While it feels like there’s still a lot we don’t know about Telltale’s upcoming Batman series, one thing we do now know is that it won’t be exclusively a single-player affair.
The game more or less plays out like Telltale’s past adventure games, but you can now allow others to participate in the decision-making process. Telltale revealed the new feature at Comic-Con this weekend, as reported by Shacknews.
The developer is aware that its players are sometimes accompanied by people who like to chime in when the game presents a choice. “Now, from two to 2,000-plus people can help the player make decisions,” Telltale’s communications boss, Job Stauffer, said. “We are now turning all of Telltale’s games into a live interactive multiplayer experience”
Batman will be the first of its games to support this new Crowd Play feature. Turning it on provides you with a URL that other people can use to participate. Viewers can give different actions a thumbs up or down and vote for dialogue options they want to see chosen. Viewers can see how the vote unfolds, and the game can be set up so that the most popular decision is automatically made or so the player still makes the final choice.
This seems like an ideal setup for streamers (or even Twitch Plays-style events), but Stauffer noted that latency will be an issue, at least initially.
Telltale recently released the first trailer for its new episodic Batman series, which debuts on August 2 for PC, PS4, Xbox One, PS3, and Xbox 360, as well as iOS and Android devices. The plan is to wrap up the season by the end of the year, but that will only happen if Telltale doesn’t have to sacrifice quality.