Telltale Games’ ‘The Wolf Among Us 2’ Survives Cancellation–Gets More Bad News
Telltale Games has finally given fans of Wolf Among Us 2 some news about the upcoming game’s release. Bigby Wolf is still coming back!
The Wolf Among Us was developed by Telltale Games and released in 2013. The episodic game was based on Bill Willingham’s Fables. In the comic, a group of mythical and legendary beings was exiled from their homes, and now they live in America. Players took control of the Big Bad Wolf, now known as Bigby, to investigate a series of murders in Fabletown. The game was well-received and a sequel was announced in 2017.
Telltale Games never got to release The Wolf Among Us 2 in 2018 or the delayed date of 2019. Due to mismanagement, Telltale Games had to close its doors and cancel all the projects it had planned. The Wolf Among Us 2 was officially canceled and the original development team was scattered to the winds. Luckily for Fables fans, LCG Entertainment bought the IP licenses for Telltale’s games. A Wolf Among Us sequel was officially announced at the 2019 Game Awards.
Wolf Among Us 2 Delayed (But Not Dead)
“I thought we were all supposed to have a fresh start here. I can’t change the past.” – Bigby Wolf
The new Telltale Games sat down with IGN to explain why it’s making the decision to delay the game till 2024. James Ottilie, CEO of Telltale Games, explained the main reasons. For one, the company is switching from Unreal Engine 4 to Unreal Engine 5. The swap was a team decision because many of the new features seemed worth the upgrade. Unfortunately, that would mean that a lot of the dev’s work would need to be redone.
“Making games is difficult and they need time to be right…And it doesn’t do any of us any good to ship something that’s not ready.”
We’ve made the difficult decision to delay The Wolf Among Us 2 #TWAU2.
To give more context, we spoke with IGN: https://t.co/afoCUHZwIy pic.twitter.com/KhrAfIrwYB
Advertisement— Telltale Games (@telltalegames) March 1, 2023
Ottlie understands that the delay is disappointing to fans who’ve been waiting for 6 long years. There were only 2 ways to meet the 2023 release date. One of them would be to release the game unfinished and patch it later.
“If we put this game out and it’s not ready, we’re going to get torn to shreds,” “The expectations are pretty high, and we want time to meet those and we want to be proud of it and know that, ‘Hey, this is the best game we could have made.’ Let the world say what they will [once] it’s done, but at least we know that in these times, in these conditions, this is the best game that we could make.”
The other option? Something every developer is avoiding these days.
No Crunch!
The other option would be to force the developers to “crunch” until it was done. The game will still be released in episodes like all Telltale Games before it. This probably would be more doable except for one thing. They are working on the entire game at once instead of making each episode at a time. Forcing the 2023 release would involve a ton of crunch more than before which would burn out the newly assembled team.
Burnout is a very serious thing when it comes to any job and crunch is what helped burned out and end the original Telltale Games. Ottlie had a lot to say about avoiding crunch and why it was important.
“I’ve done [crunch], and I don’t want to do it again, and it’s not fair to ask it,” “You can’t plan a business around it. So yeah, part of it is about maintaining a healthy work culture. We don’t want to burn out our good people. It has been incredibly difficult to recruit the last two years between COVID and the labor markets and the growth in the games industry. So certainly, burning people out or grinding them down is the wrong thing to do long-term. It’s not how you build a business. And as an industry, we’re terrible about it. We burn our people out. We burn our best people out faster. And as an industry, if we’re going to continue to grow, we have to stop it. We just have to stop doing it and make better choices.”
via Telltale Games
The game delay is a noble one and I applaud them for making that decision. Telltale Games has a second chance at life by avoiding the mistakes of the past to produce quality games. Telltale still has The Expanse game set to release in the summer, so anyone itching for that episodic goodness will be getting something soon. As for the Fables fans, this is a good time to re-read or read for the first time the comics released, including a Batman crossover last year, and re-play The Wolf Among Us to refresh yourself on what happened last time. It is a great series and I highly recommend any of it.
“Honey, I’m the Big Bad Wolf.” – Bigby Wolf
