Ian Howe, CEO of Skybound Games and previous Telltale creative director Kent Mudle hosted a Reddit AMA on October 17th to discuss their plans for The Walking Dead and its final season. With details from Skybound originally vague about how their deal with Telltale was working out, the team decided to give fans an update. Given that they wrapped up the deal early in October, fans are wondering what will happen with a franchise they’ve grown to love so dearly.

Both companies are still negotiating terms, however, the AMA Skybound confirmed that they would be bringing on members from the original team to finish development. Fans will also be excited to know that they are keeping episode 3 and 4 scripts as written, making sure to preserve the writer’s intentions. Here is what Howe had to say about the story and their process:

Regarding the story, the process of developing the narrative isn’t changing, there is a long standing collaboration between the writers and Skybound over story approval and all the same people will still be involved.”

Howe continued, saying that the team will be working with Skybound directly to reach completion of the final season. He plans to keep the staff for The Walking Dead 100% former Telltale employees, wanting to preserve the vision and integrity of the project. Unfortunately, the process is not without challenges:

In the development of any game, it’s often not a fixed team, people roll on and off of projects all of the time depending on where the game is at in it’s development cycle and this is no different. That means there are people who were on the team who were close to rolling off onto something else, it’s unfair to ask someone to come back and do a couple of weeks work, especially if that would get in the way of another job offer, so this is just one example of some of the challenges we face.”

In terms of release, Skybound was realistic about expectations and also understanding that fans would want to know this most of all. For now, Howe was reluctant to give a time frame but was optimistic about a 2018 release for Episode 3. Overall, it would appear that The Walking Dead is in excellent hands with the company, and will stay true to the spirit of the franchise. Fans interested in learning more can read the full AMA here!

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