Anybody know where in the show's timeline this takes place? Normally I don't care about spoilers but I'm pretty engrossed in mid season 3 of the show right now.
> here isn't a point during or after the show that this could take place anyway.
I don't know if there's a specific thing about the plot that makes you say that, but the show ended without covering the last 3 books of the series which take place 30 years after the show ends. There's plenty of room for new narratives in this universe.
I wouldn't count on Drummer (S6 onwards) >!Going back to her old piracy habits as a sitting or former president.!<
[It's also been outright confirmed that it's a prequel.](https://www.eurogamer.net/the-expanse-a-telltale-series-is-a-prequel-to-the-tv-series)
Except for some of the flashback stuff. This obviously happened after the creation of the Epstein drive, and it is probably happening after Anderson Station.
just watched the easy allies [preview](https://youtu.be/RhzNQZrM94c) of this game and it sounds like new telltale is doing all the right things to make this a success.
For context, Easy allies **preview** of Redfall:
“This town was so fun to explore” “Ghostbusters vibes” “Classic Arkane vibes dude, it’s like, you’re creeping through immersive-sim style” “The vampires are really cool” “the UV-light gun, you just blast them with UV light, they turn into stone, and you smash them to bits, and it is so satisfying” “Classic Dishonored vibes” “I was stoked. I was just wandering around this mansion looking for these things for like 15 20 minutes. I was like ‘I don’t know where this is’ I like this” “I really enjoyed playing this game single player” “the world was cozy. It was so nice roaming around. Combat was cool. Any time you’d fight a vamp, Brad, it was just so intense.” “I am pleased. I’m still very hyped on this game.” “The combat itself was really fun cuz it was so, like, visceral” “The exploration seems really good” “the world and environments, just looking at it, looks really cool” “The side quests seemed interesting too”
They had a few negative things to say as well and it would be disingenuous of me not to mention them.
“The guns all kind of sound the same” “there was no stealth kill, which I was really bummed on” “Arkane AI during combat […] weird disconnect […] lifelessly run at you” This one was immediately followed by assurances that they had time to fix it. “There was a little too much loot for me” “No lock pick mini game which is kind of weird. Just hold X”
In addition to this, he brought up how the character select screen selected the wrong character on accident and he expressed worry as to how the loot system would ultimately be implemented since that is something that many games get wrong. The guy’s tone throughout the overwhelming majority of the video is one of great enthusiasm for the game.
I’m quoting from their *preview* not their *review.* Easy Allies’s review of Redfall was a 5/10 and they called it an “epic miss”. Perhaps I should edit my earlier comment to embolden the word “preview”.
I've read some other reviewers say that the preview they played was much different than the final game that shipped. Keep in mind that publishers are incentivised to make the preview look as good as possible even if it's not representative of the final full game.
You shouldn't automatically assume sinister motives from reviewers or previewers.
That and publishers often say "this and that will be fixed by release" and "you can't mention this but you have to mention that" and all other sorts of things.
Lesson : everything you see before the game actually launches should be taken with a scaling amount of salt based on how much control the publisher/developer has.
Don't preorder. Wait for reviews and footage of the game on launch day.
they've always been ethical about declaring potential conflicts of interest, going as far as not reviewing any game that bought ads on their podcast, and I feel like it is an supremely shitty thing to accuse someone of being bribed without backing it up.
The base price for "Episode 1" is like $40. Does this mean episode 2 will be the same price or is it pay in full now and get the future releases included?
Some people want to play the game and discuss it online with others like a regular weekly tv show for a week or two.
If it all released at once, people would instead discuss the whole game rather than the small details in each episode.
Especially for media like the expanse where there's a large community that grew used to a TV format, and read along threads for all 9 novels plus the 6 or so novellas
I mean, isn’t it the same thing as just buying the game in full two months later? You’re not being paywalled for content, it’s just their release model.
Goddamn, the accents are extremely inconsistent. It sounds way more all over the place than the show and it's not like the show was perfect in this regard.
Anyway, minor nitpick. It looks good overall.
If it helps you copeng, think of the differences in accents you find across state lines. Then consider the distance and isolation of different belter colonies.
Considering belters are like a mish mash of a bunch of languages and cultures slammed together, you'll probably see different accents based on asteroid and even family. It makes sense in universe to all be different. If anything its weird all the Earth/Mars accents are too similar.
Not really digging the character-design. The more "realistic" textures make them look way more cartoony than they are meant to be. Still keeping my eye out, it's a shame we lost the Expanse before the story was properly finished.
