title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: On 8 February 1984, the Akalis held a successful bandh to demonstrate their strength and continued commitment to non-violent struggle. The following week, a tripartite talk with five cabinet ministers, five Akali leaders, and fifteen leaders from opposition parties came close to a successful settlement, but was deliberately sabotaged once again by Bhajan Lal with more anti-Sikh violence in Haryana. This was followed by Akali to express frustration in further protests, leading to their arrest along with many volunteers. On 25 May 1984, Longowal announced another "morcha" to be initiated on June 3, the day Operation Blue Star would be launched, practicing civil disobedience by refusing to pay land revenue, water or electricity bills, and block the flow of grain out of Punjab. Gandhi's emissaries met Akali leaders on May 27 to once again suggest the negotiation of a settlement, but though the Akalis showed signs of yielding, Bhindranwale would accept nothing short of the full implementation of the Anandpur Sahib Resolution.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: According to Gandhi's principal secretary P. C. Alexander, it would be Longowal's announcement of withholding Punjabi grain and tax from the central government that had been the true "last straw" for Gandhi to send the army when she did, as opposed to any militancy.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: In the midst of the protests, police violence, and the burgeoning insurgency ensuing, it would be increasingly clear that the government would seek a military rather than a political solution to the unrest in Punjab, and Bhindranwale would instruct the people to be prepared for a showdown with the government. Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale had with himself a group of devoted followers armed with firearms who served as his bodyguards and acolytes, occasionally as willing and unpaid assassins. Bhindranwale urged all Sikhs to buy weapons and motorcycles, which would be helpful to fight state oppression, instead of spending on television sets. He believed that "amritdharis" (baptized Sikhs) should also be "shastradharis" (weapon bearers), as had been required by Guru Gobind Singh for defensive purposes. Bhindranwale and Amrik Singh started carrying firearms at all times, hearkening to the Sikh religious duty of carrying a Kirpan, which is also a weapon, and police brutality on Sikh protesters. Upon the imposition of President's rule and the designation of Punjab as a disturbed area, the police were given broad powers to search, arrest, and shoot whom they would, immune from legal action.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: Bhindranwale's call to Sikhs to keep weapons as required by their faith was misrepresented by the press. Commenting on this, he said, "I had given a statement that in every village there should be a motorcycle and three young men with three revolvers of high quality. Opposition newspapers, the "Mahasha" (Arya Samaj) Press, have published this news: ‘Bhindranwale says, get these and kill Hindus.’ Have you ever heard me say that?” As Indira Gandhi began to use the term "extremists," a term meant to push Punjab back into line with the government, Sikhs were relieved of duty from police and military forces in large numbers. Sikhs in government positions were profiled by police across India from the 1970s to the 1990s, who arrested and tortured suspected criminals at will.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: On 12 May 1984, Ramesh Chander, son of Lala Jagat Narain and editor of Hind Samachar group was alleged by Kuldip Nayar to have been murdered by "supporters" of Bhindranwale. Lala's paper had had a "shrill tone when reporting on Sikh issues," and "was widely dubbed pro-Hindu," with its "tone" changing only subsequently. In 1989, seven editors and seven news hawkers and newsagents were assassinated. Punjab Police had to provide protection to the entire distribution staff and scenes of armed policemen escorting news hawkers on their morning rounds became common.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: According to KPS Gill, a few Sikh leaders raised their voice against Bhindranwale's presence in the Akal Takht complex. Giani Partap Singh, an eighty year old former Jathedar of the Akal Takht, had criticised Bhindranwale for the arsenal of modern weapons in the Akal Takht, and was shot at his home in Tahli Chowk, as were Niranjan Singh the Granthi of Gurdwara Toot Sahib, Granthi Jarnail Singh of Valtoha, and Granthi Surat Singh of Majauli. The police, reportedly on instructions from superiors, did not check the trucks used for "kar seva" (religious service) that brought in supplies needed for the daily "langar". During a random check, one truck was stopped and guns and ammunition were found.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: Militant organizations would lose popular support by the late 1980s, years after Bhindranwale's death, once their membership had begun to attract lumpen elements that joined the movements for the allure of money, rather than the long cherished cause of a separate homeland for the Sikhs. Separatists were accused by Indian authorities and critics for being responsible for crimes including assassination, bank robbery, home invasion, organising training camps, and stockpiling weapons.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: The Babbar Khalsa were opposed to Bhindranwale and his initial strategy of opting to join the Akalis' protest movement for Punjab's rights instead of immediately pursuing more militant means; it was more focused on propagating its view of Sikh religious life than on politics and states' rights, and contested with Bhindranwale for dominance of the movement. The rivalry intensified in April and May 1984, with the two groups blaming each other for several assassinations. Bhindranwale would subsequently be regarded as the head of the movement.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: In July 1982, at the start of the "Dharam Yudh Morcha", the President of Shiromani Akali Dal, Harchand Singh Longowal had invited Bhindranwale to take up residence at the Golden Temple compound. He called Bhindranwale "our stave to beat the government." On 19 July 1982, Bhindranwale took residence with approximately 200 armed followers in the Guru Nanak Niwas guest house, on the precincts of the Golden Temple. Bhindranwale developed a reputation as a man of principle who could settle people's problems about land, property or any other matter without needless formality or delay, more expediently than the legal system. The judgement would be accepted by both parties and carried out. This added to his popularity. Bhindranwale led the campaign in Punjab from the complex guest house, from where he met and was interviewed by international television crews.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: On 23 April 1983, the Punjab Police Deputy Inspector General A. S. Atwal was shot dead as he left the Harmandir Sahib compound by a gunman from one of the several groups residing there, in apparent revenge for police conduct. The assassination was never solved. The government promptly blamed militant groups, though all militant factions, as well as the Akalis, Bhindranwale, and the AISSF, all vehemently denied all accusations and unequivocally condemned the incident.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: On the assassination, Longowal stated, "Whenever the situation becomes ripe for settlement, some violent incident takes place. I think there is a government conspiracy behind the DIG's murder." When asked who could be responsible, he implied Darbara Singh's involvement: "The one who is afraid of losing his seat (of power);" observers had noted that Darbara Singh had been on the verge of being replaced by the Congress high command, partly on Akali request and partly due to ineptitude. Bhindranwale condemned it as "the handiwork of the Punjab [Congress] government," and "an attempt to foil the Akali agitation and to malign the Sikhs." The president of the AISSF termed the shooting "anti-Sikh" and carried out by certain elements in the Congress party, demanding a judicial inquiry.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: The CRPF, a central paramilitary police force, had been deployed in Punjab during President's rule as an alternative to the Punjab Police, who due to its mostly Jatt Sikh composition were seen with apprehension by the central government, which imposed a recruitment ban on it for a time. CRPF troops first fired on the Golden Temple in February 1984 following the Panipat riots the same month, furthering misgivings among Sikhs. The Punjab Police, traditionally seen as oppressive, were briefly seen by Sikhs as a counterbalance to the CRPF, even resulting in frayed relations and even a few clashes between the two forces, before the militancy would take off after Blue Star when it would again become the primary opposing force.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: When J S Aurora had visited the Golden Temple with his wife in December 1983, while Bhindranwale was living in the Guru Nanak Niwas, and looked at various areas of the complex, he had noticed no defensive preparations anywhere. Visiting again on 24 February the next year, when Bhindranwale had moved to the Akal Takht building, he only saw sandbags on the "langar" complex which "did not appear very formidable," which he was told was placed for protection after the CRPF had fired on the complex in February. He would visit again a month after the operation, attributing the professional defenses that had been built between March and June to Shabeg Singh who had served under him.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: Reportedly, militants responsible for bombings and murders were taking shelter in some gurdwaras in Punjab. In turn, some members of the Congress-led Punjab assembly alleged that the murder in the temple premises confirmed the charges that the extremists were being sheltered and given active support in religious places and the Guru Nanak Niwas, and that Bhindranwale was openly supporting such elements. However, the central government would later claim that it could not enter the gurdwaras for the fear of hurting Sikh sentiments. After President's rule was imposed in Punjab, the burning of a gurdwara at Churu, Rajasthan by the Jai Hindu Sangh on November 26 increased the violence, and on 14 February the Hindi Suraksha Samiti vandalized a train station by destroying a model of the Golden Temple and pictures of the Sikh gurus. Anti-Sikh mob violence in Haryana from 15 to 20 February 1984, mobilized by CM Bhajan Lal at the behest of leaders in Delhi, and the killing of eight Sikhs in Panipat on 19 February in view of the police station, provoked retaliations.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: As the days went by the law and order situation further deteriorated and violence escalated. While the Akalis pressed on with their two-pronged strategy of negotiations and massive campaigns of civil disobedience directed at the Central Government, others were not so enamoured of nonviolence. Communists known as "Naxalites", and armed Sikh groups – the "Babbar Khalsa" and "Dal Khalsa", both of which opposed Bhindranwale, sometimes worked hand in hand and clashed with the police. A covert government group known as the Third Agency was also engaged in dividing and destabilising the Sikh movement through the use of undercover officers, paid informants and agents provocateurs. Bhindranwale himself always kept a revolver and wore a cartridge belt and encouraged his followers to be armed. However, a Chandigarh officer in an interview with the December 1983 issue of "India Today" explained that the worst offense Bhindranwale could be accused of was "harsh speech rhetoric."


