The Walking Dead's Final Season Is Announced Officially
On Friday, Telltale Games announced the fourth and the final season of their zombie apocalypse series. Telltale also announced that they will show 'The Walking Dead' game on April 6th at the PAX East convention. The panel will include several members of the team including developers and voice actresses of Melisa Hutchinson, Clementine, etc.
The developers will also take questions on the upcoming season on a live stream session. The stream will be aired on the Skyboard Twitch Channel from 2:00 PM to 03:00 PM on April 6. It is not declared yet but presumably, the game will be available for Xbox One, PS4, Nintendo Switch, PC & Mac.
Toxic Workplace
Things don't appear to be going so well at the Telltale due to an unpopular boss and a toxic work environment. It is leading to a creative stagnation and developers are not happy with the atmosphere. Kevin Bruner, the CEO of Telltale is considered to be a creative bottleneck and a micromanager. He has created an atmosphere of fear which is making the creative team unhappy.
The developers are also reported to be suffering from the burnout due to workload. Telltale has worked on so many games throughout the years and developers are bearing all the strain.
With a number of sub-par releases and not getting enough sales, Telltale laid off a number of employees.
Crunch Culture
Telltale is no exception when it comes to employees working long hours every day. The former employees of the company reported working 14-18 hours every day without getting a day off for weeks.
Episodic Nature Of Games
The Telltale's titles have an episodic nature and the development cycle is a constantly turning wheel. As soon as developers finish working on one episode of the game, they need to start working on the next episode.
The company has to make sure that they don't cause too much delay in releasing the next title as it can disengage the players. We can expect the first episode of the season to land at some point of this year.
Set The Industry Standards
The Walking Dead series made Telltale extremely popular among the gamers. We have been following the story for five years.
Walking Dead has set the standards for the industry when it comes to choosing-your-own-adventure mechanics. The players are spoiled with choices that can have an actual impact on the narrative.
End Of The Story
The Telltale games have decided to bring an end to their story. Garry Whitta who co-wrote the story for Season one's episode four will also return during the last season. Telltale will reveal more about the final season at PAX East. If you want to attend the reveal or tune in online, it will be aired on April 6th, 12:30 PM to 01:20 PM. The event will take place at the Albatross Theater.
Greg Miller will host the show along with members of the team. Melissa and Clementine will also be on the stage to answer the questions of the audience. The team will do a retrospective on the whole series taking you back to the beginning of Clementine's journey.