After the floundering of Telltale, and the unfortunate end of The Walking Dead games, there’s little impetus to make more games. According to a new report, Skybound is not planning on making The Walking Dead Season 5 anytime soon. The rumors about a return to the aging franchise have swirled for some time. There were even hints of a new title called “A Fatal Frontier.”
This is the series under Telltale though, and for obvious reasons, that’s no longer the case. Telltale had been planning to make The Walking Dead Season 5 for some time, they even planned on dropping it into the comic book setting—Macon, Georgia, after the beginning of the zombie plague. The setup would have been much the same as the previous seasons. We would have seen a new cast of characters after the closing of Clementine’s story. The first four seasons saw her go from a scared yet adorable little girl into a hardened survivor, being traumatized along the way.
Telltale had also planned to drop the ailing engine from the previous games and to move to a new setup. This is no longer the case, obviously. The idea of The Walking Dead Season 5 was lost to the void when Telltale went down in flames in 2018. Though that early season of The Walking Dead had given the studio monstrous successes and acclaim, they failed to capitalize on it. The company continued to chase trends and rehashed the same formula, with a combination of technical and development issues souring both fans and employees on their games. This led to a slow bleed of cash that eventually bankrupted the studio.
The Walking Dead: The Final Season was the fourth season of the adaptation, yet, Telltale Games closed its doors in late 2018. There had been plans to continue the series. Those plans fell through when the company ran out of money, leaving only a skeleton crew to finish ongoing projects. And by finish, I mean handle pushing them onto other developers. Skybound picked up development of the fourth season of The Walking Dead to finish it. This was done, but not without a cost.
And according to Skybound, under no uncertain terms, is The Walking Dead Season 5 going to happen.
Brian Huntingdon, vice president of online content at Skybound Games, called the rumors of a new season out directly when asked about a possible fifth season of the zombie adventure. The work on the game was a labor of obligation and love, and they won’t be doing it again anytime soon. The company was foisted into the developer role, and getting the job done kind of burned them on the idea of more games. Huntingdon added that the chances were almost “zero,” and that getting the fourth season to a skippable state was no easy task.
“I never say never in these parts, but how close can you get to zero? Especially in these crazy times, very unlikely. Taking over development to finish Season 4 was crazy, especially for us since we’re not a development house,” he told the fans. That means there’s no chance of a continuation of these games with Skybound.
The Walking Dead games is out now for PC, Switch, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4.