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: The earliest demands for army intervention, under the guise of terms like "martial law," "army rule," "army takeover, and "imposition of Emergency," were made by organizations like the RSS, Hindi Suraksha Samiti, and the BJP. Later joined by other outwardly secular parties, the Congress would seek to consolidate its vote bank along communal lines. During the debate in the Parliament of India members of both the houses demanded the arrest of Bhindranwale. Sensing a prospect of his arrest from the hostel premises, he convinced the SGPC president Tohra to set up his headquarters on the Akal Takht complex. While the move was supported by Gurcharan Singh Tohra, an Akali who was then President of the SGPC, it was opposed by Harchand Singh Longowal, leader of the Akali political party. On 15 December 1983, Bhindranwale was asked to move out of Guru Nanak Niwas house by members of the Babbar Khalsa who acted with Longowal's support. Longowal by now feared for his own safety. Tohra then convinced the high priest to allow Bhindranwale to reside in Akal Takht. 15 December 1983 Bhindranwale and his supporters moved to the Akal Takht complex and began fortifying the complex with sand bags and light weaponry. Longowal attempted to block the move by persuading Giani Kirpal Singh, then Jathedar (head priest) of the Akal Takht, to use his authority and issue a Hukamnama (edict) disallowing Bhindranwale from relocating to the complex. The temple high priest protested this move as a sacrilege since no Guru or leader ever resided in Akal Takht that too on the floor above Granth Sahib but Tohra agreed to prevent Bhindranwale's arrest, In the end, while Giani Kirpal Singh did protest the move, Bhindranwale's was permitted to relocate. as Bhindranwale believed that the Morcha leader Longowal was negotiating with the government for his arrest. By December 1983, Bhindranwale and his followers, now joined by senior ex-military personnel like Major General Shabeg Singh, retired Major General J.S. Bhullar, retired brigadier Mohinder Singh, and others, had made the Golden Temple complex an armoury and headquarters, fortifying it with sandbags in preparation for a siege. Mark Tully and Satish Jacob wrote, ""All terrorists were known by name to the shopkeepers and the householders who live in the narrow alleys surrounding the Golden Temple... the Punjab police must have known who they were also, but they made no attempt to arrest them. By this time Bhindranwale and his men were above the law."" However, Bhindranwale presented himself, along with over 50 of his supporters, at the Deputy Commissioner's residence on the day he moved to the Darbar Sahib complex, revealing his purpose in moving there was not to hide from the law, as the District Magistrate at Amritsar, until shortly before the invasion, was on record as having assured the Governor of the state that he could arrest anyone in Darbar Sahib at any time, though not seeing a need to.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: After Blue Star, Lieutenant General J S Aurora commented on the lack of sophisticated weapons, mentioning a number of light machine guns and two rocket launchers, but the lack of medium machine guns or mortars, with the only weapons bearing foreign markings being 60 self-loading rifles. He would ascribe most of the weaponry to either simply having been picked up from misplaced weapons drops during border wars, issued by the government to people living close to the border for security purposes, government gun-running, or from Punjab's long-established rural trade of unaccounted guns, used in family feuds, property disputes, dacoit bands and the like. Describing the weaponry seized after the operation, he stated, "Quite a lot, yes, but the impression that has been built up in the public mind of foreign governments deliberately arming the terrorists with a view to overthrowing the government is grossly overdone."


