Did the critical and commercial success of The Walking Dead take you by surprise?
“The response on so many levels was surprising and fulfilling for everybody involved in the project. It’s good to sell tonnes of games, but the biggest deal was when we saw the emotional impact the story had on people. There’s a bunch of YouTube videos out there that show people in tears at the end of Episode 5. There are big moments prior to that within the season that had people screaming at their TV’s or computer monitors.”
Were you always keen to create an emotional experience?
“That’s what Telltale is all about. In all our games, the most important things are telling an amazing story that people get emotionally invested in. By the same token, creating characters that are believable and relatable - that people care about. One of the biggest challenges for us was that in many videogames, there weren’t many child characters that people did not find irritating. Clementine resonated with people. I’m a parent and it definitely affects you. I think it changed a lot of people’s opinions who don’t have children. It gives you an understanding of what it is to protect a child.”
How challenging was it to create a game that kept the momentum of narrative, but made it feel like the player has control?
“That’s the way we design everything. [Screenwriter] Gary Whitta, who worked Season One, put it across that the player is the last collaborator in telling the story. It’s all about actions and decisions; choice and consequence. You make the decision and you have to live with it. That’s what made it different to most other narratives. Because we produce content in an episodic fashion, something you did that seemed relatively inconsequential in Episode 2 could come back in a big way in Episode 5.”
Was it important to make it feel like 400 Days was within the same universe as Season One?
“It’s all based within Robert Kirkman’s comic book universe. In Season One, we had some crossover with the comic books. It’s definitely an expansion of that universe. Even though 400 Days is set within roughly the same locale, timeframe and all that, it allows you to see more of the universe that Robert Kirkman created, and see it from five very different points of view. The Walking Dead TV show, meanwhile, is its own thing.”
To what extent is The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman involved in what you do?
Everything we do he sees and approves. Obviously, he’s super busy so he doesn’t get to write for us. It’s something we’d love to happen. He’s got a whole bunch of different projects, comic books, and the TV show. But he does take time to check out what we’re doing. ”