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The first prototype for the game that would become Telltale’s The Walking Dead series originally started as a narrative-focused Left 4 Dead spin-off.
That little detail, and many others, make up a new 10th anniversary documentary from Skybound Games about the creation of Telltale’s influential adventure game series, which debuted the first episode of its first season in April of 2012. The documentary (via Eurogamer) assembles various developers who worked on the game as well as The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman to look back on how the series came to be.
“The very first Walking Dead prototype was actually for a different zombie thing that ended up turning into The Walking Dead,” Jake Rodkin, The Walking Dead season design and direction lead, says in the documentary. “The first conversation was actually with Valve and it was about, ‘What if we did a narrative side story in the universe of Left 4 Dead?'”
As to what that early prototype looked like, it was what Rodkin describes as “the boiling pots or spinning plates” prototype, essentially a collection of character progress bars that would continue to fill until the player addressed them. Of course, a Left 4 Dead side story from Telltale never came to be, something that Kirkman is ultimately glad didn’t work out. There has not been a new entry in the Left 4 Dead franchise, spin-off or otherwise, since 2009’s Left 4 Dead 2.
Telltale’s The Walking Dead series would eventually spawn multiple seasons and spin-offs of its own, and is best-known for fan-favorite characters like Lee and Clementine. It would establish Telltale’s formula that would go on to be used in a host of similar licensed titles, ranging from Game of Thrones to Batman.
While many of Telltale’s games like The Wolf Among Us and Tales from the Borderlands were well-received critically and considered successes (so much so that both games are getting sequels), Telltale would file for bankruptcy and shut down in 2018. Following Telltale’s closure, which happened as the company was in the middle of releasing episodes for The Walking Dead: The Final Season, Kirkman’s own company, Skybound Entertainment, brought on numerous Telltale developers in order to finish the game. The Walking Dead: The Final Season’s last two episodes were released in 2019.
LCG Entertainment purchased the Telltale name and assets following the studio’s original closure and is behind the upcoming second season of The Wolf Among Us along with Adhoc Studio, a team comprised of ex-Telltale developers. Tales from the Borderlands will be getting a sequel later this year developed by Borderlands-developer Gearbox Software.
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