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: Bhindranwale was not an outspoken supporter of Khalistan, although he often emphasized the separate identity of the Sikhs. Bhindranwale stated his position on Khalistan, a movement which was first introduced in concept during the 1946 independence negotiations. During interviews with domestic and foreign journalists and public speeches through his phrase that ""Sikh ik vakhri qaum hai"" (or, "Sikhism is a distinct nation"), using the word 'Qaum' (nation, people, or also religion) when referring to the Sikh population of Punjab, though others have argued that "national" is a mistranslation of 'qaum,' as India was a nation of various races and 'qaums.' In a speech given by Bhindranwale on 27 March 1983:


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: While Bhindranwale never explicitly supported Khalistan, in a BBC interview, he stated that if the government agreed to the creation of such a state, he would not refuse and repeat the mistakes made by Sikh leadership during the 1946 independence: “How can a nation which has sacrificed so much for the freedom of the country want it fragmented but I shall definitely say that we are not in favor of Khalistan nor are we against it.” adding that the Sikhs would opt for a separate state only if they were discriminated against and were not respected in India, or if their distinct Sikh identity was in any way threatened. In regards to the idea of the Indian government attacking the Darbar Sahib, he stated, "if the Indian Government invaded the Darbar Sahib complex, the foundation for an independent Sikh state will have been laid."


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: In his final interview to Subhash Kirpekar, Bhindranwale stated that "Sikhs can neither live in India nor with India. If treated as equals it may be possible. But frankly speaking I don't think that is possible." Kuldip Brar, who would later head Operation Blue Star, would subsequently put forth that per the Indian intelligence sources in early June 1984, there was a "strong feeling" and "some sort of information" among the government that Bhindranwale was supposedly planning to declare Khalistan an independent country any moment with support from Pakistan, that Khalistani currency had allegedly already been distributed, and that this declaration would have increased chances of Punjab Police and security personnel siding with Bhindranwale.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: In later disclosures from former R&AW special secretary G.B.S. Sidhu, R&AW itself helped "build the Khalistan legend," actively participated in the planning of Operation Blue Star. While posted in Ottawa, Canada in 1976 to look into the "Khalistan problem" among the Sikh diaspora, Sidhu found "nothing amiss" during the three years he was there, stating that "Delhi was unnecessarily making a mountain of a molehill where none existed," that the agency created seven posts in West Europe and North America in 1981 to counter non-existent Khalistan activities, and that the deployed officers were "not always familiar with the Sikhs or the Punjab issue." Describing the secessionist movement as a "chimera" until the attack on the Darbar Sahib, after which the insurgency would start, he would later contend that:


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: Khushwant Singh had written that "considerable Khalistan sentiment seems to have arisen since the raid on the temple, which many Sikhs, if not most, have taken as a deep offense to their religion and their sensibilities," referring to the drastic change in community sentiments after the army attack.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: In addition to Capt. Harcharan Singh Rode, another of Bhindranwale's elder brothers, Harjit Singh Rode, has also said that Bhindranwale had never demanded Khalistan, saying that he had wished for "no more and no less" than the full implementation of the Anandpur Sahib Resolution, a demand that the central government had "overlooked" as it mischaracterized his position.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: The planning for Operation Blue Star was initiated long before Bhindranwale had relocated to the complex in December 1983 and begun to fortify it running sand-model exercises for the attack on a Golden Temple replica in the Doon Valley over 18 months prior, and over 125 other Sikh shrines were simultaneously attacked. According to Gen. S.K. Sinha, it had not been a last resort, but on Gandhi's mind since after the 1982 Akali agitations. During publicly recorded speeches in May and July in 1983 (still several months before relocating to the Akal Takht and initiating efforts to fortify it) Bhindranwale warned that senior officers of the CID were planning to initially occupy Taksal and Nihang camps of Mehta, and gradually take control of the Golden Temple. A previous request to solicit the use of army personnel and tanks had been made by Chief Minister Darbara Singh and Prime Minister Gandhi to aid in the arrest of Bhindranwale at Mehta Chowk in 1982. However, then military commander Lt. Gen. S.K. Sinha, a "dear friend" of General Shabeg Singh, Bhindranwale's military advisor, viewed the request as "very strange" and advised against the use of military force considering the sanctity of the complex and potential repercussions. While Bhindranwale surrendered peacefully at Mehta Chowk, Sinha would opt for early retirement when the same request came again two years later for him to deploy tanks and army personnel to conduct Operation Blue Star, and what he advised against, his replacements Gen. A. S. Vaidya (selected by Gandhi to supersede Sinha) and Lt. Gen. Krishnaswamy Sundarji did "gladly."


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: The government made elaborate plans for an army action while feigning readiness for negotiations and denying any intention of sending armed forces inside the Darbar Sahib complex. Six additional divisions of the army including especially trained para commandos were inducted into Punjab by the end of May 1984. The government sent a team led by Narasimha Rao, which proved unsuccessful, as Bhindranwale's firm position was nothing short of full implementation of the Anandpur Sahib Resolution, rejecting, for instance, the offer to give Chandigarh to Punjab in exchange for areas of southwestern Punjab state, as Chandigarh had been promised exclusively to Punjab in a formal communication issued by the Union government on January 29, 1970. The Sikhs would ultimately withdraw, believing they had seen a commando unit move into the city. Indira Gandhi tried to persuade the Akalis to support her in the arrest of Bhindranwale. These talks ended up being futile. On 26 May, Tohra informed the government that he had failed to convince Bhindranwale and that Bhindranwale was not under anyone's control. As Gandhi had no intention of implementing the Anandpur Sahib Resolution and feared the loss of Hindu electoral support, and as the Akali Dal also feared losing power, as over 40 SGPC members and 130 Akali leaders, including former legislators, had revolted against Longowal's leadership in favor of Bhindranwale, Akali Dal and central government interests had finally converged. Faced with imminent army action and with Longowal abandoning him, Bhindranwale declared "This bird is alone. There are many hunters after it".


