When it comes to Telltale Games, the studio has an interesting history. It’s gained a massive following for its adaptations of popular IPs into adventure games. However, with the final chapter of The Walking Dead came to fruition, the studio was forced to close its doors. Fortunately, fans of the franchise saw the completion of the game thanks to Skybound Games, but that left others a bit disappointed that Telltale Games’ other projects would never see the light of day. Fortunately, it wasn’t too long that another company, LCG Entertainment, stepped in and brought Telltale Games back from the dead.
This announcement also came shortly after the reveal of The Wolf Among Us 2 was heading into development. Fans of the first installment would get a new thrilling adventure game, but we knew that this game was early in production. In fact, it seems that some obstacles presented themselves afterward that further hurt development. Of course, I’m referring to the pandemic that caused so many other studios to struggle with development and new setbacks to hiring staff. According to an interview with IGN, Telltale Games CEO Jamie Ottilie noted that if they had known a pandemic was in store, there might have been some second guesses about revealing The Wolf Among Us 2.
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.
Jamie Ottilie – IGN
But the studio seemingly needed a solid IP for the reveal to help secure funding. Now that we’re in 2023, the year that The Wolf Among Us 2 was slated to release in, Jamie Ottilie has unveiled that the studio has delayed the game. Apparently, there was a push to bring the production of the game onto Unreal Engine 5, which meant certain aspects of the game had to be redone for the new engine. This prompted the development studio to make a choice, either push on and try to get the game out this year or delay it to likely a 2024 release.
According to the report on IGN, the choices for bringing it out this year didn’t make sense for the company. They would either release an unfinished game that would have been torn to shreds or force their employees into a crunch. Crunch culture is not healthy, and it’s very much criticized when other studios push their employees into burning out on production. To avoid this, the studio simply opted to push the game back and ensure that it’s able to deliver the best product possible for fans.
