14 DAY TRIAL // The development team at Telltale Games says that one of the biggest problems it had to deal with when working on the Second Season of The Walking Dead was the relative paucity of characters that could be brought back, considering how the finale of the first season played out.
Kevin Bruner, one of the developers working on the adventure game, is quoted by Polygon as saying during the SXSW event that, “The books explore a lot of survivor stories, and they're pretty brutal about what can happen to principal characters that you care about. So, it seemed like a really interesting thing for us to do as game-makers and storytellers, and it also seemed like the right thing to do for the Walking Dead universe.”
Basically, Telltale had to change the characters included and their core identities without affecting the main lore of the narrative they had established.
Meanwhile, Clementine had to move from a supporting role in the first season to the position of protagonist in the second one.
The developers add, “That was not an easy problem to solve. Because there are so many memorable characters in season one — just hitting the rest button? We try not to just go, ‘Boop, new game’. It just didn't fit the series to be like, ‘It's a completely new thing’.”
Before season two was launched, Telltale experimented with new characters in the standalone 400 Days downloadable game content, allowing players to get acquainted with some new faces and a smaller story.
Clementine was also empowered in order to become the emotional center of The Walking Dead, but the team managed to keep her vulnerable and build the entire narrative around her need to be protected.
The Walking Dead continues to be the most important episodic game series that Telltale Games is working on and the third episode of the second season should be launched shortly.
At the same time, the studio is working on the third episode of the new Wolf Among Us series, which is based on the Fables comic book universe.
The company is also busy working with the team at Gearbox on the Tales from the Borderlands series, which will offer an entirely new take on the familiar shooter universe.
And, finally, they are collaborating with HBO to create a complex game built around the Game of Thrones universe, as portrayed in the TV show of the same name, which is set to be launched before the end of the year.