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: Army action in the Punjab, which had been discussed in December 1983 to consolidate Hindu votes for Congress, began on 3 June, the day of Longowal's planned "morcha". Punjab's borders were sealed off and intrastate movement was disabled by the troop presence, with the water and electricity supply to the Golden Temple cut off. Exploratory fire was attempted on 4 June, with army commandos and CS gas proving ineffective on 5 June. The use of tanks on the complex began on 6 June, with tanks, helicopters, and other means used to deter the thousands of upset villagers attempting to gather in Amritsar, along with any other attempted gathering at over 125 other gurdwaras which had been taken over preemptively by the state. The main action was concluded by 6 June, in which a large number of pilgrims, including women and children, had been killed, and young men shot, by incensed troops who had entered the complex, with their hands tied back with their own turbans, with others dying of suffocation in the guest rooms set up as detainment camps. The operation resulted in 700 army casualties and 5,000 civilian deaths.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: In June 1984, after the negotiations, Prime Minister of India Indira Gandhi ordered Operation Blue Star, an Indian Army operation carried out between 1 and 8 June 1984, to remove Bhindranwale and his armed militants from the buildings of the Harmandir Sahib complex in Amritsar, Punjab. Bhindranwale was killed in the operation. Army officers and soldiers commented on 'the courage and commitment' of the followers of Bhindranwale who died in action.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: According to Lieutenant General Kuldip Singh Brar, who commanded the operation, the body of Bhindranwale was identified by a number of agencies, including the police, the Intelligence Bureau and militants in the Army's custody. Bhindranwale's brother also identified Bhindranwale's body. Pictures of what appear to be Bhindranwale's body have been published in at least two widely circulated books, "Tragedy of Punjab: Operation Bluestar and After" and "Amritsar: Mrs Gandhi's Last Battle". BBC correspondent Mark Tully also reported seeing Bhindranwale's body during his funeral.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: In 2016, "The Week" quoted former members of the confidential Special Group (SG) of India's Research and Analysis Wing as stating that SG had killed Bhindranwale using AK-47 rifles during Operation Blue Star, despite the Para SF claiming responsibility for it.


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: Cynthia Keppley Mahmood wrote in "Fighting for Faith and Nation: Dialogues With Sikh Militants" that Bhindranwale never learned English but mastered Punjabi. He was adept at television, radio and press interviews. Keppley further stated that "those who knew him personally uniformly report his general likability and ready humour as well his dedication to Sikhism". The author further states that "Largely responsible for launching Sikh militancy, he is valorized by militants and demonised by enemies and the accounts from the two divergent sources seem to refer to two completely different persons."


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: Though journalist Khushwant Singh was opposed to Bhindranwale, he allowed that the Sikh preacher-become-activist genuinely made no distinction between higher and lower castes, and that he had restored thousands of drunken or doped Sikh men, inured to pornographic films, to their families, and that Operation Blue Star had given the movement for Khalistan its first martyr in Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale. In 2003, at a function arranged by the Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee, at Akal Takht Amritsar under the vision of president SGPC Prof. Kirpal Singh Badungar and Singh Sahib Giani Joginder Singh Vedanti, former "jathedar" of the Akal Takht made a formal declaration that Bhindranwale was a "martyr" and awarded his son, Ishar Singh, a robe of honour. Harbans Singh's "The Encyclopedia of Sikhism" describes Bhindranwale as "a phenomenal figure of modern Sikhism".


title: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

text: A movie named "Dharam Yudh Morcha", released in 2016, was based on Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, mostly depicting the Sikhs' struggle for preserving Punjabi language and the Anandpur Sahib resolution. Though the movie was banned to avoid controversy, it is available on online platforms.


title: Telltale Games

text: Telltale Incorporated (trade name: Telltale Games) was an American video game developer based in San Rafael, California. The company was founded in July 2004 by former LucasArts developers Kevin Bruner, Dan Connors and Troy Molander, following LucasArts' decision to leave the adventure game genre. Telltale established itself to focus on adventure games using a novel episodic release schedule over digital distribution, creating its own game engine, the Telltale Tool, to support this. It closed in October 2018 after filing for bankruptcy protection.


title: Telltale Games

text: Telltale's initial successes were on games using intellectual properties with small but dedicated fan bases, including "Sam & Max", "Wallace & Gromit", "Homestar Runner", and "Bone". Around 2010, the studio gained more lucrative licensing opportunities in more mainstream properties such as "Back to the Future" and "Jurassic Park". Telltale's critical breakout game came in 2012's "The Walking Dead", based on the comic book series of the same name. It introduced a more narrative-directed approach that diverged from the standard adventure game "point and click" gameplay. "The Walking Dead" gave the player the ability to make choices that may affect how future events in the game or its sequels play out, effectively allowing players to craft their own personalized take on the offered story. Nearly all of Telltale's adventure games afterwards featured this player choice-driven approach. "The Walking Dead" was critically praised and considered to have revitalized the adventure game genre since LucasArts' departure from it in 2004.


title: Telltale Games

text: Telltale continued to expand with new licensing deals for episodic adventure games over the next few years, including for "Minecraft", "Game of Thrones", "Guardians of the Galaxy", and "Batman", but the rate of production created a "crunch time" culture behind the scenes, leaving poor company morale, little room for creativity to veer from the formula set by "The Walking Dead" or improvements on the Telltale Tool. A management shakeup occurred in early 2017, with CEO Bruner stepping down, and Pete Hawley, formerly of Zynga, brought in to fix Telltale's problems. Internal restructuring led to a layoff of 25% of the company's staff in November 2017, along with an emphasis to slow down game production to improve production quality, retire the Telltale Tool for a more standard game engine, and seek other lucrative properties to develop for. This resulted in an early 2018 deal with Netflix in which Telltale would adapt its "" into an interactive program for the streaming service, and Netflix licensing the rights to Telltale for an adventure game based on its show "Stranger Things".


title: Telltale Games

text: In the midst of releasing "", the company was forced to initiate a "majority studio closure" after their last investor had pulled out of funding. Telltale announced on September 21, 2018, that it had let go of all but 25 of its staff as part of this closure, with the remaining skeleton crew completing specific obligations, such as finishing the "Minecraft: Story Mode" project porting to Netflix. Telltale Games filed for assignment in October 2018. Many assets were later acquired by LCG Entertainment, which revived the Telltale Games name as part of its business in August 2019, retaining many of the company's previous licenses and offering former staff freelance positions.


