[COLUMN] I’m 99% Sure This Stranger Things Animated Series Was Originally a Telltale Game | by Marty Sliva (Patreon)

The trailer for a new Strange Things spin-off – an animated series called Stranger Things: Tales From ‘85 – dropped online yesterday. Premiering on Netflix this April, Tales From ‘85 is set between the second and third seasons of the main series, and follows a bit of a side quest that the main group of kids goes on in between their usual bouts with Demigorgons, Mind Flayers, and Vecna (Vecanas?).

The thing is, after having only seen that brief trailer, I have a theory about this series. That being that its story, and perhaps even its art style, are vestigial tails of the Telltale Stranger Things video game that was announced in 2017, before being canceled after the studio suffered mass layoffs and was essentially shuttered the following year in 2018.

It’s hard to state just how big of a deal Telltale was as a developer during a stretch of the 2010s. Following a bunch of series that never really broke through to the mainstream, including Bone, Back to the Future, and Jurassic Park, the studio struck gold with its 2012 take on The Walking Dead. That five-episode season, which followed new characters Lee and Clementine, cemented the studio as one of the best storytellers in games, and showered them with GOTY awards from a bunch of outlets. This led to a golden age for the studio that delivered genuine bangers like the first seasons of The Wolf Among Us as well as Tales From the Borderlands (hmm, the new Stranger Things animated series is called Tales From ‘85…).

But just like clockwork, the company grew too big and stretched itself too far. Crunch became a common practice at the studio. Episodes of a season were released without a firm idea of when the next one might be ready, leading to a stuttering schedule that made getting invested in the drama difficult until the entire thing was wrapped.

At the same time, they were locking down deals with properties like Batman, Game of Thrones, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Minecraft to add to their growing portfolio, which only exacerbated the problems. As this was growing more and more unstable, they signed a deal with Netflix to port over games like Minecraft, as well as getting the greenlight for their Stranger Things project. Obviously all that was scrapped when the studio ostensibly shuttered in 2018.

Honestly, I haven’t really given much thought to that canceled Stranger Things game over the years. Following Telltale’s closure, some early footage of the project leaked online, showcasing snippets of a scene between Will Byers and his mother Joyce, followed but a bit with us hiding from a prowling Demigorgon. The footage is pretty basic, but it points to a time period and a character style that feels very much akin to what we now see nearly a decade later with Tales From ‘85. 

Now, I’m not saying that the upcoming animated series is just stitching together scenes from a game that was canceled eight years ago. But that game, which also had input from The Duffer Brothers, feels like it would’ve told the exact kind of story that could’ve been slotted in between two seasons of the series without doing too much to shake the established canon, which is exactly what this animated series seems to be. And though animation for the upcoming series is being handled by Flying Bark Productions, there’s a similarity between the character designs in the trailer and those seen in the leaked prototype footage of the game that I just can’t shake.

Stranger Things is in a bit of an odd spot following the release of its series finale last month. The final season was met with mixed reception, and it felt like the whole thing really lost steam during its last lap. It reminded me a bit of what happened during the last run of Game of Thrones, and how the brand seemed to be sullied following its 8th season. And though it took some time, that brand is back firing on all cylinders, as the currently-airing A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is delivering a weekly series on par with Thrones at its peak. 

It’s certainly possible that a Stranger Things project down the road could bring back the magic of those early seasons, but it feels like arriving in April might be a bit too soon for Tales From ‘85 to be that miracle cure.

All that said, I’m kind of surprised that Stranger Things never got a big video game tie-in during its decade-long run. While there were a few smaller retro games, a VR experience called Stranger Things: Catalyst, and plenty of crossovers with stuff like Fortnite and Dead By Daylight, it feels like the series would’ve been primed for a LEGO game or a big kid-friendly RPG. Who knows, maybe the canceled Telltale project would’ve been just that.

And yes, if the headline to this column sounds a bit familiar, it’s because this is the second time I’ve been 99% sure of something in the past year. Last time was following the re-reveal of Capcom’s Pragmata, in which I laid out my theory for why the new IP isn’t actually a new IP, and is secretly part of the greater Mega Man universe. Capcom has since debunked that theory, but that sounds like something that a secret Mega Man game would say, so I’ll be eagerly awaiting Pragmata’s release in April.

As for Telltale, that’s a whole different story. The creative leads of that initial season of The Walking Dead left to form Campo Santo, who delivered 2016’s excellent Firewatch, and were set to follow it up with the ambitious In the Valley of Gods. However, the team was acquired by Valve back in 2018, and while that second project was never officially canceled, given that several of them ended up working on Half-Life: Alyx, chances of ever seeing it again feel slim.

Several more of the creative leads behind the excellent seasons of The Wolf Among Us and Tales From the Borderlands also formed their own studio in AdHoc, which just recently delivered the excellent Dispatch, which feels like a true evolution of that classic Telltale formula. But even that banger didn’t go without a hitch, as the new Switch port of the game is wading through some extremely dumb censorship controversy. 

And then there’s Telltale itself, which is ostensibly still alive and working on a second season of The Wolf Among Us, though given recent comments from the aforementioned AdHoc (who were co-developing it for a stretch along with Telltale), I’m personally not holding my breath for that one.

If you couldn’t tell by now, I was a huge fan of Telltale’s games and the folks who made them during that special stretch in the ‘10s. I’m glad to see that many of the talented developers found footing at various spots across the industry, and are able to deliver gems like Firewatch and Dispatch, which feel like they’re keeping that classic flame alive. And seeing the trailer for Stranger Things: Tales From ‘85 brought back a flood of memories about a developer who reached the upper creative echelon of the gaming industry, only to be sabotaged by the greedy corpos that ran the place. It’s certainly not an original story, but it seems like it’s one of the only ones we have nowadays.