By the end of the decade I expect Telltale Games to be making an adventure game version of every single franchise in the entire history of the world. The latest company to sign up with the developer is comics giant Marvel.
The partnership will result in a new game for consoles and PC, set for release in 2017. That’s big news. It’s almost certainly going to result in Telltale’s highest profile game yet. Sadly though, we don’t yet know what it’s going be about.
”Announced this evening in San Francisco, we’re excited to reveal an all-new partnership with the incredible team at Marvel Entertainment,” the developer posted on its blog. ”We’ll be teaming up on the development of an upcoming Telltale game series project set to premiere in 2017!”
So what will it be? There are countless Marvel properties that could be a good fit. The X-Men perhaps? Star Wars, the comic rights to which the company owns thanks to the Disney deal? The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us were both comic adaptations of course, so this isn’t entirely new territory for the studio.
Telltale has managed to come up with a model that appeals to a huge range of IP holders; it’s gameplay-lite with a focus on story, which means that anyone can jump in and play, it’s a neat fit for tablets, and despite some issues with delivering episodes on time (surely Telltale has to expand now), the studio has proved it can adapt the same basic structure for wildly divergent properties.
Telltale and Marvel haven’t commented further on the announcement, and given the planned release date I wouldn’t expect them to for a good while. We’ll keep our eyes peeled.
