Dishonored and The Walking Dead score high in Game Developers Choice Award nominations


The Game Developers Choice Awards are the other side of a coin that also contains the IGFs. Sure, indies are allowed into this GDC organised awards show, but they have to promise to be on their best behaviour. And wash behind their ears.

The nominations for this year’s award – chosen by a panel of game developers – have been announced, with The Walking Dead and Dishonored scoring plenty of nods. Not the most, though – that honour goes to Journey, which is apparently a PS3 game about collecting scarves. Or something.

Dishonored picked up four nominations, including Game of the Year, Best Game Design, Best Narrative and Best Visual Arts. The Walking Dead also received nominations for Game of the Year and Best Narrative, as well as a chance to nab Best Downloadable Game. Wait, aren’t all games downloadable?

Other PC relevant nominations include Game of the Year nods for Mass Effect 3 and XCOM, a well deserved Best Audio mention for Hotline Miami, and a Best Technology listing for Planetside 2. FTL also did well, being nominated for the Innovation Award, along with a shot at Best Debut for its developer, Subset Games.

Game of the Year
The Walking Dead (Telltale Games)

Best Downloadable Game
The Walking Dead (Telltale Games)

Best Narrative
The Walking Dead (Telltale Games)

Though a followup saga to the first season of The Walking Dead is as sure as a zombie-shaped surprise behind a blood-smeared door, Telltale has yet to determine the exact direction the series’ second season will take. Speaking to Polygon, CEO Dan Connor says that the first season’s heavy conclusion means “anything is possible” for a return to The Land Where Zombies Roam.

“We’re talking through different scenarios, though I don’t think we’ve talked through one where we just start with a new set of characters,” Connor says. “For us, it’s just really important to make sure we are delivering on what people have played and liked in season one.”

Connor believes The Walking Dead’s second season will be shaped by the series’ staple of hooking an audience through intricate narrative and character relationships, saying, “A huge goal for us is what happens between episodes. How do you carry the experience through? How do you use this ability we have to keep people engaged and talking.”

Future Walking Dead episodes could tie more closely with characters from the AMC TV show: “There’s nothing saying our characters couldn’t cross over with their characters at some point in the timeline,” Connor suggests. “It’s a very interesting concept for us.”

Overlapping with the TV show is the least interesting of these possibilities to me because it runs the risk of feeling referential—a cameo by Glenn in the first episode demonstrated that Telltale’s game doesn’t need to rely on existing characters to get us to care. But whatever approach they take, I’m confident Telltale’s writing team will find a way to turn me into an emotionless husk once more.

Telltale Games' second season of The Walking Dead is slated to arrive this fall. The developer revealed the planned date to Game Informer today after some miscommunications indicated it was set for next year.

That release window is just an estimate, and we would not be at all surprised to see it slip one way or the other. We're still unfamiliar with Telltale's plans for the Walking Dead between seasons, but we know the developer is cooking up something to reveal soon.

Two different date of release? Fall 2013 or Autumn 2014?

both means the same. Fall = Autumn.

Your post is 2014?

It should be on fall/autumn 2013 instead of 2014

lol, now they changed it to 2014.

lol u read it wrongly. it's this year, not next year.

the article originally mentioned 2014, that's why i posted the screenshot showing they updated it.

yeah, i hope the gameplay picks up but more importantly Telltale squash any bugs before releasing unlike season 1's prefs.prop bug. many times i thought all the progress was lost.

The Walking Dead’s first season may be over, but that doesn’t stop Telltale from retroactively adding to it like more talented, and less crazy, George Lucases (or is it George Lucasi?) Teased over the past week, it turns out 400 Days is a DLC episode that will bridge the gap between the first and second season of Telltale’s zombie epic, telltaleing the stories of five new characters, who will presumably show up in the next season in some manner or other. Teaser trailer below.

So – five stories, five characters, one dude that looks a bit like The Dude. According to the PlayStation blog (the game was announced during Sony’s E3 presentation), “This special episode will allow you to choose a character and play through each of their stories in any order, which are all centered around a truck stop on a Georgia highway. Some decisions you may have made in Season One will affect moments of 400 Days, and while we don’t want to give away too much yet, we will say that your decisions in 400 Days will echo into future installments of the series.”