure game-like originally like pre-TWD series, but shifted more to include less long tedious puzzles similar to TWD s1 throughout the course of the season.
Jurassic Park despite being the Dark Horse of Telltales library, paved the way for TWD s1’s gameplay elements that made up future installments. They get why people made fun of it.
Wolf’s development was completely based off fan reception of The Walking Dead
Nick and Dennis did not read the comics prior to development, but got into them while working on it, similar to how TWD did not have a TV show but they started watching it as it premiered mid-development
AdHoc guys are disconnected from Gearbox team. They purposely set up Fiona and Rhys to be used by Gearbox but it was never a guarantee they would be used in BL3. They’re satisfied to see Rhys and Vaughn used. The Telltale devs were happy to change tones from TWD/TWAU to Borderlands.
Nick bought BL3 but couldn’t bring himself to play it, the example given is being sick of Pizza after working at a Pizza Parlor. Dennis mentions how he was a huge Back To The Future fan in high school, but couldn’t watch any of the movies for 6 years after working on BTTF:The Game for so long.
Dan says working with the LCG guys like Jaime and Bryan is great, and that they recognize working with the old people from Telltale is a must. “No red flags” as Nick says it.
Tons of discussions were had with potential IP for Telltale Games that never got made. It was at the point where they would have to say no to IP owners. This doesn’t line up with Kent Mudle saying that Batman s2 was only made because they couldn’t get any other IP. I’m pretty sure they were referring to the time period right after The Walking Dead
They thought the fake Wolf 2 leaks looked terrible and didn’t understand why people thought they were real.
They don’t think that they can answer any questions about Poker Night. They love Sam and Max and joked that they peaked including them.
Adam Harrington was found by Telltale from TWD 102, that’s how they found him for Wolf.
Bay Area Sound/ Jared E.J. are working on getting more Telltale soundtracks on Spotify,citing Batman and Wolf. “but seriously, I'm hoping it will be happening for all of these soundtracks, and it's looking hopeful for several of them.”
Detective Brannigan was originally a much bigger piece of the series. She was removed since Dennis, Nick and most of the people who worked on Brannigan were moved to other projects.
Telltale can track stats for ANY choice including small dialogue prompts.
When asked if Wolf 2 is out of pre production: “It’s safe to say we are making a video game.”
Scene with hiding the Woodsman corpse hiding was removed because it felt too similar to old adventure games. They wanted to move away from using Monkey Island-like puzzles.
Eric Stripe got his job at telltale by making his own point and click adventure game and submitting it, it was played by tons of Telltale employees and they all like it.
Telltale Tool isn’t very user friendly, hence why it was never released to the public by old Telltale. Employees struggled with it for around the first 3 months.
Banang is hidden in every Telltale Game. Except they’re not sure about Batman and GOTG. It’s on a barrel in GOT.
6 years ago, Nick tried making a Smash Bros style game with Telltale Ip, with Sam and Max playable. It didn’t work becuase it was in the Telltale Tool which was restrictive.they wish they could’ve used Unreal. They joke about how it would’ve been a legal nightmare with IP ownership.
Banang will be in Wolf season 2 (half-joke)
Comments
Just some corrections, "Dan" was also Nick.
Hiding the Woodsman was also cut for pacing.
Nick was the one who was making a Smash Bros style game
(and Im not sure about this, but im pretty sure they never named who made the point and click game)
I'm so glad they answered so many of my questions. I wish Pierre had been there too, I feel like he would've been a better candidate to ask about cut content seeing as how he wrote so much of it.
Other stuff that you missed:
Thats strange- I dont recall them specifically mentioning the year of Season 2 being an important factor.
It was at the very beginning of the stream before the opening credits. They said they forgot what year TWAU1 took place and had to go back and check for sure, but yeah, it's going to come up in s2 with some real world event coinciding with it.
Another thing of note: Drive was a big influence on season 1.
Thanks, I was preoccupied while jotting these down doing other work while listening to stream as background noise. There's probably lots of small things like these in my summary.
