Telltale’s The Walking Dead series, now published by Skybound Games, made a strong return to form last week on Steam. All five installments of the long-running series are now back on sale on Steam and if you’re quick you can grab them for 25% off until January 27th. That lot includes:
The collection is also more complete on the Nintendo Switch with both Season 2 and A New Frontier newly released on January 21st. No discounts there I’m afraid. I’ve updated the tables at the top of all the game pages on the site with the new releases and links to download.
The Telltale Games saga just won’t stop! After announcing that the studio would be shutting down last September, Skybound Entertainment swooped in to take control of its own The Walking Dead series (which they’ve since relaunched on the Epic Games Store with a definitive edition coming soon). The remaining Telltale titles have slowlybeendelisted from console and PC storefronts and it looked like only a matter of time until they would all be removed.
Enter LCG Entertainment led by Jamie Ottilie and Brian Waddle, backed by China’s Athlon Games, and with a handful of industry veterans serving as executives. LCG has acquired the Telltale Games name, its original properties including the likes of Puzzle Agent, and some of its existing licenses. The plan is to revisit some of Telltale’s expired properties and explore a new take on episodic adventure games with new titles.
So far it sounds a bit sterile despite some of Ottilie’s more hopeful comments made to Polygon. For now we’ll just focus on what this means for delistings. LCG has so far confirmed that both The Wolf Among Us and Telltale’s Batman series fall under their purview. Both series have remained on sale across the board while the likes of Back to the Future, Jurassic Park, Game of Thrones, Guardians of the Galaxy, and others have been delisted.
Judging by Ottilie’s admission about the team’s small size and their reliance on freelance workers, we’re probably looking at several relistings as opposed to all-out remasters for at least a year or two. Until more news comes to light I’ll continue working to add all of the old Telltale’s delisted games to the site.
With pre-orders opening up last week for the September 10th release of The Walking Dead: The Telltale Definitive Series, we’ve already been asked a few times about what’s on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One discs. Skybound has been talking up the collection for a few months now which will include all 4 Seasons, the 400 Days DLC, and The Walking Dead: Michonne, along with new visuals, a comic-inspired Black & White option, and over 10 hours of behind-the-scenes content.
That’s a fantastic anthology, but what’s inside the box? You may remember that the original versions from Telltale saw several retail releases, many of which only contained a single episode and simply added the season to your download history. That means that if you go out today and pick up any of the existing games on disc you’re more than likely going to be disappointed… and missing out on most of the story.
So I reached out yesterday to Skybound in hopes of getting clarification and I’ve got good news to report! According to the rep I spoke with all of that content will be on the disc making the Telltale Definitive Series quite literally that; the most definitive way to make sure you can play the entire series for years and years to come.
You can pre-order the physical console editions through Amazon, GameStop, GAME, or direct from Skybound now. And if you’re ok with the digital releases you can pre-order them from any console marketplace, the Epic Game Store, or the Microsoft Store. One note on the Nintendo Switch: there won’t be a physical release or a Definitive bundle but updated versions of seasons 2 and 3 with extra content will launch on the eShop to accompany what’s already there.
The Telltale Games saga just continues to get stranger. As of May 31st all digital versions of the Minecraft: Story Mode series were confirmed delisted worldwide with the ability to re-download previous purchases being removed on June 25th. That’s a respectable window to allow owners a chance to download all their purchased content but an unexpected wrinkle arose in regards to the Xbox 360 edition. On June 14th, the Minecraft Story Mode Facebook page sprang back to life with the following announcement:
“As you may have heard, Minecraft: Story Mode games will no longer be supported via the necessary game servers on June 25th, 2019. All of Minecraft: Story Mode content was removed from sale on each digital storefront ahead of that happening. In the process of removing these items for sale, on the Xbox 360 platform only, existing Minecraft: Story Mode players became unable [to] download their remaining episodes. From working with the Xbox 360 platform, the only solution to this situation is to re-list the downloadable content for purchase.
So, to assist existing customers, all the downloadable Episodes for the two Minecraft: Story Mode titles are temporarily re-listed but, to deter new purchases, they will be re-listed at a very high price! The price shown is a real list price, please do not buy the content, if you do, you will be charged the amount shown. This is simply the only mechanism available to facilitate players being able to download their remaining episodes prior to servers shutting down.
Hopefully this will help existing Xbox 360 players get the downloadable Episodes they are entitled to. When the game servers are switched off on June 25th, the content will once again be removed from sale, upon which downloads will again become blocked.”
The current asking price? $99.99 per episode. Youch. That’s a steep price but one that I feel still isn’t beyond the reach of some dedicated (obsessed?) digital collectors. Anyone daring enough to click the Buy button on these episodes? You’ve only got about week to decide.
