Grave Gamer News & Views — telltale games

To Live and Die on Pandora: Tales From the Borderlands Gets Trailer’d!

Behold, minions! The first long-length look at Telltale’s next not-Walking Dead thing! Based on the trilogy(ish) of loot n’ shoot titles from Gearbox, Tales From the Borderlands is an episodic adventure that follows a Hyperion pencil-pusher seeking a leg up in a Skag-eat-Skag world.

Setting foot the rough terrain of Pandora...

Telltale's The Walking Dead: Season Three Announced at SDCC

If you’re a fan of big budget superhero movies and giant monsters, this year’s San Diego Comic-Con, as expected, delivered. But it’s those unexpected surprises that turn out to be the best treats.

One such treat was the confirmation made by Telltale co-founder Kevin Bruner that, yes indeed, a third season of their heart-punching adventure game The Walking Dead is underway.

Even with Season Two just barely into its finale, the soon-to-be-released “No Going Back,” the series massive success has guaranteed a return to the studio’s comic-adapted apocalypse. As with any good confirmation, we have absolutely no details on Season Three – no characters, no story info, no date.

The project joins Telltale’s growing catalog of upcoming episodic games including Tales From the Borderlands, a joint undertaking along with Gearbox Software, and Game of Thrones, a title that draws inspiration from the best genre show in television history this side of Firefly.

Is Game of Thrones Receiving the Telltale Treatment?

In the last few years Telltale Games has made a name for itself by accomplishing the impossible: Creating worthwhile licensed games.

Plowing through a rough start – Back to the Future: The Game was an enjoyable if hollow experience while their adaptation of Jurassic Park tried its very best to make you fucking hate Jurassic Park – Telltale has nailed their formula down to a science, churning out catch-you-off-guard critical hits such as The Wolf Among Us and The Walking Dead: Season One.

If IGN’s sources are on the money, it now seems the Californian studio wants to travel to Westeros, adapting George R.R. Martin’s eloquently scribed, punishingly brutal high fantasy series, A Song of Ice and Fire, into a new adventure game (more than probably, anyway).

Well, they might be. Or they might be adapting the inescapably popular HBO series, Game of Thrones, into an adventure game. At this stage, and without an official title, it’s unclear how much influence the new game will draw from the television series, if at all. If The Walking Dead is any indicator, Game of Thrones: The Game (my stupid tentative title for it) may present a wholly new story set in the universe of the original fiction – in this case, George R.R. Martin’s vision of Westeros, including the hulking super throne illustrated above.

Telltale’s official statement on the matter is that it has no official statement on the matter. It’s not like their plate isn’t full as is, either. Currently, their team is headlong into development for both The Wolf Among Us - Episode Two and the second, majorly awaited season of The Walking Dead: The Game. Still, the notion of marrying Martin’s engaging character and too-good-to-pull-away storytelling work with Telltale’s immersive, panic inducing “Choose Or Die” gameplay has me seriously anxious.

But if Winter is truly coming, given Telltale’s schedule, we’ve got a while before first snow.

Clem is the Star of The Walking Dead: Season Two

Telltale has gone on record to confirm Clementine, your adolescent companion and inarguably the emotional anchor of Season One, is the playable lead in The Walking Dead: Season Two.

We pick up months after the incredibly somber, soul mincing events of Season One. Clem has been travelling by her lonesome, fending against the undead in the ruins of our cities as well as the living left ruined by them.

In her search for safety, Telltale promises “you will be tested by situations and dilemmas” that measure your morality just as much as your will to survive. Just when you thought it was safe to play a video game without having your emotions strung through the ringer.

The choice driven gameplay that brought the first season critical acclaim returns, and the narrative will be affected from the get-go by choices made both in Season One and the short expansion 400 Days. I’m glad Telltale seems to be locking the story into one perspective instead of several like in 400 Days, but given the amount of preamble the DLC’s cast received, count on them to return in Season Two in some sort of meaningful role.

The Walking Dead: Season Two will encompass another run of five episodes to be released across 2014 for PC, Xbox 360, PS3, and iOS. Missed out on TWD up until now? What in the handless Rick is wrong with you? Catch up on all of Season One plus 400 Days once The Walking Dead: Game of the Year Edition drops on November 11th.

Pop your rotting eyes back in and watch Season Two’s Teaser Trailer!

The success of Telltale’s Walking Dead games doesn’t rest squarely on the comic branding, nor did gamers go crazy about the first five episodes because of a loose tethering to the AMC show hanging in their mind.

Telltale’s Walking Dead was its own monster; a licensed game that carved its own path deep into gamers’ psyches by forcing us to shed the voyeuristic barrier of comfort that comes in merely watching these characters suffer by putting us right beside them, by making us choose their fates, usually within no more than a moment.  Hard choices are nothing new this generation; Bioware solidified that idea through the mainstream success of their Mass Effect games.  But whereas Sheperd’s dilemmas were often clearly laid out in black and white (or red and blue), The Walking Dead demanded you navigate its conversation webs with your own moral compass.