The Wolf Among Us 2 Has Been Delayed Out Of 2023

Telltale Games announces that The Wolf Among Us 2 will not arrive until 2024 as originally planned. A statement was made by Telltale Games. IGNThe team explained that it doesn’t want to stress the team or release an unfinished product. They also plan to move development to Unreal Engine 5.

Telltale issued a message to its customers on Twitter announcing the delay, but CEO Jamie Ottilie shares more context with IGN. Ottilie discusses the challenges of relaunching the studio in 2019, which were then compounded when the COVID-19 pandemic began the following year. That includes announcing the game when the studio was still staffing up to help secure funding. Despite those early hurdles, Ottilie states that development has been going well since then, but the team recently decided it wants to adopt Unreal 5 to take advantage of the engine’s new features. Unfortunately, that meant having to redo a lot of the work that had been created in Unreal 4.

With such a big change, Ottilie explains that the only way The Wolf Among Us 2 could still arrive this year would be either to launch it in a less-polished state (which the team wants to avoid given its high expectations) or to overwork the staff. Ottilie insists on avoiding burnout and crunch in this studio, given the reputation of Telltale’s old games. 

“I’ve done [crunch], and I don’t want to do it again, and it’s not fair to ask it,” Ottilie tells IGN. You can’t build a business around that. Part of the challenge is maintaining a healthy workplace culture. We don’t want to burn out our good people.”

The Wolf Among Us 2 like its predecessor will have an episodic format, however Telltale is creating each episode in parallel. The entire series will launch when the initial installment is released. The trailer for the inaugural installment can be viewed here. The studio’s other project, The Expanse: A Telltale Series, is still slated for this year. 

[Source: IGN]