This morning a group of investors shared that they’re reviving TellTale, the studio known for critically acclaimed narrative games including, but not limited to, The Walking Dead, The Wolf Among Us, and Tales from the Borderland. However, any announcement about the return of TellTale Games is a bit misleading.
The truth of the matter is that Jamie Ottilie and Brian Waddle, two men with a background in the video game industry, secured the rights to the company name. They also retained some of TellTales’s licenses such as The Wolf Among Us and its Batman titles, but lost many others. Skybound purchased the Walking Dead series in order to finish production of Season 4, and the shutdown cost TellTale licenses for franchises including Minecraft and Stranger Things.
Ottilie and Waddle stated that “some workers from the original Telltale Games will be offered freelance roles, with full-time positions possible in the future.” The Beat plans to run an editorial digging into what that means for the staff laid off last year and suggests about this new iteration of TellTale.
The return makes sense. TellTale’s backlist of games is valuable even without some of its marquee titles. This is very much a wait-and-see situation, as it will be months before any sort of production gets underway, if not longer. Fans and critics hope to eventually see the quality TellTale games are known for without the drama that surrounded them.
