The Wolf Among Us 2 Delayed Out Of 2023 To Avoid Crunch

thegamer.com:

The Wolf Among Us 2 developer has announced another delay for the anticipated sequel, which is now coming no earlier than 2024. The difficult decision has been made for several reasons, such as preventing crunch and the desire to switch to Unreal Engine 5 for this one.

Telltale Games has discussed the reasons behind pushing The Wolf Among Us 2 out of 2023 with IGN. According to the studio's CEO Jamie Ottilie, due to the challenges of rebuilding Telltale during the COVID-19 pandemic and hiring new staff, the team faced a tough choice of either releasing an unfinished project this year as promised or relying on crunch to complete all the work.

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"It doesn't do any of us any good to ship something that's not ready. If we put this game out and it's not ready, we're going to get torn to shreds," Ottilie said. "The expectations are pretty high, and we want time to meet those and we want to be proud of it. Let the world say what they will [after] it's done, but at least we know that in these times, in these conditions, this is the best game that we could make."

As for the crunch, Jamie Ottilie said that this new version of Telltale simply won't do it, because "it's not fair to ask it" from the newly recruited staff - no matter how important this sequel is for the studio. "Part of it is about maintaining a healthy work culture," he said. "As an industry, we're terrible about it. [...] We just have to stop doing it and make better choices."

Another reason for the delay is Telltale's recent decision to switch to Unreal Engine 5 in pursuit of new interesting features. This means redoing "quite a bit of work" that was already done in the older version of the