Some Bits about Telltale's New Batman Game

With but a glance, it’s always easy to identify a Telltale game: they have a very unique gameplay style, a heavy emphasis on story and emotion, and of course, they all look hella ugly.

For all their virtues, and they do have a lot of virtues, Telltale doesn’t have much in the way of technical prowess, and it’s been using the same ol’ engine for games basically since the Sam and Max days. Which was ten years ago. And while they’ve been able to do a lot with that engine, the seams are starting to show, and it’s getting very hard to get emotionally invested in such choppy, ugly characters.

Fortunately, it’s looking like TellTale has finally gotten its act together and hired some engineers, because at GDC they were happy to reveal at a panel that their upcoming Batman adventure game would be playing on a telltale engine that was, and this is a direct quote, ‘very upgraded’ from the kind we’re used to playing on. What that upgrade entails is hard to tell, but they seem to be implying that the graphics and gameplay will be a bit smoother, perhaps a bit larger… given the nature of the project, and the style of game Batman usually finds himself starring in, the need for a better engine makes sense.

That said, the panel did reveal a bit more about the game itself, as well. For example, there’s an uncharacteristically larger emphasis on Batman’s alter-ego, Bruce Wayne, in this game, and you can even choose to do certain things either as Batman or as Bruce. They weren’t willing to share who from Batman’s Rogue Gallery will show up in the game, but the game is shooting for a hard M rating and will have option to either spare someone or beat the crap out of them, possibly ending in murder, perhaps? The style of the game will also be based on the comics, rather than anything approaching photorealistic, and they pointed to Wolf Among Us as an example.

So, that’s exciting, I suppose. We’ll have to wait till summer to find out what’s really going on, though.