Telltale Games announces autumn 2013 release for Walking Dead season 2

Telltale Games has announced that it will be releasing the next season of the critically acclaimed Walking Dead games this year. According to GameInformer, the company is aiming to release the game in autumn this year.

Telltale told GameInformer, “The current estimated release window for Season Two of The Walking Dead is for fall of this year (2013), and not next year (2014) as has been reported after a recent interview.”

The report about season 2 of the game series coming out next year was a result of some miscommunication between Telltale CEO Dan Connors and Eurogamer.

“We apologise for any confusion and thank you and all of our fans for your continued excitement for Telltale’s series,” the company stated.

Season 2 is coming this year

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The release date lends credence to the rumours that the next season will be making its way to the next-gen consoles along with the present-gen ones. It helps that Telltale has the habit of releasing its games on multiple platforms without too many porting issues.

Back in February, writer Gary Whitta had revealed that Telltale may have some more Walking Dead content planned before the release of season 2. “You won’t have to wait for season two to play more Walking Dead,” he had said.

“I can tell you what you already know, which is season two is coming. There’s not much to say because it really is very early…it’s a way off,” said Whitta. “But, knowing that it’s a way off, and knowing that people are hungry for more Walking Dead…there may very well be more Walking Dead from Telltale before season two. We may have a little something extra for you between season one and two. That will make the wait for season two slightly less agonizing.”

Although this is great news for fans of the award-winning game, Telltale is not limiting itself to one franchise. Back in January, Connors had said he’d like the studio to work on large-scale projects. He cited Half-Life and Star Wars as examples. “Coming from LucasArts, we always felt we could do a great Star Wars story game,” he said. “We also love the idea of building out a deeper story to a great game franchise—something like Half-Life stories or Halo stories.”

Other than the Walking Dead games, Telltale is working on games based on the Fables series of comics where classic fairy tale characters live in a modern urban environment, and the hijinks that ensue.

The main story of the Walking Dead universe is set in America where zombies are suddenly running… er, walking amok, and a rag-tag bunch of survivors must do whatever it takes to survive. The comics tread a very dark path by highlighting some truly unspeakable acts performed by the humans, as opposed to the zombies. Though the game’s tone isn’t quite that dark, there are still glimpses of it in the first episode.

Despite the lacklustre gameplay, The Walking Dead managed to be one of last year’s best games purely due to its great script. The replay value afforded by the branching storyline was more than a pleasant bonus, and it managed to push gaming as a creative medium much further than most AAA games have managed to do in the past. The Walking Dead is easily counted among the likes of Planescape: Torment and Spec Ops: The Line when it comes to the quality of writing, both in plot and in dialogue.

We absolutely loved The Walking Dead so much that it ended up being our Game of The Year for 2012. You can check out the reasons for this in our review.