Telltale Games is best known for making games based on other people's creations, like Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead, Borderlands, and Minecraft. But it recently began work on an original project, the first one it's ever made, that CEO Kevin Bruner told GamesIndustry is "probably the most ambitious thing the company has ever done."
"We've spent a lot of time experimenting over the last decade with how powerful a storytelling tool interactive can be and when we thought about building something from the ground up that gave us absolutely everything we could dream of as storytelling tools," he said. "The right kind of story, the right kind of setting, the right kind of people involved, everything."
"[It] kind of rose organically and doing your first original IP is a pretty big deal for any company so it's something we're pouring a lot of love into," he continued. He said he couldn't reveal anything about the game itself, which was announced in January when he took over as CEO, but added, "It is the perfect thing for us."
He also noted the dramatic change in Telltale's status over the past decade: In the early days it had to chase after the creators it wanted to work with, but now it has companies like HBO coming to it in search of collaboration. "If even five years ago or ten years ago when we started if we said we were going to be working on the biggest HBO property it would have just been a dream," Bruner said. "Now that's it's actually real it's amazing."