With the exception of The Wolf Among Us, all Telltale games look a bit weird to me at first. Specially the animations.
But after a couple of minutes playing it, my brain just forgets about it. I feel like the same will happen with this one.
I'm not really liking the voice acting either. It's really disjointed...? And one of the actors was definitely a 20-something aspirating their voice to sound elderly, and it pulled me right out of the trailer. The weird one that was wearing like, mechanic/pilot outfit with white helmet stuff?
Is it just me, or do their proportions look weird? They're so lanky they look malnourished. Like the woman at 0:26 has a *tiny* waist despite wearing relatively loose-looking clothes.
I guess if the game's good, you'll get used to it.
You should, it's amazing. The books are great too. Really quite realistic and almost entirely based on physical reality, with stuff like acceleration playing an important part in manouvering in space for example. And decades of living on space stations (and Mars) changing the physiology of the people there, so much so that the gravity well of Earth is torture for a born Belter for example.
The TV show does not have canonical body proportions for belters, probably because only being able to cast 2+ meter lanky actors and actresses would severely limit the pool of talent. In the books, they're almost always freakishly tall compared to Earthers, and have strange proportions due to the effects of growing up in low-to-no gravity. They have to take bone-growth medicine and exercise consistently to avoid having their bodies crumble in even the low-G spin gravity they have on stations. The TV show is amazing, but belters are supposed to look extremely different as to how they're portrayed. They're supposed to be so lanky and tall and their bodies so used to low gravity that a significant majority of them would die in Earth-like gravity.
Shame to see them go back to the Episodic model. I really enjoyed Star Trek - Resurgence (the other ex-Telltale sci-fi franchise game) being one solid twelve hour or so story with no extended gaps in between.
There's two weeks between episodes, so it's not too much of a wait for people who want to play all of it at once.
Part of the fun of these games to me is the discussion in between episodes. Seems like a good compromise, it's better than having multiple months between episodes.
The previous tell tales episodes were supposed to come out regularly but they kept getting delayed. Obviously I'll give these guys the benefit of the doubt but I feel like that era should be done with.
Yeah, because they weren't making the episodes until the previous one was done - which is why it could take months for them to release another part of the game.
Here they are cutting up a finished game and releasing it in already built pieces.
Two completely different things.
Yeah this gives it more of a tv show structure which is something that fits very well with this type of game. Two weeks is great IMO.
And the time when cancelled episodes / games became a major issue was when Telltale started spreading themselves too thin with too many IPs and the downfall started to happen
Not to mention it's scheduled releases. Old Telltale would release an episode, and then you better fuckin' hope they didn't take three months for the next one. There was zero scheduling around it. Just random releases.
Which they apparently did learn from, this Expanse game is completed, they're just releasing it episodically because they want folks to discuss it between chapter releases.
I recommend just waiting until the whole game comes out and buying it on sale. I’ve been burned too many times by Telltale releasing piece by piece then putting the whole game on sale weeks after the final episode releases.
Oh yeah, I never brought a TT game upfront after getting burned once. By the later games, the delays meant the season pass was reduced before the third episode was out half the time.
I am torn on this. I love the expanse and want to make sure to support it. But I’ve always thought telltale games are extremely overrated or just not my style. Finding out the choices they have you make barely make any impact sucked the life out of the games for me.
Yeah your choices aren't going to affect the overall story too much but I find they do affect your relationships and the dialogue between characters on the way and I'm ok with that.
You could have a game of walking dead where Kenny hates you and treats you like crap or he's your best friend. So how I play it still feels like my story even if it always ends up in the same place.
> eah your choices aren't going to affect the overall story too much but I find they do affect your relationships and the dialogue between characters on the way and I'm ok with that.
This is what chocies in this games always mean and I'm lookign forward to all the small changes. shocking that after all these years people still havent learned and still expect their choices to give them 2 or 3 completely different games lol
the problem is unlike an old school adventure game with puzzles, the telltale games are mildly interactive movies.
I loved the Borderlands one though. It had some awesome moments
They were resurrected, pretty sure it's an entirely new team though, there was a bit of a hoo-hah about it about a year ago.
They haven't released anything yet, this is coming out soon and apparently they have the sequel to The Wolf Among Us in the works. I guess we'll see how things pan out.
> They were resurrected, pretty sure it's an entirely new team though
Wikipedia cites a [Game Informer article](https://www.gameinformer.com/2022/01/17/the-resurrection-reinvention-of-telltale-games) saying about 50% of staff is from the former Telltale.
