Joystiq (the site most famous for not being able to spell joystick) reports that IGN is reporting that Jurassic Park: The Game is coming on November 15th. The big is news is that all four episodes will be available at the same time. Xbox 360 will have to buy the game on disc while PC and PS3 gamers can download the episodes.
There also may or may not be an iPad version. Eventually.
Source: joystiq.com
jp-30
So, why make episodes? Why not just make one big game?
It's pretty interesting to speculate on why Jurassic Park went down this way. One theory would be that while the game was delayed six months to "refine the gameplay" (paraphrasing), the production of the actual content/assets of the episodes progressed on schedule. This is their first action title, or at least, their first title with this much action, so this could just be a case of them tinkering with that aspect while the rest of the game is more or less locked.
And of course, the precedent for this is the CSI games, which are comprised of five episodes yet released as individual packages, thought granted that was already the way those games were structured before Telltale inherited the license. In a really old interview it was explained that they develop their CSI games on a similar episodic schedule to their digitally distributed seasons. I think the studio's production pipeline is so fundamentally built around the concept of episodes that it's the way they choose to do it regardless of the distribution method.
This defeats the purpose of Episodes, and kinda goes against all the lines that Dan Connors says about the Episodic Model which grows the userbase with each release, and fosters community discussion and anticipation between releases.
Strange.
Kroms
Give me your best-reasoned argument as to why I should do that.
Fire.
I answered on GameCola, but I'll do it here, too. My basic problem is that I don't like how an episodic release schedule affects the storytelling. It works for games that aren't hugely story-driven (like earlier Telltale games), or if the games come out, say, once every week, instead of once every month and a half; but when the crux of a game is one overarching storyline that takes place over five episodes, I find it way too difficult to follow. Particularly in the case of more recent Telltale games, wherein the end result is that you get to play two hours of a story every six weeks.
I shouldn't complain so much, though---there's nothing stopping me from just waiting until all the episodes are out, and THEN buying and playing the full game. Which is usually what I end up doing nowadays.
pfranzen
Yes! Say no to episodic release schedules!
Give me your best-reasoned argument as to why I should do that.
Fire.