In a recent interview with Mashable and Kevin Bruner, the head of narrative powerhouse Telltale Games, the upcoming third season of The Walking Dead was stated to be released later this year. Along with this, further information regarding the third season will be made available at the International Comic-Con held in San Diego from July 21st to the 24th.
This is big news for fans of the series who’ve been waiting patiently for nearly two years since season two ended. One of the things Bruner mentions in the interview is that Telltale intends to invite a host of new players into the series, while still making it appealing to established fans. A difficult task, no doubt, but Bruner seems fairly confident of their ability to accomplish this, stating:
“How do we go back and make sure all Walking Dead fans can get in while still keeping all of our storylines going? I think where we’re landing with the story for Season 3 does a really good job of both of those things.”
“It allows people who maybe haven’t played [the first two seasons] to come in and get up to speed really quickly. But it definitely respects, honors and facilitates all of the various end points that Season 2 had.”
Although the multiple endings found in season two were all considered to bring their respective storylines to an appropriate close, Kevin Bruner states that their aim for season three is to continue each of these storylines, but in a manner that will do justice to them all. He states specifically:
“The way that we’re dealing with and validating and retaining all those different playthroughs is really cool and unexpected and, I think, pretty innovative from the storytelling point of view.”
Bruner also addresses the worries that previous entries in the series didn’t have cloud saving capabilities, and that problems that might arise when fans try to carry their saves over into season three:
“We’ve got a strategy to help Season 3 players … collect all their data from the previous games. [W]e didn’t have the cloud services in Season 1 that we have now, so we’re going to have a solution for everybody that we’re not talking about it yet.”
It seems like season three is still in good hands then. It’ll be very interesting to see how Telltale manages to balance elements designed to draw in new players while also remaining faithful to fans who have invested themselves in the series already. With Telltale’s track record however, we probably have very little worry about.