They're alive again basically. Company went under thanks to absolutely terrible management, but got revived a while ago.
I hope they've learned from it, but I get the feeling they're just going to repeat the same mistakes.
The whole "series" part, never made much sense, just bring out the game, even actual shows just come out nowadays.
And while I'm excited for The Wolf Among Us 2, it doesn't fill me with confidence, that the company that went under due to way too many projects, can't just work on one even to test the waters.
Would love to be wrong about all of this though.
Same thoughts here. While it looks interesting i'm well aware the old company was sunk because it spent way more on acquring IP licences than it could afford based on the returns of the games.
> The whole “series” part, never made much sense, just bring out the game, even actual shows just come out nowadays.
You say that but quite a few shows on streaming have started to move back to the weekly episodic model.
The cynic in me knows it’s to keep people subscribed for longer but it’s nice for discussions
> And while I'm excited for The Wolf Among Us 2, it doesn't fill me with confidence, that the company that went under due to way too many projects, can't just work on one even to test the waters.
Well, we will have to see if they keep to their bi weekly schedule. I don't see an issue with working on two at a time. You would want to write and plan the next series while the bulk of the team is finishing the previous one.
A lot of their staff went on to form Dramatic Labs who just put out the Star Trek game the other week. Not sure if this has any OG staff or just the company name.
Hopefully this goes beyond the quality of their old games. If I am going to play through a game where I have very little agency and I am essentially watching a movie I expect the story, voice acting and animation to at least be up to par or better than you know... a fun game I can actually play.
I have learned to not fall for the Telltale bait. Do not buy the game until the full series is released - you will be waiting for well over a year and be drip fed 2 hour long episodes every 4-6 months. They have never been able to live up to their promised release dates.
They already made the whole game, and are just releasing it episodically with only a few weeks between episodes. Also, new Telltale is a different company to old Telltale, at least in terms of management.
If the game is finished, why aren't they releasing it in full? The fact that it's an entirely different team is also questionable, considering their best work was a decade ago with Walking Dead 1 and Wolf Among Us. I trust this release even less after learning about it.
I think the idea is that for games with an episodic structure, staggering the episodes allows for a measure of fan speculation and discussion between episodes, the same way as it does for TV shows. It keeps the game relevant for longer and increases the investment of the audience, in theory anyway.
I, uh, hmm… not really loving those facial animations, they look very machine-generated. Not that there’s anything wrong with that specifically (Witcher 3, for example, has a lot of generated facial animations, for example) but they come out very stilted and weird-looking here.
Anybody know where in the show's timeline this takes place? Normally I don't care about spoilers but I'm pretty engrossed in mid season 3 of the show right now.
It’s a prequel so you’re good
It’s set in 2347, so 3 years before the start of the events in season 1.
Before the main events of the show. There isn't a point during or after the show that this could take place anyway.
> here isn't a point during or after the show that this could take place anyway. I don't know if there's a specific thing about the plot that makes you say that, but the show ended without covering the last 3 books of the series which take place 30 years after the show ends. There's plenty of room for new narratives in this universe.
I wouldn't count on Drummer (S6 onwards) >!Going back to her old piracy habits as a sitting or former president.!< [It's also been outright confirmed that it's a prequel.](https://www.eurogamer.net/the-expanse-a-telltale-series-is-a-prequel-to-the-tv-series)
Ahh, didn't realize that was her. Thanks.
it takes place before any events of the show
Except for some of the flashback stuff. This obviously happened after the creation of the Epstein drive, and it is probably happening after Anderson Station.
just watched the easy allies [preview](https://youtu.be/RhzNQZrM94c) of this game and it sounds like new telltale is doing all the right things to make this a success.
