The International House of Mojo

Is it going to be on Mac?

When is Sam and Max going into production again? The writing for StrongBad has to be finished by now...

Is it the same writing team for Wallace, too?

I'm guessing the writing overlaps to some degree, but I think the Strong Bad team is basically the Sam & Max team, and that the Wallace & Gromit team is mostly separate. I don't think Sam & Max is in production yet, but I bet it's not far off. Wallace & Gromit we know has been in production for awhile.

I wouldn't bet on any Wallace and Gromit prior to '09.

Me neither... though I am holding out 'a little hope'. That's all.

I'm just holding out hope that a) Peter Sallis is doing the voice of Wallace (otherwise it has to be a damn perfect impersonation) and that the humour is British and not Americans-doing-British, which never ends well.

Andrew Langley said "We send our scripts to a consultant who makes sure all our vernacular is spot on, so to speak. But on top of that, we do have a few employees who have roots in England, so we keep ourselves in check."

Can't help but agree, though I don't imagine TTG hired on a whole new British writing staff just for Wallace & Gromit. They're some good writers, though, so I'm hoping it's the best damn Americans-doing-British ever.

I don't have any doubt in Telltale's gaming and humour capabilities - it's just that it's a different, well, culture I suppose. Does anyone in the US get the joke behind 'Aye-Up' magazine, for example?

First... I can't actually speak for the W&G team, just so you know. This is coming from the limit of my personal experience on the project. My only responsibility on W&G is the UI stuff, but given that there are copies of Hello! magazine laying around the office, and given that I've been poking around at (and hearing) Yorkshire slang lately due to the game, I could hopefully successfully explain the joke to you. I imagine the writers, by now, have internalized weird Northernisms to a deeper, creepier point than my perfunctory surface level of "getting it."

We're aware that it would be easy to inadvertently Americanise, and are trying to keep that from being the case. Aardman writers check out the writing to make sure its not gone off the deep end, and the game's voice is being recorded in the UK. We've had folks from TTG fly out to Aardman to look at the production of the new W&G short and talk to their artists, and one of our environment/scene designers took a research trip through northern England during pre-production and came back with hundreds of reference photos, local art and history books, and anecdotes from his time there.

This stuff is obviously not deeply grained into the cultural consciousness of Telltale the way it would be if we were all, you know, born in raised in England, but we're definitely putting time and meticulous effort into making sure Wallace & Gromit feels like Wallace & Gromit. (And like all Telltale things, I imagine that the more time we spend with it, the more naturally and quickly it will start flowing, until we all scare ourselves.)

Thanks for the scoop, Jake. I think this is the most info we've gotten on the game so far, and some great news.

I agree, excellent, thanks man. You've gone a long way in allaying my (admittedly small) fears.