title: Telltale Games

text: Telltale Games was founded in San Rafael, California, by Kevin Bruner, Dan Connors and Troy Molander, a group of former LucasArts employees that worked on the studio's adventure games. In March 2004, LucasArts recognized that there were "current market place realities and underlying economic considerations" that made adventure games too risky to release, and canceled work on two sequels of previous adventure games, "Full Throttle 2" and "", as well as laying off many of those developers. Bruner, Connors and Molander were not among the layoffs, but felt that the change of direction at LucasArts was not favorable, and departed the company later that year to found Telltale Games July 2004. The studio opening was announced on October 4. The name "Telltale" was selected by Bruner as the three envisioned themselves creating more adventure games but de-emphasizing puzzle elements in favor of narrative aspects, telling a tale to the user. Technology attorney Ira P. Rothken negotiated publishing and licensing deals for the company.


title: Telltale Games

text: The company's initial goal was to develop a new "Sam & Max" game in an episodic format. Grossman said that Telltale identified that "Sam & Max" had a small but dedicated audience allowing them to develop a title that would be successful in reaching out to this group and not requiring them to seek out a bigger license that would have incurred more development costs. Developing a "Sam & Max" game required both development of tools to produce the game, and the license to make it. At the time of the studio's founding, the license for "Sam & Max" was still held by LucasArts, who refused to negotiate a deal nor license the work on "Sam & Max: Freelance Police" for Telltale to complete it. Telltale waited out the licensing period until around mid-2005, after which Steve Purcell, "Sam & Max"s creator, immediately offered the license to Telltale.


title: Telltale Games

text: Until they could get to that point, the studio developed other games to bring in revenue and keep the studio afloat. On February 11, 2005, the company released their first game, "Telltale Texas Hold'em", a poker card game simulator which was intended primarily to test the Telltale Tool, their in-house game engine. They used the license around Jeff Smith's "Bone" comic book series to test the episodic format. Though initially planned for a five-episode series, Telltale only released two episodes in 2005 and 2006 and the remaining episode had been canceled. Alongside "Bone", Telltale developed a series of games for Ubisoft around the "CSI" television series, including "", "", "", and ""; though these games were also developed as episodes, they were each released in single packages. Outside of Ubisoft, few other publishers were interested in distributing Telltale's early games, forcing them to turn to their own distribution system.


title: Telltale Games

text: Once they had secured the rights to "Sam & Max", Telltale set about to making this game with an episodic approach, with episodes planned to be released on a tight monthly basis through their partner, GameTap. "" was considered a success for the company, and considered one of the first successful demonstration of an episodic release in video games. The success led to additional funding through two rounds of angel investment, including Matthew Le Merle and members of angel group Keiretsu Forum. The studio created a second season for "Sam & Max", and found additional niche intellectual property areas, including "Wallace & Gromit" and "Homestar Runner", to continue the episodic adventure game format. When Darrell Rodriguez became CEO of LucasArts in 2008, he wanted to see the old LucasArts adventure properties flourish, leading to a license for Telltale to create a new game in the "Monkey Island" series, "Tales of Monkey Island". Telltale was also able to expand their release platforms beyond personal computers, with releases of these games on various consoles at the time.


title: Telltale Games

text: To supplement their normal episodic games, Telltale created a pilot program in early 2010 to explore one-off games that would explore other gameplay and storytelling approaches that could eventually be incorporated into their episodic games. The first game, "", a puzzle-solving game in collaboration with Graham Annable, was released in June 2010, while "Poker Night at the Inventory", a crossover poker game featuring characters from "Sam and Max", "Homestar Runner", Valve's "Team Fortress 2", and the webcomic "Penny Arcade", was released late in 2010. Telltale followed up "Puzzle Agent" with a sequel, "Puzzle Agent 2", in 2011. In 2013, Telltale continued the series with "Poker Night 2". "The Walking Dead" started out as a pilot program game that was known internally as the "zombie prototype". In general, few of these games brought in large revenues, and until 2010, the founders feared that investors would suddenly pull out of the company and would force its closure.


title: Telltale Games

text: Having established themselves as working with comedy franchises, Telltale chose to work with dramatic franchises as well as comedy series. In June 2010, Telltale announced that they had secured licenses with NBC Universal to develop two episodic series based on "Back to the Future" and "Jurassic Park". Notably, Telltale's "" was the first game to break away from the standard adventure game format, including elements like quick time events and time-limited choices which would become a core gameplay element in their future adventure games. Telltale obtained the license from NBC Universal to develop episodic series around the "Law & Order" franchise in April 2011.


title: Telltale Games

text: By 2010, Telltale had proven itself successful, with yearly revenues of $10 million, 90% greater than the previous year. Part of this was attributed to "Back to the Future: The Game", which Steve Allison, the senior vice-president (VP) of marketing, called in 2011 their "most successful franchise to date". Allison stated that for most of their games, they only need to sell 100,000 copies to break even, but many of their recent releases have seen twice that number or more. The studio expanded from 90 to 140 employees. They had obtained a license in 2011 to develop a "King's Quest" adventure game based on the original Sierra games, but Activision took back the rights in 2013, which were subsequently used by The Odd Gentlemen to create their 2015 episodic "King's Quest" game.


title: Telltale Games

text: Telltale's breakthrough success came with the licenses of the comic book series "The Walking Dead" and "Fables" in association with Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment in 2011. Allison anticipated that "The Walking Dead" series could be a $20 to $30 million franchise. Their "The Walking Dead" video game presented an alteration of Telltale's approach, as rather than a traditional adventure game where players would need to solve puzzles, "The Walking Dead" was more focused on providing a cinematic experience but presenting choices to the player, either through dialog trees or through quick time events, that would create "determinants" that would feed into latter parts of the episode and into future episodes; one example would be deciding which of one of two characters to save from a zombie attack at the spur of the moment. While these decisions do not have a direct impact on the game's overall narrative and structure, it provides a more personalized story around what decisions the player had made. This format proved highly successful: the game sold one million copies in 20 days, exceeded 8.5 million episode purchases by 2013, and an estimated $40 million in revenue. The success led to two additional 5-episode seasons, a 3-episode mini-season and a final 4-episode season. "The Walking Dead" is considered to have revitalized the waning adventure game genre due to this more emotionally driven focus. Since "The Walking Dead", nearly all of Telltale's games have used a similar approach of being built around the impacts of the player's choices as determinants in later episodes and seasons.


