After what feels like a lengthy climb to success (remember the Back to the Future and Jurassic Park games?), Telltale finally hit the big time with its intense and enthralling take on The Walking Dead. It’s proved that an episodic point-and-click style adventure game can work incredibly well, providing you know your source material inside out, upside down and better than the back of your hand. Relationships have been everything as we’ve progressed through this world-gone-wrong, and the final climax was a gaming moment to remember. In short, if you haven’t played it – go rectify that right now.
But what’s next? Telltale has proven it’s more than capable of delivering passionate and authentic adaptations to series newcomers and purists alike, so we’ve put together a list of some of the most beloved franchises on the planet – ones that Telltale might like to tackle.
You’re wrestling with the controller, fighting it, mashing the on-screen commands in some desperate and futile attempt to stop the inevitable. Your friend writhes around on the floor, screaming in agony; a bulbous shape moving unnaturally beneath their skin, wanting to escape. Finally, eventually, with an almost morbid sense of relief, a Chestburster gives birth to itself in a gory shower of blood, at the expense of your companion’s life.
The image of that scene alone should make you yearn for an Alien mini-series.Telltale understands the challenges involved in integrating an original protagonist in a pre-existing universe, especially one that’s so revered. Add in the tension, the stress, the violence, and the knowledge that whatever desperate measures you employ, your murderous opponent will in all likelihood survive, and you’ve got an episodic series that would be a worthy follow up to The Walking Dead.
Alien holds a very special type of horror in its heart. Claustrophobic space corridors and dank spaceship underbellies are the perfect breeding ground for intense action and instinctive choice making. It’d be like Dead Space crossed with The Walking Dead. That sounds ace, right?
Putting the inimitable Robert Downey Jr. and Benedict Cumberbatch aside for a second, Telltale should go back to the drawing board to establish its own vision of the infamous detective, and deliver something that smells nothing like the two most recent adaptations.
From there, it’s a trickier endeavour – it’s risky to write fresh and original cases, especially with so many scrutinising eyes fixated on the storytelling. One case across five episodes might be stretched a little thin, but five original spins on existing stories would fit nicely into the episodic structure.
The detective clue-finding would suit the adventure focus brilliantly, too - choices that result in different consequences and outcomes in individual cases; different leads depending on how meticulous you are at each point of interest. The partnership between Sherlock and Watson would also be another test of Telltale’s ability to craft emotional relationships. Remember that sense of disbelief and shock at the end of the most recent series of Sherlock? That kind of thing is exactly what The Walking Dead excels at.
Game of Thrones is all about weight. The bloody clunk of swords hitting axes, the complex, verbose ins-and-outs of family politics, and the gratuitous levels of sex and violence all combine to form a heavy, unforgiving and adult franchise. It’s also the most tangible fantasy world to grace your bookshelf and screen since Lord of the Rings, and we want that same level of depth on our consoles.
An RPG seems like the obvious choice for Game of Thrones, but that didn’t go so well. With all the wordy politics, petty squabbles, abundant potential consequences and profligate characters, an episodic Game of Thrones would really need to expand the scale and scope of anything else TellTale has achieved yet in order to align itself with the series’ epic lore.
With such a vast fantasy world on offer, the door of creative freedom is open for the studio to wow us with unmet characters, unseen locations and untold stories – you could explore the mysteries of life beyond the Wall, delve into the origin stories of each family and their rise to prominence in the Game of Thrones universe, or tackle something separate entirely. With so much fantasy brilliance at its disposal, there’s no shortage of stuff for TellTale to draw upon for inspiration.
War of the Worlds explores much the same themes as The Walking Dead - humanity at the end of its reign over planet Earth, extinction, and the fight for survival – but the execution is wholly different. Instead of mindless corpses coming at you with their insatiable lust for living meat, there are towering extraterrestrial behemoths capable of killing millions with their flesh-evaporating ray guns. The scales are tipped against you a little further.
H.G. Wells’ sci-fi horror is ready and waiting to be elevated to video game fame, but unlike the Walking Dead’s focus on an unlikely band of survivors grouping together to fend off impossible odds, a tight-knit family cast would be perfect for War of the Worlds. Desperate to stay hidden as you search for safety and food, horrific circumstances and unimaginably tough choices could push the stress and tension even further than The Walking Dead’s relationship between fill-in father Lee and young Clementine. Even more so than Alien, this is the sci-fi episodic game I’d love to see TellTale-ified.
Despite Jack Bauer’s brutal interrogation tactics, he’s a good guy. In fact, he’s the best guy. He’s the guy the government calls upon to get the job done, even if it means missing his daughter’s birthday and forever being branded a terrible father: Dad of the Year mug revoked. For that reason, TellTale should stick to Jack as the protagonist for a 24 mini-series, because you’d never call anyone else when you’ve got the option of Bauer on speed-dial.
However, as the series already follows a strict episodic structure, TellTale has a difficult choice to make – does it stick to the same format of one hour per episode to make two-dozen releases? Or incorporate several hours into each release to shorten the entire thing down? Either way, with months/years between each of the main TV series, there’s ample time and a wealth of opportunity for fresh national security threats to slot into the main canon. Just as long as it’s not another nuclear bomb.
There are also an abundance of subplots, including Jack’s imprisonment and torture in China, his undercover stint with the Mexicans, the stretch of time he was believed dead and his period in undercover military service as a spec-ops operative. All these are touched upon in the main series, so the idea of rummaging deeper into Jack’s persona is something any 24 nut would appreciate.
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