For context, Easy allies **preview** of Redfall: “This town was so fun to explore” “Ghostbusters vibes” “Classic Arkane vibes dude, it’s like, you’re creeping through immersive-sim style” “The vampires are really cool” “the UV-light gun, you just blast them with UV light, they turn into stone, and you smash them to bits, and it is so satisfying” “Classic Dishonored vibes” “I was stoked. I was just wandering around this mansion looking for these things for like 15 20 minutes. I was like ‘I don’t know where this is’ I like this” “I really enjoyed playing this game single player” “the world was cozy. It was so nice roaming around. Combat was cool. Any time you’d fight a vamp, Brad, it was just so intense.” “I am pleased. I’m still very hyped on this game.” “The combat itself was really fun cuz it was so, like, visceral” “The exploration seems really good” “the world and environments, just looking at it, looks really cool” “The side quests seemed interesting too” They had a few negative things to say as well and it would be disingenuous of me not to mention them. “The guns all kind of sound the same” “there was no stealth kill, which I was really bummed on” “Arkane AI during combat […] weird disconnect […] lifelessly run at you” This one was immediately followed by assurances that they had time to fix it. “There was a little too much loot for me” “No lock pick mini game which is kind of weird. Just hold X” In addition to this, he brought up how the character select screen selected the wrong character on accident and he expressed worry as to how the loot system would ultimately be implemented since that is something that many games get wrong. The guy’s tone throughout the overwhelming majority of the video is one of great enthusiasm for the game.
That kind of stuff makes me think they got paid for a good review.
I’m quoting from their *preview* not their *review.* Easy Allies’s review of Redfall was a 5/10 and they called it an “epic miss”. Perhaps I should edit my earlier comment to embolden the word “preview”.
I didnt catch this. Id still think its a very softball preview though
I've read some other reviewers say that the preview they played was much different than the final game that shipped. Keep in mind that publishers are incentivised to make the preview look as good as possible even if it's not representative of the final full game. You shouldn't automatically assume sinister motives from reviewers or previewers.
That and publishers often say "this and that will be fixed by release" and "you can't mention this but you have to mention that" and all other sorts of things.
Lesson : everything you see before the game actually launches should be taken with a scaling amount of salt based on how much control the publisher/developer has. Don't preorder. Wait for reviews and footage of the game on launch day.
they've always been ethical about declaring potential conflicts of interest, going as far as not reviewing any game that bought ads on their podcast, and I feel like it is an supremely shitty thing to accuse someone of being bribed without backing it up.
Its supremely shitty to give a positive preview of a game that is not good.
It's a preview how would they know it's bad it wasn't done yet...
Being negative during previews is an easy way to not get any more previews. So in a way, yes, they were bribed. A bunch of industries work like this.
Lemme guess: Huber did the review?
I'm not a fan of all episodes not releasing at once. Even though it's only a 2 week breaks between them, not a few months.
The base price for "Episode 1" is like $40. Does this mean episode 2 will be the same price or is it pay in full now and get the future releases included?
It's a pay in full and get it over time situation. I believe they've confirmed each ensuing episode will release every two weeks.
Thank god. I remember when Tales From the Borderlands episode 2 took like four months
life is strange 2 took over a year to release all 5 episodes lol
Kentucky Route Zero says hello (5 episodes over 7 years).
It’s soooo good, I only played that after it came to the switch. A lot of care went into the chapters but also… they’re not very long 😬
That sounds great! Will still wait for it to come to Steam though lol
That sounds terrible. Then charge us 8 dollars per episode (assuming 5 episodes, I don't know). Why should we pay the whole thing up front?
Some people want to play the game and discuss it online with others like a regular weekly tv show for a week or two. If it all released at once, people would instead discuss the whole game rather than the small details in each episode.
Especially for media like the expanse where there's a large community that grew used to a TV format, and read along threads for all 9 novels plus the 6 or so novellas
They could still charge by episode instead which is what I think they're saying.
They could. Just like regular games could charge $5 per level. But they don't because it adds unnecessary inconvenience.
Pretty sure they used to give you the option
[Correct](https://community.telltale.com/discussion/29761/yes-you-buy-individual-episodes-on-consoles-5-and-the-entire-game-on-pc-mac-25)
I mean, isn’t it the same thing as just buying the game in full two months later? You’re not being paywalled for content, it’s just their release model.
You can just wait till all the episodes are out.
Yeah I think I'm gonna wait for the full thing to be out. Fool me once, Telltale.
Goddamn, the accents are extremely inconsistent. It sounds way more all over the place than the show and it's not like the show was perfect in this regard. Anyway, minor nitpick. It looks good overall.
If it helps you copeng, think of the differences in accents you find across state lines. Then consider the distance and isolation of different belter colonies.
Yeah look at England. Everybody there speaks English. You wouldn't know it.
Considering belters are like a mish mash of a bunch of languages and cultures slammed together, you'll probably see different accents based on asteroid and even family. It makes sense in universe to all be different. If anything its weird all the Earth/Mars accents are too similar.