title: Telltale Games

text: Telltale has had several other licensing details from popular works, including "Tales from the Borderlands" based on the "Borderlands" series by Gearbox Software, and "Game of Thrones", based on the HBO television show adaption, "" based on the Mojang game, "Minecraft", "" from DC Comics, and "" from Marvel Comics. On retrospective after the studio's closure, former employees of Telltale believed that the studio's expansion into all these additional licensed properties were trying to replicate the success of "The Walking Dead", moving the company from a risk-taker to seeking risk aversion strategies. This was also propagated by the weight of the licensed properties: they had taken more conservative approaches to deliver a game that mirrored "The Walking Dead", a well-known product, rather than take risks and potentially lose the license.


title: Telltale Games

text: Telltale relocated to a larger space and expanded from 125 to 160 in mid-2013. Around 2015, the company had grown to 200 to 250 employees. The company continued to grow, at its peak having about 400 employees in mid-2017. In the midst of this growth, in 2014–2015, the management of Telltale recognized the need to restructure to handle more projects and more staff. This led to original chief executive officer (CEO) Dan Connors resigning and being replaced by co-founder Kevin Bruner, who was also the firm's president. Connors noted that with the studio's continued growth, it had begun experiencing growth-specific challenges. Connors stated that Bruner's ascension to CEO would best enable Telltale Games to act on future expansion opportunities. Connors remained on the board of directors, and also served as a creative consultant. Internally, there were concerns about this transition and Brunner's influence on it; an anonymous quality control (QC) employee writing in "Gamasutra" after the firm's closure called this transition "the beginning of the end" for Telltale.


title: Telltale Games

text: With Bruner's placement as CEO in January 2015, Telltale said it was developing a game based on its own intellectual property as a result of this leadership change.


title: Telltale Games

text: In February 2015, Lionsgate announced an investment within Telltale Games to produce a number of "Super Shows", a hybrid interactive work combining television and video game elements, which would be distributed through non-traditional channels such as through streaming services. The first Super Show planned was an original intellectual property (IP) developed by Telltale that would be able to take advantage of this format. Telltale also announced that Lionsgate CEO Jon Feltheimer and Unity Technologies CEO John Riccitiello joined Telltale's board of directors. Alongside this, Lionsgate had invested into Telltale. The "Super Show" concept never got out of pre-production, due to issues that arose with the studio in 2016 and 2017, according to "Variety".


title: Telltale Games

text: By 2016, Bruner said that the Telltale studio had established an environment to be able to work on four major titles simultaneously with room for various side projects. However, this approach to development had created a perpetual state of "crunch time" within Telltale, according to several current and former staff speaking to "USgamer", "The Verge", and "Variety" in 2017. This limited the amount of time that the creators and developers could spend on content in order to maintain a consistent flow of episodes to consumers but impacted the quality of games. There was a perpetual drive to release new episodes on a regular basis, whether they were good or not, so that the company had a continued source of income. This particularly affected the Telltale Tool, the game engine used since the company's inception, which caused numerous bugs in released episodes that Telltale became infamously noted for. The anonymous QC tester stated that their department was nearly always under crunch time, working from 48 to 60 hours a week on testing at least two game series across multiple platforms simultaneously, and were understaffed, leading to some of the quality control issues as well. During this time, the eighth generation of video game consoles emerged, and while the Telltale Tool was ported to these platforms, it showed its age in graphics quality, which also diminished Telltale's products. There was also a new trend of major AAA titles incorporating deep story-telling, such as "God of War", which Telltale would not easily be able to compete with.


title: Telltale Games

text: The company was also hobbled by working with established IP, and inconsistencies in the reviewing process with management that led to last-minute reworking of some episodes. "The Verge" also found some of the employees they spoke to had stated that top-level executives, including Bruner, had become fixated on the format that "The Walking Dead" presented, making decisions that prevented developers from looking at alternative formats or variations from this formula, stifling creativity and leading to several staff departures prior to the 2017 layoffs. According to narrative designer Emily Grace Buck, management would frequently demand rewrites of materials, with most games having between 60 and 90 percent of the content reworked after executive review. Bruner and management created a "culture of fear" of demotion or firing among developers. Some of these rewrites had come days prior to an episode's submission date for certification, creating hasty rewrites that filtered through the entire production process. This rush created some of the apparent "bugs" in the Telltale Tool which Buck stated were more often a result of the inability to smooth out hastily-reworked animations as well as perpetuating the crunch time culture within the company. Other cases of narrative rewrites were a result of different expectations by some of the executive management. Buck stated that they had originally been driven by management to make "Minecraft: Story Mode" as a more mature game, but eventually reworked this to a family-friendly title, while for their "Guardians of the Galaxy" game, the storywriters had written a story they felt more true to the humor and wit of the source material, but were told by management to make a darker story. Further, anonymous sources from Telltale stated that very few of the games were profitable, with only "The Walking Dead: The First Season", "Minecraft: Story Mode", and revenues from publishing "7 Days to Die" turning a profit. "Batman: The Telltale Series", released in 2016 was said to be one of the worst commercial failures for the company.


title: Telltale Games

text: On March 15, 2017, Bruner announced he had stepped down as CEO of Telltale, though "Variety" reported that he had been voted out of this position by the Board of directors. Bruner turned the day-to-day operations to Connors, while still remaining on the Board of Directors. Bruner said "The time has come to pass the reins to someone that can better drive Telltale to the next level and realize all the potential that is here." Pete Hawley, the former VP for Games at Zynga, was announced as the new CEO, with Connors remaining on its Board and acting in an advisory role. Rather than other corporate "fixers" who take control of a company for a temporary period to help it regain its financial footing, Hawley had committed to staying with Telltale after helping the company to get past these problems.


