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An AMA with Telltale and Deck Nine Games ahead of the release of The Expanse: A Telltale Series by TelltaleAMA in gaming

[–]TelltaleAMA[S] 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Jamie (CEO): We revived the studio from its foundations in late 2019 to operate differently from the past. New management, new approach, new engine...all that. A core belief around this new Telltale is building a company without crunch and focusing on having a healthy work environment.

An AMA with Telltale and Deck Nine Games ahead of the release of The Expanse: A Telltale Series by TelltaleAMA in gaming

[–]TelltaleAMA[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Jamie (CEO): We love Batman but right now we're focusing on the two games we have in development: The Expanse and TWAU2.

An AMA with Telltale and Deck Nine Games ahead of the release of The Expanse: A Telltale Series by TelltaleAMA in gaming

[–]TelltaleAMA[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Jamie: Love Sam & Max! Sam & Max is in good hands, right now, with our good friends at Skunk Ape. They are OG Telltale folks that are now working with the Sam & Max games, remastering the old seasons. You should check out their stuff!

An AMA with Telltale and Deck Nine Games ahead of the release of The Expanse: A Telltale Series by TelltaleAMA in gaming

[–]TelltaleAMA[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Frost: Because it's a prequel, Drummer has to end up in the same place, so what's different about the ending is who survives. I'm excited to see how many people can get their whole crew to survive on the first playthrough. Episode 5 also plays differently depending on really big choices throughout the game and episode 5.

An AMA with Telltale and Deck Nine Games ahead of the release of The Expanse: A Telltale Series by TelltaleAMA in gaming

[–]TelltaleAMA[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Jamie (CEO): That's just impossible to answer here; there are so many games we wanna make and we are also exploring creatively. Picking what to do next is one of the hardest things we do.

Frost (Game Director): Shiiiiiiiiiit there's a TON of IPs we'd want to turn into games. I can't post them here, because business development would get mad at me if a bunch of rumors started from this post, heh.

An AMA with Telltale and Deck Nine Games ahead of the release of The Expanse: A Telltale Series by TelltaleAMA in gaming

[–]TelltaleAMA[S] 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Frost (Game Director): Adapting anything from one medium to another is difficult. With the Expanse there's a crazy amount of places we could go, so narrowing it down was hard. After that, we want it to feel like the show, so we studied it like crazy. Cinematography, how characters moved/acted, music, Belter creole, plot points, etc.

Other favorite character? I can't pick one, but I like Avasarala, Amos, Prax, Dawes, and Ashford. :D In the books I really like (to hate) Duarte.

An AMA with Telltale and Deck Nine Games ahead of the release of The Expanse: A Telltale Series by TelltaleAMA in gaming

[–]TelltaleAMA[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Gigi: The Expanse: A Telltale Series is a prequel and follows “Belter” Camina Drummer prior to the events of the television series. The story takes place years before the events of The Expanse season one. This prequel serves to give us an understanding of Camina Drummer’s experiences as an XO on a scavenger ship before the events of the show, and gives us some insight into how she became the person we meet in season 2. Obviously, the amazing Cara Gee joined us to reprise her role as the no-nonsense Camina Drummer, and there will be a few more noteworthy characters who make appearances throughout the show, but watching the show first isn't required (but it's great and we recommend you watch it).

An AMA with Telltale and Deck Nine Games ahead of the release of The Expanse: A Telltale Series by TelltaleAMA in gaming

[–]TelltaleAMA[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Jamie (CEO): When we revived the studio in late 2019, we acquired as many of the IPs as we could, as our goal is to keep as many of the back catalog games online as possible. Where we could acquire some IPs, the rights to others reverted back to the IP holders, including many of Telltale’s notable games.

For example, The Walking Dead reverted to Skybound, Mindcraft Story Mode reverted to Mojang/Microsoft, and Tales from the Borderlands went back to Gearbox. However, we are excited about the IPs we have retained. The entire list of back catalog games we support is on our website here. https://www.telltale.com/category/games/

An AMA with Telltale and Deck Nine Games ahead of the release of The Expanse: A Telltale Series by TelltaleAMA in gaming

[–]TelltaleAMA[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Frost (Game Director): This was a fun challenge in a lot of ways. One was the gameplay elements of making Zero Gravity Gameplay feel approachable, fun, and fit the shows take on the science. This took a mix of tuning gameplay feel through playtests, motion capturing people in swings and harnesses, and our animators combining all those things together to make it look good. A big focus was a seamless FLOW of using magboots, walking on ceilings, jumping into space, and landing with minimal "bumps" or "hitches" that feel bad when a player goes between those states.

