Telltale Games has been creating titles since 2004, but it was the 2006 release of Sam & Max that put the company in the spotlight. Released in episodic format, the game's straightforward gameplay and clever dialog attracted a wide audience, including people who weren't traditionally gamers.
What's next for the company? Season three of Sam & Max is in the works, and Telltale is only a couple of weeks away from unleashing Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People simultaneously on both WiiWare and the PC. "Having an additional console channel is interesting," says Telltale founder and CEO Dan Connors. "We're looking at adding other channels. All of a sudden we're looking at these releases as multiplatform instead of just PC, and it's going to be a brave new world for us..."
But the big news at Comic-Con this past weekend was the announcement of Wallace and Gromit's Grand Adventures, a new series of episodic adventure games starring the intrepid duo originally featured in shorts (and then a full-length movie) from Aardman Animations. Watch the new trailer:
We were curious how Telltale lined up a deal with the award-winning animation studio. "We approached them," Connors explains. "We talk a lot at Telltale internally about what we think is interesting, and 'Wallace and Gromit' came up often. We went after them and said, 'Hey look, we have this new idea for how to do games, it's episodic...' And we explained the model to them and told them how it worked." Aardman was impressed. "They were interested in doing more regular releases than just feature films," Connors continues. "So it was good timing."
To create the game, Telltale won't be hand-animating any puppets. Instead, the company has painstakingly converted the iconic miniatures into 3D models, rendered and shaded to look as though they were lit and animated by hand. Connors explains how there was a lot of back and forth with the studio to get the look just right, even to the point of getting thumbprints on the digital models.
Wallace and Gromit will feature an all-new story penned by the Telltale team with the approval of Aardman Animations (again subject to lots of back and forth). "We'd send them some things and say, 'here's some ideas we like,'" chimes in Design Director David Grossman. "And they would point out, 'here's what would be more Wallace and Gromity.'"
No release date is scheduled for the new adventures, which are still in the early phases of production. Judging by the trailer above, it looks like Telltale has captured the flavor of Wallace and Gromit -- we're looking forward to seeing more.