I'll have to go back and rewatch that once the stream can be viewed as a video. I was fairly certain they were talking about Season 1 team constantly forgot the year Wolf takes place in and always looked it up even though it didnt really matter. I dont recall them saying it would conspire with a certain real world event either. If this is right though, it is possible New Years is involved seeing the setting and for it to be an important for making sure your year is correct even if that isnt really connected to a "real world event" like the New York garbage strike for example, as it is still a real world event.
Yeah, it's right when the TELLTALE PRESENTS card shows up. I only remember it because I thought it was such a tease how they couldn't even give us a definitive year because they considered it a spoiler.
But do me a solid and check, Poogs. I feel like I'm going nuts here.
They also said that they hired 2 junior writers who are new to the industry with no resumes...
I wonder if Poogs was one of them... Hmm.....????
Wait there's one in GoT? Is there a screenshot of it or is this new info?
I’ve never heard about it until now.
I just checked. They didnt say that. All Nick said was they had to look it up because of Season 2 because its something they should just know making a sequel. You may have got confused as he said that a specific year overall isnt that important so, thats a no on Wolf 2 is coordination with a real world 1980s new york event.
...
this gets me hype : D
I don't understand either. They looked so awful.
This sounds AWESOME.
Poogs said they were real though. Albeit not done by Telltale. But concept art or something something.
I think Dennis and Nick were talking about the reddit leaks. I was really thinking about asking them about the Funlabs renders but that would have steered the discussion way too close to the original pre-cancellation Wolf 2, since that’s the version they seemed like they were for, and I didn’t want to make things awkward.
Im not sure what youre saying I said was real, but if youre talking about all these recent Telltale leaks like that blue Bigby hours before the game awards or tftbl Redux I didnt say those were real and have actually been pretty actively saying they arnt.
If youre talking about that original original chunky Bigby leak from 2018 then yes, that was very likely real. Everyone already kinda assumed that seeing how it was made by a company Telltale was partnered with.
(But looking back at that VGA Bigby leak, it def looks really fake, I think the main reason so many people bought into it was simply because a lot of us were assuming the VGAs would be an announcement and then that popped up like only a few hours before the event.)
I doubt they would actually know anything about that anyway seeing how that wasnt until Summer 2018 and they left February 2017. Solid year and a half of time between there.
Not sure I get what the sentence is supposed to be here.
I think they are referring to the beginning of Episode I, when Faith sticks the axe in the Woodman's head, and they just leave him along the street, and then the next time we look he's gone.
In episode 1 originally instead of the Woodsman running away into the night, a mundy cop shows up, and you would have to hide the Woodsman in a dumpster before the cop pulls up, then Bigby and Faith have to pretend to be boyfriend girlfriend and that Bigby cashed his car. The cop checks the place out to see if theres anything suspicious as you try to lie and keep that lie up, then he leaves, Woodsman is gone because he sneaked out, scene plays out normal between Faith and Bigby for the most part after that.
Was cut because he said it was a bit too much like an old school adventure game, and because (what I think is probably the more likely reason) pacing as it kinda slows everything down from what was happening before as well as not really having a reason to even exist in the first place as its kinda pointless to the story.
There was a cut hub where you'd hide the woodsman corpse, but it was a puzzle similar to what you'd see in Monkey Island or Sam and Max. AFter TWD s1 they shifted away from puzzles so it was removed.
Oh, thanks for clearing that up. @Poogers555
ᵃˡˢᵒ ᶦᵗ ᵐᵃʸ ʰᵃᵛᵉ ᵍᶦᵛᵉⁿ ᵃ ᵇᶦᵗ ᵒᶠ ʲᵘˢᵗᶦᶠᶦᶜᵃᵗᶦᵒⁿ ᶠᵒʳ ᵇᵘʸᶦⁿᵍ ᵃ ᵐᶦˡˡᶦᵒⁿ ᶦᵖˢ
I think a lot of Telltale's designers got hired after writing their own adventure games first. Mark Darin is another one. He wrote the free Nick Bounty games, which you can still download (at least parts 1 and 2) from http://www.pinheadgames.com/nick-bounty-1--2.html .
Mark Darin works for LCG/Telltale now? Haven't heard this yet.
(He means Mark was originally hired at Telltale back in the day because of his old Nick Bounty games)
Exactly.