title: Telltale Games

text: In November 2017, a restructuring of the company cut about 90 positions, about a quarter of their staff, which was not expected to affect the release of any existing projects. Hawley said that the restructuring was for "reorienting our organization with a focus on delivering fewer, better games with a smaller team". While Telltale had not stated which positions were let go in the restructuring, sources speaking to "USgamer" stated that most were part of the management structure that led to these problems; coupled with Hawley's appointment as CEO, this was expected to be a turning point to help revitalize Telltale.


title: Telltale Games

text: In June 2018, Bruner filed a lawsuit against Telltale in relation to his departure, citing financial damages as he had been seemingly removed from the Board of Directors, and thus could not gain information related to Telltale's financial status in anticipation of selling off a portion of his shares in the company. Telltale stated the claims were "meritless". In its response to Bruner's lawsuit, Telltale stated that the company "is now working to turn around the decline that it experienced under [Bruner]'s stewardship". Kent Mudle, the creative director for "The Walking Dead: The Final Season", stated that the new management had shown a great deal of effort to turn the studio around from the previous uses, with the executives staying more hands-off and reducing the amount of micromanagement of the creative teams.


title: Telltale Games

text: In June 2018, Telltale announced a partnership with Netflix for the streaming service to provide its games to subscribers, with the first planned game being "Minecraft: Story Mode". Alongside this, Telltale announced that they were working on a yet-untitled game based on Netflix's original property, "Stranger Things". According to "Variety", there had been suggestions of teaming with Netflix for collaboration shortly after "Stranger Things" first aired in mid-2016, but Telltale's management at the time, including Bruner, rejected the idea. The Netflix partnership solidified after Hawley took over as CEO. The "Stranger Things" game would have been used to bridge the show's story between its second and third season. In addition to this game, Telltale had started working with Night School Studio in 2017 for them to make a first-person, narrative driven game that would have led into Telltale's game. However, Night School reported difficulty in cooperating with Telltale over 2018 and were also surprised by the studio's sudden closure.


title: Telltale Games

text: On September 21, 2018, CEO Pete Hawley announced that Telltale was undergoing a "majority studio closure", with around 90% of its present workforce (225 to 250 employees) let go that day. A core team of about 25 employees remained to "fulfill the company's obligations to its board and partners", which includes completing the "Minecraft: Story Mode" interactive media project for Netflix. According to Dan Connors, the studio had been ready to close another round of financing when their last major investor pulled out. The company executives had to make the decision to end all production as soon as possible without this investment. While Connors did not specify which investor pulled out, "Variety" suggested that this may have been Lionsgate, which had contacted Telltale's board the previous week about its intent to pull out of funding Telltale in order to return to its core film business. "Variety" also reported that AMC Networks, which owns the rights to "The Walking Dead" television series, and Smilegate, a Korean mobile games publisher, were looking to invest in Telltale, but both pulled out the day before Telltale's closure announcement. Dan Murray, president of Skybound Interactive which was working with Telltale for "The Walking Dead" games, said "We knew some of the challenges Telltale was facing, but when the news hits so suddenly everyone was taken off guard", while anonymous Telltale employees stated to "The Verge" that they had known the company was in financial trouble in the months leading up to the closure and was further hurt by leaks of news related to the Netflix deal, which management wanted to use as a lure for speculative investors.


title: Telltale Games

text: Those who were let go reported they were given no warning, had to leave the office building within 30 minutes of the company's decision, received no severance, and only had a limited amount of time on their health care benefits. Melissa Hutchison, the voice actor for Clementine in "The Walking Dead" games, said that the news came in the middle of a recording session which they had to immediately end. On September 24, the former staff were allowed to return to the office within a three-hour timeframe to gather any belongings they did not manage to collect in the 30 minutes following the majority closure decision. The suddenness of the closure, along with the lack of post-layoff support for the employees, led to renewed discussions about the need for video game developers to unionize, with the Game Workers Unite grassroots movement calling the treatment of the Telltale employees "exploitative". On September 24, 2018, a class-action lawsuit was filed by former Telltale employee Vernie Roberts, representing about a total of 275 Telltale employees, alleging that Telltale violated the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act of 1988 (WARN Act) and the more stringent requirements set by California of requiring at least 60 days notification before issuing mass layoffs.


title: Telltale Games

text: Telltale has not officially commented on the status of its in-progress games, including "The Wolf Among Us: Season Two", "Game of Thrones: Season Two", and the untitled "Stranger Things" project, but laid-off employees alleged that teams working on these games had all been let go. On September 24, Netflix announced that it is "in the process of evaluating other options for bringing the "Stranger Things" universe to life in an interactive medium." It also confirmed that it plans to go ahead with releasing "Minecraft: Story Mode" as planned. The first three episodes of "Minecraft: Story Mode" were subsequently released on Netflix on November 27, and the remaining 2 were released that December.


title: Telltale Games

text: Telltale released the second episode of four of "The Walking Dead: The Final Season" as scheduled on September 25, 2018, and stated that it had been contacted by "multiple potential partners" to help bring the last two episodes of the series to completion in some manner. However, while some fans of the series were happy about this news, others, including Cory Barlog, suggested that Telltale should prioritize finding ways to pay the let-go developers over finishing off the game. Two anonymous sources speaking to Ethan Gach of "Kotaku" clarified that Telltale was trying to convince potential development partners to hire the staff Telltale had laid off so the staff could remotely finish the two remaining episodes of "The Walking Dead: The Final Season". During the 2018 New York Comic Con, Robert Kirkman, the creator of "The Walking Dead" comic, stated that his production company Skybound Entertainment completed negotiations with Telltale to finish off the last two episodes of "The Final Season" through their Skybound Games division and with the original development team from Telltale.


title: Telltale Games

text: On October 4, 2018, narrative designer Rachel Noel stated that her team within the skeleton crew was also laid off, and that there were "not many" people left at the company. Telltale saw assignment proceedings begin on October 11, 2018, working through Sherwood Partners to liquidate all remaining assets; the company remains in assignment as of April 2019. Various digital storefronts started removing Telltale products from their marketplaces by November. For some of these removed games, after rights were returned, the original company was able to rerelease the titles as the new publisher; for example, Skybound republished all four seasons of "The Walking Dead" as one collection, "The Walking Dead: The Telltale Definitive Series", in September 2019, while Gearbox Software rereleased "Tales from the Borderlands" in February 2021.


