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1 year ago
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Telltale has announced The Wolf Among Us 2 will no longer release in 2023, but has been delayed into 2024 as the development team switches from using Unreal Engine 4 to the latest Unreal Engine 5.
“We know, it’s frustrating to hear,” the studio wrote in a statement posted to Twitter. While The Wolf Among Us 2 was first announced back in 2019, the decision to announce it then was made without thinking a global pandemic would get in the way.
Speaking in an interview with IGN, Telltale’s chief executive officer Jamie Ottilie elaborated beyond what the statement provides, explaining that while the switch to Unreal Engine 5 is a main cause of the delay, avoiding burnout and not shipping an unfinished game are also part of the decision.
“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.”
Ottilie also speaks on how his version of Telltale will not fall into the same crunch habits of the old Telltale.
“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.”
Meanwhile, those waiting for a new Telltale game won’t have to wait all that long, as the studio’s take on The Expanse is still set to arrive this year.
