AG: Are you tailoring the W&G games in any other way to appeal more to the typical console gamer? Or will these be pretty traditional adventures like your previous series?

Dave Grossman: Well, there's no "jump" button. The episodes all end with a fairly high-energy scene, just like most of the Wallace & Gromit movies, but even those parts are all about being clever and creative instead of dodging around some kind of a boss fight. Reflexes are not required. What we expect console players to respond to is a comfortable, sofa-based interactive story experience, with controls that are intuitive and familiar. Also, there are achievements, though in some cases these are a bit silly.

AG: As I'm sure you know as well as anyone, part of the Wallace & Gromit charm is the fact that it's done with claymation. What kind of challenge has it been to simulate the look and feel of the W&G shorts?

Peter Tsaykel (art director): We're huge fans of Aardman Animation. Instead of just creating CG versions of the Wallace & Gromit characters, we approached the production by trying to make the game feel like an Aardman-style world. Of course, no one outside that studio can truly animate like Aardman, but we did our level best; our animators really studied Wallace and Gromit, and worked hard to stay in-character and on-style. With a lot of consultation from Aardman, we were able to replicate many of Wallace's facial expressions and mannerisms — and add a few of our own. On the system side, our engineers revamped our lip-synch tech to really emphasize that trademark style of oval-mouthed, toothy dialog animation. We even rewrote our rendering engine to really bring out the surface textures of characters and environments. Finally, we slowed things down a bit and gave the animation a bit of stutter to really push a hand-animated, filmic look rather than the quick, smooth computer-interpolated animation commonly seen in games.

AG: What is the design arrangement between Telltale and Aardman for this series? Is writing and development largely in your hands, or is there a lot of ongoing input and communication with them?

Andy Hartzell: Nick Park selected a writer named Tristan Davies to be our editor and Aardman liaison. Tristan has worked directly with Nick on Wallace & Gromit comics, audio books, and other projects. He has a pretty intimate knowledge of the characters and the rules by which their world operates, and he's proved to be a great guide.

Dave: Which means, basically, that writing and development is largely in our hands, AND there is a lot of ongoing input and communication — with Aardman in general, and with Tristan specifically in the areas of writing and design, in which he keeps us honest and on track. He also helps us sound more British than we otherwise would.

AG: Do you think there's a tangible difference between "British humour" and American? (Besides us spelling the word correctly, of course.) If so, how do you bridge that gap while handling a distinctly British franchise?

Andy: Yeah, I think there's a difference, but it's harder to pin down than people think. When people over here talk about British humour, they're usually talking about dry wit, or the sort of poker-faced absurdism you associate with everyone from Oscar Wilde to Monty Python. There's a bit of this quality in Wallace & Gromit, but really they fit into a different tradition.

To get in the right frame of mind for making Wallace & Gromit games, we watched things like Passport to Pimlico and other Ealing comedies of the ‘40s and ‘50s. These are movies about provincial folks triumphing over the system, and they're an acknowledged influence on Nick Park's sensibilities. Also comics like Beano — good old lowbrow knockabout comedy. We didn't so much worry about "bridging the gap" between British and American tastes. We just wanted to be as true as possible to the Wallace & Gromit brand of comedy. Judging from the number of American Wallace & Gromit fans, it's a brand that travels well.

AG: What would you say are the keys to successfully pulling off episodic gaming? Spicy Horse and GameTap pulled off a nice little run with American McGee's Grimm a while back with a slightly different release model, but apart from that, to date Telltale is still the only developer to make episodes really work. What's the ancient Chinese secret?

Dave: Planning. And talent. And also planning.

Dan Connors: If we told you it wouldn't be a secret, but I will say this: You get good at what you focus on. Our internal studio has been built from the ground up to do this. Every decision we make, from staffing to workflow to QA testing, is based on hitting a monthly schedule.

AG: Your monthly release schedule clearly hasn't changed, but internally how has Telltale evolved its own episodic approach since the early days of Bone… (Which, I might add, we'd still dearly love to see continued!)

Dave: It wasn't until Sam & Max that we instituted the elaborate, overlapping production approach that allows us to release episodes as often as we do. The basic philosophy has not changed since then, but we have been tweaking the specifics with every series. We've taken a few cues from television, using a Writers Room process for design, and having different directors for different episodes. We're also constantly improving our tools. And the people who use them.

Dan: We also take feedback on our games to heart, and have tried to keep improving the episodic experience so that people will be engaged in our series. I think by the end of Chariots of the Dogs, people were very interested in what was going to happen next — there was a huge build-up towards the finale. That's the type of experience we set out to create.

AG: To those who aren't already Wallace & Gromit fans, why should people be excited about their Grand Adventures? What's going to blow us all away and make this series special?

Andy: Beautiful visuals. Funny characters. Absorbing puzzles. Stories with lots of unexpected twists and turns. A completely immersive, cinematic gameplay experience.

AG: Wow. Even in point form, that worked on me. Well, that and the demo, which certainly showed you’re well on your way to achieving those goals. And looking even farther ahead, what else is in store from Telltale?

Dave: We've decided to launch our offices into space, in order to make more room for employee parking and improve the view. Beyond that, we're not telling.

AG: Sounds like a bit of a commute, but so long as those great games keep coming, enjoy the launch! And thanks to all of you for the insightful answers… except for Dave there, at the end.