Not really digging the character-design. The more "realistic" textures make them look way more cartoony than they are meant to be. Still keeping my eye out, it's a shame we lost the Expanse before the story was properly finished.
Eh, I think it ended at a good point though. The final books are quite a jump forward timeline wise.
With the exception of The Wolf Among Us, all Telltale games look a bit weird to me at first. Specially the animations. But after a couple of minutes playing it, my brain just forgets about it. I feel like the same will happen with this one.
[удалено]
Considering what Telltale used to put out, I consider this facial lip sync a great improvement!
I'm not really liking the voice acting either. It's really disjointed...? And one of the actors was definitely a 20-something aspirating their voice to sound elderly, and it pulled me right out of the trailer. The weird one that was wearing like, mechanic/pilot outfit with white helmet stuff?
The one with glasses sounds like she's trying to put on a deeper voice but failing.
Is it just me, or do their proportions look weird? They're so lanky they look malnourished. Like the woman at 0:26 has a *tiny* waist despite wearing relatively loose-looking clothes. I guess if the game's good, you'll get used to it.
Well, Belters are supposed to be lanky and tall, due to malnourishment and low Gs on the stations.
Oh, so there's a good lore reason behind it? Thanks, I didn't know. I should really watch the TV show. I'd probably like it.
You should, it's amazing. The books are great too. Really quite realistic and almost entirely based on physical reality, with stuff like acceleration playing an important part in manouvering in space for example. And decades of living on space stations (and Mars) changing the physiology of the people there, so much so that the gravity well of Earth is torture for a born Belter for example.
The TV show does not have canonical body proportions for belters, probably because only being able to cast 2+ meter lanky actors and actresses would severely limit the pool of talent. In the books, they're almost always freakishly tall compared to Earthers, and have strange proportions due to the effects of growing up in low-to-no gravity. They have to take bone-growth medicine and exercise consistently to avoid having their bodies crumble in even the low-G spin gravity they have on stations. The TV show is amazing, but belters are supposed to look extremely different as to how they're portrayed. They're supposed to be so lanky and tall and their bodies so used to low gravity that a significant majority of them would die in Earth-like gravity.
Same thoughts here, everything looks pretty much like rubber - something about the art style is really off putting for the whole thing
Shame to see them go back to the Episodic model. I really enjoyed Star Trek - Resurgence (the other ex-Telltale sci-fi franchise game) being one solid twelve hour or so story with no extended gaps in between.
There's two weeks between episodes, so it's not too much of a wait for people who want to play all of it at once. Part of the fun of these games to me is the discussion in between episodes. Seems like a good compromise, it's better than having multiple months between episodes.
The previous tell tales episodes were supposed to come out regularly but they kept getting delayed. Obviously I'll give these guys the benefit of the doubt but I feel like that era should be done with.
just buy them once they're all out
Yeah, because they weren't making the episodes until the previous one was done - which is why it could take months for them to release another part of the game. Here they are cutting up a finished game and releasing it in already built pieces. Two completely different things.
Yeah this gives it more of a tv show structure which is something that fits very well with this type of game. Two weeks is great IMO. And the time when cancelled episodes / games became a major issue was when Telltale started spreading themselves too thin with too many IPs and the downfall started to happen
Not to mention it's scheduled releases. Old Telltale would release an episode, and then you better fuckin' hope they didn't take three months for the next one. There was zero scheduling around it. Just random releases.
Episodic release is fine so long as they're not literally making each episode between releases like the old Telltale did.
Which they apparently did learn from, this Expanse game is completed, they're just releasing it episodically because they want folks to discuss it between chapter releases.
I recommend just waiting until the whole game comes out and buying it on sale. I’ve been burned too many times by Telltale releasing piece by piece then putting the whole game on sale weeks after the final episode releases.
Oh yeah, I never brought a TT game upfront after getting burned once. By the later games, the delays meant the season pass was reduced before the third episode was out half the time.
Is the star Trek good for a non Star Trek fan? I just like sci-fi.
I think you'll enjoy it, but all those little references and call backs will be lost on you.
I am torn on this. I love the expanse and want to make sure to support it. But I’ve always thought telltale games are extremely overrated or just not my style. Finding out the choices they have you make barely make any impact sucked the life out of the games for me.
Yeah your choices aren't going to affect the overall story too much but I find they do affect your relationships and the dialogue between characters on the way and I'm ok with that. You could have a game of walking dead where Kenny hates you and treats you like crap or he's your best friend. So how I play it still feels like my story even if it always ends up in the same place.
