I grew up playing all the old Sierra and LucasArts adventure games, so I’ve been enjoying the Telltale games because they keep the narrative-driven gameplay while doing away with the puzzles (which can often be very irritating). If you like the Telltale games, you should definitely watch the talk below, delivered during GDC 2015 but only now made free for everyone to watch. The talk starts with the Jurassic Park game and how the developers started looking for ways to shift from point-and-click mechanics to a formula that would service the narrative they wanted to tell. They also talk about the challenge of figuring out the correct levels of interactivity in a game and their fear of players feeling like Telltale games weren’t really games because of the lack of the usual mechanics. The famous “He will remember this" comes up and they talk about how that mechanic was one of the first signs their ideas would actually work.

The talk goes into character development and the need to make them believable enough to allow for the players to connect with the character they’re playing. If you enjoy The Walking Dead (Free) series, you’ll enjoy all the background information on how that series came about and how some of the seminal scenes were developed. Overall, this is a great talk that you should definitely watch if you enjoy Telltale games or simply want to hear more about game design.