The Wolf Among Us 2 has been delayed out of 2023 to avoid crunch and burnout, according to IGN. The game is currently being developed by Telltale, and the developer claims that they want to avoid crunching in order to maintain a healthy work culture.
The delay isn’t just due to the pandemic that forced a restart in 2019; it’s also because they’re making the switch from Unreal Engine 4 to UE5, which means redoing “quite a bit of work” already done in Unreal 4. CEO Jamie Ottilie said in an interview with IGN that they want to avoid crunch in order to keep their team happy and healthy.
The Pandemic
In a recent interview with IGN, Telltale Games CEO Jamie Ottilie explained that the studio decided to delay The Wolf Among Us 2 out of 2023 to avoid crunch and team burnout. Essentially, this is because the studio recently switched to Unreal Engine 5, which means that they have to redo a lot of their work.
This is something that Ottilie has been fighting against ever since he joined the company in 2018. He also believes that crunch culture is not good for the industry and wants to make sure that his team is not suffering from this.
According to the MGMA report, burnout is a rising concern for healthcare leaders. It is causing turnover rates to increase and increasing employee stress levels.
For example, Allscripts has offered employees a variety of flexible work options in an effort to reduce the burnout that is being seen. In addition, it has shifted meetings and other processes to focus on employee well-being. For example, it has added “no-work-zone” meetings and virtual “walks to the cafe” that allow staff members to disconnect from their work and connect with each other on a social level.
Switching to Unreal Engine 5
Unreal Engine 5 is a game engine that allows both giant and small developers to create realistic, high-quality games. This new technology is able to take advantage of the increasing computer power that gaming hardware provides, making it possible to blur the line between the virtual and real worlds.
There are plenty of amazing new features in Unreal Engine 5, including Lumen Global Lighting System, Virtual Shadow Maps, and World Partition. But one of the most important is Temporal Super Resolution, which allows for lower resolution rendering without compromising on image quality.
This technology helps the engine run smoother, even on machines that aren’t as powerful as modern CPUs and GPUs. This is a huge advantage for games that require a high-quality image without having to sacrifice performance.
In other words, UE5 allows for games that would be too costly or too computationally demanding to make with other tools. It also gives studios the ability to create new worlds and characters in a much more realistic way, making for some very exciting titles that could change the face of video games forever.
Delaying the Release
As you probably know, Telltale Games recently announced a delay in the release of The Wolf Among Us 2. In an interview with IGN, CEO Jamie Ottilie explained that the reason behind this change is to avoid crunch and burnout.
This comes as a huge disappointment to fans, but the company is committed to delivering a game that meets their expectations and provides an experience they can’t get anywhere else. They are also putting the health of their entire development team first, which is something that many other developers don’t do.
According to Ottilie, the development of The Wolf Among Us 2 has been a difficult one, with the game being pushed back several times over the years. This is primarily due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused a lot of delays and setbacks for developers.
The Final Words
The Wolf Among Us 2 has been delayed out of 2023 to avoid crunch and burnout on the studio’s team. Telltale Games CEO Jamie Ottilie outlined this in an interview with IGN.
The sequel was originally announced back in The Game Awards 2019, but the COVID-19 pandemic shifted things on its head. As such, The Wolf Among Us 2 is now being developed in an entirely different way.
It is being developed in Unreal Engine 5 instead of Unreal Engine 4, and is being released in a completely new episodic format. This is an entirely different approach than the previous Telltale games, in which episodes were made separately and were then released at a different pace.
Telltale’s CEO also explained that the switch to Unreal Engine 5 was done because the studio has seen enough improvements and features from the new engine that it felt it was worth reworking some of the work they had already completed in Unreal 4. However, this does mean the development cycle will be significantly more complicated.