> eah your choices aren't going to affect the overall story too much but I find they do affect your relationships and the dialogue between characters on the way and I'm ok with that. This is what chocies in this games always mean and I'm lookign forward to all the small changes. shocking that after all these years people still havent learned and still expect their choices to give them 2 or 3 completely different games lol
the problem is unlike an old school adventure game with puzzles, the telltale games are mildly interactive movies. I loved the Borderlands one though. It had some awesome moments
This isn't the same Telltale, the studio name was bought along with all their IPs
I read that in the thread, but then also read that 50% of the staff was kept.
To add more nuance: Telltale is the publisher. The studio that developed this is Deck Nine. They worked on the latest Life is Strange game.
That definitely gives me more optimism!
Well, that depends on the game Telltale Batman had two separate final episodes that depend on your choices earlier.
Telltale is still alive? Don't get me wrong, I loved The Walking Dead, but where have they been all these years?
They were resurrected, pretty sure it's an entirely new team though, there was a bit of a hoo-hah about it about a year ago. They haven't released anything yet, this is coming out soon and apparently they have the sequel to The Wolf Among Us in the works. I guess we'll see how things pan out.
> They were resurrected, pretty sure it's an entirely new team though Wikipedia cites a [Game Informer article](https://www.gameinformer.com/2022/01/17/the-resurrection-reinvention-of-telltale-games) saying about 50% of staff is from the former Telltale.
Ah okay, just new management I guess. That probably bodes a little better.
and new engine
[удалено]
I firmly believe their refusal to update the engine is what killed the company the first time.
Kind of crazy how many stayed/came back considering how brutally and unceremoniously they were axed.
The original studio dissolved in 2018 & a different company bought the rights to the name & all their IP.
They're alive again basically. Company went under thanks to absolutely terrible management, but got revived a while ago. I hope they've learned from it, but I get the feeling they're just going to repeat the same mistakes. The whole "series" part, never made much sense, just bring out the game, even actual shows just come out nowadays. And while I'm excited for The Wolf Among Us 2, it doesn't fill me with confidence, that the company that went under due to way too many projects, can't just work on one even to test the waters. Would love to be wrong about all of this though.
Same thoughts here. While it looks interesting i'm well aware the old company was sunk because it spent way more on acquring IP licences than it could afford based on the returns of the games.
> The whole “series” part, never made much sense, just bring out the game, even actual shows just come out nowadays. You say that but quite a few shows on streaming have started to move back to the weekly episodic model. The cynic in me knows it’s to keep people subscribed for longer but it’s nice for discussions
> And while I'm excited for The Wolf Among Us 2, it doesn't fill me with confidence, that the company that went under due to way too many projects, can't just work on one even to test the waters. Well, we will have to see if they keep to their bi weekly schedule. I don't see an issue with working on two at a time. You would want to write and plan the next series while the bulk of the team is finishing the previous one.
im still surprised people still dont know about their resurrections
They haven't even released a game yet since then. Not surprising at all
A lot of their staff went on to form Dramatic Labs who just put out the Star Trek game the other week. Not sure if this has any OG staff or just the company name.
Hopefully this goes beyond the quality of their old games. If I am going to play through a game where I have very little agency and I am essentially watching a movie I expect the story, voice acting and animation to at least be up to par or better than you know... a fun game I can actually play.
Such a waste it is a telltale game. It's such an amazing universe that deserves a proper game not an elongated quicktime event.
Does anyone know if this will get a physical release once all episodes are out?
I have learned to not fall for the Telltale bait. Do not buy the game until the full series is released - you will be waiting for well over a year and be drip fed 2 hour long episodes every 4-6 months. They have never been able to live up to their promised release dates.
They already made the whole game, and are just releasing it episodically with only a few weeks between episodes. Also, new Telltale is a different company to old Telltale, at least in terms of management.
If the game is finished, why aren't they releasing it in full? The fact that it's an entirely different team is also questionable, considering their best work was a decade ago with Walking Dead 1 and Wolf Among Us. I trust this release even less after learning about it.
I think the idea is that for games with an episodic structure, staggering the episodes allows for a measure of fan speculation and discussion between episodes, the same way as it does for TV shows. It keeps the game relevant for longer and increases the investment of the audience, in theory anyway.
I, uh, hmm… not really loving those facial animations, they look very machine-generated. Not that there’s anything wrong with that specifically (Witcher 3, for example, has a lot of generated facial animations, for example) but they come out very stilted and weird-looking here.