With Tell Me Why on Xbox Game Pass, episodic games have found their moment

Episodic games have always felt like an idea ahead of its time. For many gamers, it’s a compelling concept – story-based games broken down into digestible parts that you can play over the course of weeks or months. But the realities of game development and release schedules proved problematic. Telltale Games, the studio behind episodic hits like The Walking Dead and bat Man, infamously collapsed while struggling with demands to release new episodes every month. Meanwhile last year Life is strange 2 It was excellent but difficult to follow as the chapters were released at an erratic rate, releasing every few months.

But with the advent of subscription services like Xbox Game Pass, episodic games may have finally found their moment.

I realized this while playing Tell me why on Xbox One, the latest release from French studio Dontnod, which is the same team behind the Life is strange Serie. It’s exactly what we expect from the studio: a mix of prestigious television drama and a classic point-and-click adventure game. Players control two twins living in a small town in Alaska, facing the death of their mother and their secret life. It’s just as emotional and exciting as the studio’s previous work, and there’s even an intriguing new superpower to play with; the twins have a psychic connection, which they can use to talk to each other and relive old memories.

The story itself is great and I was hooked from the start. The first episode of Tell me why released on August 27, with new chapters coming out weekly. The third and final episode comes out today. That cadence has proven particularly compelling; In the past, episodic games used to release new chapters every month or two, making it difficult to keep track of the story. Usually I just waited until each episode was released and played it all at once. But with Tell me whyKnowing that a new episode would come out every week, I played it differently, diving in as soon as the next chapter was released.

It’s a model that fits particularly well with a streaming service like Game Pass, which is starting to feel more and more like the long-awaited Netflix for games. The whole process is perfect – I don’t have to worry about buying new episodes or keeping track of my saves. Everything works, so I can focus on enjoying the story.

Game Pass’s selling point has been access to great Microsoft exclusives; if you subscribe, you won’t have to buy a new aura or Gears game, as they are part of the service. But Microsoft has also done a great job developing Game Pass with a variety of different experiences. There are great worlds online like Destination, survival games like Groundedand classic arcade titles like Battletoads. It’s enough that Game Pass has become an important part of Microsoft’s next-generation strategy. When you finally buy an Xbox Series X, there is a good chance that you will not buy any games for it. I will only play things on Game Pass.

Episodic games fit perfectly with this strategy. For one, they’re small, the kind of experiences you can play between bigger games. But their story-driven nature also means that they tackle different topics, and in turn, can attract new audiences compared to traditional blockbusters. Dontnod has become particularly adept at this. The first two seasons of Life is strange It covered difficult topics like suicide and racism in a direct and sensitive way, a rarity among mainstream games. Tell me why she’s trying something similar regarding her transgender main character. Being on a growing service like Game Pass could open up these types of games to new audiences.

Subscription services do not necessarily solve all problems with episodic games. Releasing new games on a weekly or monthly basis is still a great undertaking for any developer; Tell me why It looks like it was already completed before the episodes started rolling out, which could be a fix. However, other than that, the two seem to fit perfectly. As services like Game Pass become more and more like their streaming TV counterparts, games that combine interactivity with TV-style storytelling are starting to make a lot more sense. It took a few years, but the industry has finally caught up.