Telltale is reportedly dropping their extremely outdated engine in favor of the popular and modern Unity engine. After using their Telltale Tool engine for 14 years, creating 34 games, it’s about time.
According to Variety, multiple sources have confirmed to the magazine that the company will switch the engine that they’re using. There are also new job listings for their company that all indicate that they will work with the Unity engine. The last game that they will be making with their old engine is The Walking Dead: The Final Season. A trailer for the game has already been released so it must have been in development for too long to change up the engine that they are using. However, The Wolf Among Us 2 and Game of Thrones 2 have both been delayed, probably to change the engine that the games are using. The first game to use the new engine will be the Stranger Things game that was announced last week.
The change in engine is most likely caused by two primary reasons, Netflix’s involvement as well as the removal of the old CEO of the company. With the involvement of Netflix for the Stranger Things game, it’s very likely that they want to ensure that the game is up to their standards and of very high quality. Before the switch to the new engine, most gamers agreed that Telltale games have become clunky and hideous to look at. Furthermore, Netflix wants to stream the game via their platform, where players can input commands using remotes or anything else linked to the TV. HBO already wanted to implement this with Telltale’s Game of Thrones but wasn’t able to do so due to the old engine.
The forced removal of the management at Telltale games was reportedly another prime reason why the engine has been changed. According to The Verge, multiple Telltale employees said the company went down the drain between 2014 to 2017. They would continuously pick up new titles with not enough time to work on former titles. Former employees have also confirmed that there was a creative bottleneck where the management had a very specific idea about what a Telltale game should be and anything that didn’t fit their image would be completely ignored. After an investigation by Lionsgate, the former CEO had been removed from his position and Telltale is now under new management. We will just have to see if this move will ultimately save the company.
