by Alan Danzis

We can speculate on many reasons why The Walking Dead episode one quickly sold more than one million units for Telltale Games. I’d like to think it was a combination of great writing, a solid story and the fact that decisions the players make will carry over to the other four episodes making up the game.

While Telltale has brought back many beloved properties to fans like Jurassic Park and Back to the Future, never before had decisions mattered game to game. (I’m not counting the end of Jurassic Park for the ten of us who played it all the way through.)

It’s probably due to the fact that the Walking Dead, in its very nature, lends itself to this kind of storytelling and gameplay. By virtue of being a survival (and horror, if you see it that way) game, it’s authentic and perhaps necessary to make your character’s decisions over who lives and who dies matter from game to game. (I have to imagine it’s also a huge pain in the ass for the writers.)

There’s a ton of other existing and gone-but-not-forgotten TV properties that would lend themselves well to a decision-based adventure game like The Walking Dead. Here’s three of my ideas for what I wish Telltale would tackle next:

(Note: potential spoilers for anyone who watched these shows.)

24:

Sure, the 24 franchise already got a game back in the PlayStation 2 days. (And as I’ve sworn to my friend Tina, it’s one of the best, if not the best, videogame based on an existing TV/movie property. This was before I played Walking Dead of course.)
Imagine, however, if you still played over the course of a 24 hour-style story line – which perhaps Telltale could release in 4 or 6 hours at a time – and had decisions that had ramifications later on.

Perhaps if you beat on a subject too much, they closed up and wouldn’t reveal crucial evidence you would need later. Perhaps you could follow the wrong lead and wind up being too late to stop an attack, resulting in civilian casualties.

Or perhaps one false decision in the field could lead to the permanent death of one of your fellow agents. (Though not Chloe. She would be safe back at CTU. And I would be mad if this was possible.)

And by setting the game before the end of the series, we could see the return of characters that may have perished or left the show later on. Except for Kim Bauer. No need to bring her back.

Unless there’s another cougar after her…

Angel:



The series Angel was spun-off from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which had its own line of games across a variety of platforms. I played Chaos Bleeds, and from memory, it was just OK.

Angel was more of a noir as opposed to a horror dramedy like Buffy. (Though they definitely had their funny moments on Angel.)

As the show went on, it became stronger because Angel increasingly had to make more and more difficult decisions. The strongest season of the show was the fourth season which, after about episode seven, was just one long storyline that had every episode flow directly into the next. It was also the season that saw a return to Angel’s violent, evil alter ego, Angelus.

Telltale could do a series of episodic games set during one of the earlier seasons—again, like the 24 game set before major characters had been killed off. Imagine either an existing Big Bad or a new one that Angel and team would have to defeat. The game would be designed around how close to becoming the evil Angelus that Angel would need to be in order to defeat them.

Perhaps he asks the evil law firm Wolfram and Hart for a favor to speed a clue along.
Or he takes the life of a human to make him seem evil to someone he’s trying to fool into helping him.

The entire game could be built around how dark Angel can go before he becomes too dark and becomes Angelus.

(Which I’m sure a lot of gamers would want to have happen anyway.)

Battlestar Galactica:

There was no more show on television that constantly pushed the characters to deal with increasingly morally complicated decisions than this last example. Battlestar Galactica tackled war time decisions that resulted in the deaths of civilians, the use of suicide bombers and more as a group of people and humanoid robots – known as Cylons – looked for a place they could called home.

During most of the earlier seasons, the President of the Colonies, Laura Roslin, would constantly write the current population of the human fleet (usually around 50,000) on a dry erase board. Imagine an entire show based around that idea—get to 0, and, well, you and humanity lose.

Perhaps, like Lee Adama in the first season, you had to make a decision whether or not to destroy a civilian ship called the Olympic Carrier that may contain evil Cylon agents aboard. Destroy it and you lose 10,000 civilians. Risk it entering the fleet and perhaps you lose 20,000.

Perhaps, like season three of the show, you too would be forced to decide whether or not you would resort to suicide bombings to stop the Cylons. You would lose both the life of the bomber, as well as potentially civilians in your quest to take down the Cylons. But would those deaths ensure more didn’t die at the hands of the Cylons?

Then again—maybe it would be more fun to play as the Cylons desiring to kill all the humans in the first place…

Final Thoughts:

I’m sure Telltale’s got a lot of great things in the pipeline, including finishing The Walking Dead. But I’d still love to see them tackle one of those three properties. Or, maybe here are a few other TV properties that would be great to turn into decision-based adventure games.

• Alias
• Chuck
• Justified
• Heroes
• Supernatural

What are yours?

About the author: Alan Danzis is a senior PR professional in video games among other industries as well as a passionate media enthusiast. You can follow him on Twitter @adanzis.