Skybound Games announced just a few days ago that they would be holding a Reddit AMA to answer more fan questions about The Walking Dead: The Final Season and that event took place tonight.
Skybound Games’ CEO Ian Howe was in the AMA thread responding to as many different questions as possible and as you might expect, the number one question dealt with that of Episode 3’s release date. Howe said that as of now, things are a bit tied up as far as legal matters go which means that production on Episode 3 is at a halt. That said, Howe said he is confident that they will be able to work through these hurdles quickly and can get to work on the third episode of The Walking Dead: The Final Season sooner rather than later.
Even though there is still no official release date for this episode, Howe said that it was mostly finished before Telltale Games laid off its staff, which means there is not a ton left to be done. He also went as far to say that he has hope for it to release before the end of the year.
“OK, given that you guys have been so supportive and patient, I’m going out on a limb and will say yes, I fully expect Episode 3 to be this year and I’ll be very disappointed if we can’t make that happen.”
As for the rest of the work left to be done on The Walking Dead: The Final Season, Howe said that Episode 4 had only ever entered pre-production and as such, there hasn’t been much work done on what is planned to be the final installment in this series. Once development begins again, work on Episode 4 will likely be what is required more than anything to finish The Walking Dead.
In regards to getting some of the former staff members at Telltale to return to work on this project, Howe said he has also been in contact with many of them–over 40 within the past week–and they seem excited to get back to work on the game. Once legal matters are wrapped up, Howe said that these discussions with the ex-Telltale employees can progress further. Howe seems to be aware that finishing this series alone isn’t enough if it isn’t finished by the staff that was originally working on it. Despite this, he also acknowledged that some former Telltale employees might already have new job offers, which is completely understandable.
As for other cursory details given in the AMA, Howe says he hopes the series will return to digital storefronts by the end of October. Additionally, Howe said that many of the former Telltale employees are located out of the Bay Area in San Francisco while Skybound is in Los Angeles. Because of this, Howe said they’ll likely find a space for the dev team to work out of that is convenient for them.
Even though this situation has been an incredibly tough one to watch over the past month, it seems like Skybound Games is trying to make the absolute best out of a bad series of events. Hopefully, the things that Howe said in this AMA can come to fruition in a way that both does right by the former Telltale employees and also gives The Walking Dead: The Final Season the ending it deserves.
If you want to check out the full Reddit thread for yourself, you can find it here.