Telltale Games

It's a Telltale tradition to take team photos while dressed to the nines on a game's launch day and it was no different for the Law & Order: Legacies team!

The team had a little bit of fun with this tradition for the Law & Order: Legacies launch and got into the spirit of some of the game's unique aspects. If you've played the game, you'll recognize this "Good Job Detective" screen from instances where you display excellence in your criminal investigation skills. 

*This shot was taken just moments after the previous one as Law & Order: Legacies producer Dave Felton was shot down in cold blood. The rest of the Law & Order: Legacies team leapt into action to discover more information using the knowledge they acquired while working on the game. 

Have you played Law & Order: Legacies yet? Episodes 1 thru 3 are now available for iOS in the iTunes App Store. Get the universal app now. - LINK

*Dave Felton is just fine. 

Law & Order: Legacies Episodes 1 and 2 launched for iOS late last month and fans of the series have been enjoying solving cases with the all-star cast of characters from the Law & Order franchise! I asked Law & Order: Legacies lead designer Ryan Kaufman to give a little insight into the concept of the game in general and the characters from the long-running franchise you'll meet in the seven episode series and he was kind enough to oblige.

Without further ado, Law & Order: Legacies lead designer Ryan Kaufman.

"When you work on a licensed game, it’s really great to have a license you truly love.  And I’m a big Law & Order fan, so diving into a game based on the tv series was an absolute blast.   I watched the show mainly during the Briscoe/Logan/Curtis era, so it was natural to include that time period as part of our overall story arc.  But the great thing about L&O is that you can dip in almost anywhere-- any year, any era-- and immediately know what’s going on.  I have a huge amount of respect for the show creators and writers that they were able to keep it interesting within a standard format … for 20 years!
 
We knew right away the most important thing to do was capture the distinctive feel of the show.   Law & Order has an incredibly quick rhythm to it; the dialog is clipped and tight, and the scenes rarely last more than 2 minutes.  It was a challenge to offer a game experience with a similar full gallop pace.  We also knew we had to really make you feel the moral choices and compromises being made in court.  Law & Order is always great at sparking debate about how justice was (or wasn’t) done in any particular case.
 
Characterization is sharp and quick, and they don’t spend a lot of time on backstory.   With Rey Curtis, we looked at his history on the show and the quirks and facets of his personality that might come back in some small comments.  For instance, when he first arrived on the show, it was 1995 and the computers were a new and scary thing in the precinct.  Curtis, the junior detective, embraced the new technology, while Briscoe shrugged and was generally content to do things the old way.  However, in 2011, we wanted to show how Curtis too had aged—he’s no longer savvy about the latest tech, and sometimes he’s shown up by nerdier adversaries.
 
We wrote Olivia Benson into the series --because she is completely awesome-- but at the time we were writing the story arc, the latest SVU season was ending and her partner Elliot Stabler’s fate was still up in the air.  So, we felt like she and Curtis might go well together—both have lost their partners, and are at an unresolved mid-point in their careers.  They’re both in a state of flux, looking for answers…
 
We hope you feel like we captured the tone and characters of the show, so that playing the game feels a bit like seeing a bonus episode.
 
--Ryan
 
[And as a footnote, we originally announced the game based of the Law & Order: Los Angeles show.  I suspect there are probably fans out there, and we were definitely sorry to see it go.  The show was building momentum, and Carey Stoll’s Mexican drug cartel storyline was getting goooood.  It would be fun to bring those characters to New York at some point, and/or bump into Bobby Goren or Detective Munch somewhere.]"

Law & Order: Legacies (Universal App)

We're getting into the Thanksgiving spirit here at Telltale. Thanksgiving is all about well...being thankful for the things we're fortunate enough to have, so we wanted to make this Thanksgiving a little easier for some folks in our local community. 

Earlier today, a few of us, on behalf of the entire Telltale Games staff, went out to the local supermarket and filled up a shopping cart with the plumpest turkeys we could find. After loading the gobblers into the car, we shuffled them off to The Ritter Center, a spot in downtown San Rafael that local homeless individuals can go to for support. 

After unloading the car, we handed the birds over to The Ritter Center team and went on our way. 

San Rafael has been Telltale Games' home since we started so giving back to a community that's given us so much over the years just made sense! 

We encourage you to donate to local organizations this Thanksgiving to help make others' holidays just a little more pleasant. 

• Learn about The Ritter Center

November, famous for Thanksgiving and Black Friday, is getting a little more distinguishable as the Movember movement grows - and it's getting just as hairy here at Telltale! 

Movember, a grassroots movement to raise awareness for men's health by the growing out of lustrous mustaches, has taken hold here at Telltale and we're only about halway through the month. A number of the Telltale team have taken to growing their whiskers for this good cause and, halfway through the month, many of them are looking pretty nice. We'll have pictures to show you soon!

We encourage you to join in the Movember fun by joining up on the Movember site and making a team for yourself - just visit the official Movember site! 

• Learn more about Movember and register on the official Movember site now!