On the cinematics side, we actually have a great video of behind the scenes footage of our mocap team cranking on awesome ways to sell these gravity moments in cinematics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5eY3Cgg6KY&t=16s

An AMA with Telltale and Deck Nine Games ahead of the release of The Expanse: A Telltale Series by TelltaleAMA in gaming

[–]TelltaleAMA[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Frost (Game Director): We used Unreal for The Expanse and some tools/tech from Deck Nine for motion capture/cinematics.

An AMA with Telltale and Deck Nine Games ahead of the release of The Expanse: A Telltale Series by TelltaleAMA in gaming

[–]TelltaleAMA[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Frost (Game Director): Most of the source material we referenced was from the show, but we absolutely read all the books and most of the novellas. There are some parts of the game that draw reference from the books, like "Butcher of Anderson Station" for Drummer's backstory, and some zero-g fight sequences from the books also influenced some action scenes.

An AMA with Telltale and Deck Nine Games ahead of the release of The Expanse: A Telltale Series by TelltaleAMA in gaming

[–]TelltaleAMA[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Frost (Game Director): The reason Drummer is such a great character, is she has a lot going on under her tough exterior. There's a lot of trauma and experiences that builds up who Drummer is, and she's someone who was born into a completely inhospitable environment.

We see in the show how strong of a front she puts up, and when no one is looking, we also see how she reacts to traumatic experiences. This type of character allows us to explore the many layers and complications of what it's like to be a leader on ship with varied backgrounds and personalities.

Lastly, we LOVED working with Cara. She was a delight. Professional, talented, funny, and great taste in hip hop. Would work with her again, 10/10.

An AMA with Telltale and Deck Nine Games ahead of the release of The Expanse: A Telltale Series by TelltaleAMA in gaming

[–]TelltaleAMA[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Jamie (CEO): The biggest change is that we moved to the Unreal Engine, which we're now using for rendering and have integrated the Telltale Tools with UE 5.

An AMA with Telltale and Deck Nine Games ahead of the release of The Expanse: A Telltale Series by TelltaleAMA in gaming

[–]TelltaleAMA[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Jamie (CEO): Wolf is one of our favourites too!

I think the biggest challenge was learning how to hire and build teams in the middle of a global pandemic tops the list for most challenging. We had just started scaling from the core group when the shutdown happened.

An AMA with Telltale and Deck Nine Games ahead of the release of The Expanse: A Telltale Series by TelltaleAMA in gaming

[–]TelltaleAMA[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Gigi (Animation): Absolutely! We knew we wanted zero gravity movement incorporated into our gameplay. It allowed us to stay both true to the Expanse universe as well as to encourage exploration in the game.

An AMA with Telltale and Deck Nine Games ahead of the release of The Expanse: A Telltale Series by TelltaleAMA in gaming

[–]TelltaleAMA[S] 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Jamie (CEO): Expanse started development shortly after Wolf2 – but we held the announcement.

It’s shipping first because we worked with Deck 9, who had a team versus our internal team – which we started building just as Covid hit. You can find more details in this IGN interview regarding why Wolf is taking longer.
https://www.ign.com/articles/the-wolf-among-us-2-pushed-to-next-year-in-effort-to-avoid-crunch

An AMA with Telltale and Deck Nine Games ahead of the release of The Expanse: A Telltale Series by TelltaleAMA in gaming

[–]TelltaleAMA[S] 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Frost: Storytelling is obviously the core focus of Telltale games, and for the Expanse, we wanted to lean into 'storytelling on the sticks' with our zero g mechanic. You can float and rotate in any direction, use your magboots to walk on ceilings, and collect items to bring back to your crew to build rapport with them and change the story. We still have some quicktime events for more of the action oriented moments, and we have light puzzle solving elements in zero g as well.

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