title: Telltale Games

text: Following negotiations with Sherwood Partners starting in February 2019, LCG Entertainment acquired several key Telltale assets and on August 28, 2019, announced that it was re-launching the company by assuming "Telltale Games" as its trade name, operating out of Malibu, California, with a satellite studio in Corte Madera, California. Under the leadership of founders Jamie Ottilie (chief executive officer) and Brian Waddle (chief revenue officer), the new Telltale is set to re-release the old Telltale's back-catalog, as well as work on new games based on Telltale-affiliated properties. While licenses for games and planned games like "The Walking Dead" and "Stranger Things" have since reverted to their original owners, the new Telltale retains licenses for "The Wolf Among Us" and "Batman", as well as the intellectual property for "Puzzle Agent". The new Telltale was expected to start small for the first six months to regain distribution channels, and the company has offered former staff of the old Telltale freelance roles within the company with the potential for full-time positions at a later point in time. Partners in the new Telltale include publisher Athlon Games, which will handle distribution, and financial contributors Chris Kingsley, Lyle Hall and Tobias Sjögren. None of the newly involved parties had previously worked with the old Telltale. The first game under this new company was a re-release of "Batman: The Telltale Series", adding in a new noir-style shader among other fixes, which was released in December 2019. The company also announced "The Wolf Among Us 2" at The Game Awards 2019.


title: Telltale Games

text: Former employees of the original Telltale were skeptical of LCG's approach to the relaunch of Telltale, considering that offering only freelance work while in San Francisco, which has one of the highest costs-of-living in the country, is risky. Others have urged LCG to pay off the existing Telltale debt to its former employees, while others have called for a boycott of any game from the new Telltale.


title: Telltale Games

text: Telltale Games released video games in episodic installments. It is seen by production studios and other content producers to take a more realistic approach to movie tie-in games rather than the difficult "see the movie, play the game" model, and also collaborates with studios and screenwriters to create a strong experience that pays homage to the original film or franchise. In a September 2017 interview, Job Stauffer called Telltale's role as "an interactive TV network and a studio", able to produce content across a wide range of genres on a regular basis. He considered their studio something between a video game developer and a cable or streaming network with production capabilities like HBO or Netflix.


title: Telltale Games

text: In general, Telltale offered its games as a one-time "season pass" purchase for the game's season when the first episode of the season was released, with the user then entitled to all planned episodes for that season. For digital purchases, this entitlement was handled through the digital storefront. In retail, Telltale published complete seasons after the season's digital release was over, but also adopted a model where they could publish, at the same time as the digital release, a retail disc that contains the first episode. The disc included a "season pass" entitlement to the remaining episodes to be digitally downloaded, tied to the disc itself rather than the user. This allowed for trading or resale of the retail product that can be played by others, which according to Stauffer, makes for a "nice in-between" market model that satisfies players, retailers, and themselves. For some of their games, Telltale developed additional downloadable content, such as "400 Days" for "The Walking Dead", or three additional episodes for "Minecraft: Story Mode" Season 1, which must be purchased separately from the season pass.


title: Telltale Games

text: With "Batman: The Telltale Series" and most of their subsequently released episodic adventure games, Telltale added a "Crowd Play" feature that can be used by those that stream their playthroughs on services like Twitch. Through Crowd Play, viewers can vote for an option for the streamer to select.


title: Telltale Games

text: While mainly a developer, Telltale also verified its self-publishing ethos; the only classic developer-publisher relationship was with Ubisoft for the "CSI" video game franchise. They have struck financial arrangements with GameTap for the first two seasons of the rebooted "Sam & Max" games, but their publishing arrangements have been chiefly made after the games were already completed and had already been sold via digital distribution.


title: Telltale Games

text: Telltale aimed to also present itself on as many digital platforms and avenues as possible. To date, it has released games through GameTap; on Microsoft Windows and OS X, through Steam and similar services, plus its own online store, on Wii via WiiWare and disc, on Xbox 360, via Xbox Live Arcade and disc, on PlayStation 3 through PlayStation Network and disc, on iPhone and iPad through iTunes, on PlayStation Vita, and on Kindle Fire HDX. Though Telltale normally port their own games to other systems, "" was ported to the PlayStation 2 by Ubisoft Sofia, and "" was ported to Mac OS by Vanbrio. Telltale was one of the companies who Sony confirmed pledged PlayStation 4 third-party support at the PlayStation Meeting 2013. Telltale had also committed to developing and re-releasing seasons for the Nintendo Switch. Stauffer stated that there were no restrictions on what games they can bring to the Switch due to content, but they were focusing on their more recent, family-friendly games like "Minecraft: Story Mode", "Batman", and "Guardians of the Galaxy" only due to ease of porting these to the Switch, while older games like "The Walking Dead" required more effort to port.


title: Telltale Games

text: The Telltale Tool is a proprietary game engine developed by Telltale. Telltale commenced development on the engine shortly after its founding, initially referring to the engine as the "Telltale Engine and Toolset". A casual poker game, "Telltale Texas Hold'em", was created to test their engine and distribution model, and to ensure that all major bugs were ironed out before the release of their first adventure game, "".


title: Telltale Games

text: The Telltale Tool has been used for every game developed by Telltale Games, and continued to receive improvements since the initial version, such as compatibility to new systems and better graphics capabilities. The only third-party game to use the Telltale Tool, "", was developed by Straandlooper and also published by Telltale Games.


title: Telltale Games

text: While the Telltale Tool has been updated over the years to support newer consoles and computers, it lacked features that made it more difficult to develop for as the company took on more projects, rushing the development schedules. Until 2016, Telltale Tool did not have a physics engine, meaning that if a scene required an object to fall, this had to be animated by hand, taking time from other more productive activities. This also prevented them from using elements like dynamic lighting, and requiring them to develop lighting models using 3D modeling tools like Maya, significantly extending time to develop art assets. The aged feature set of the Telltale Tool led to a perception that many of Telltale's games had an abnormally high rate of bugs and other technical flaws, pervasive enough to pose a significant risk of impeding players' ability to progress through a given game. A 2015 article by "Kotaku" noted that "their games, wonderful in many ways as they may be, have been accompanied by an undercurrent of fan anger" over widespread bugs and glitches. The article concluded that Telltale's support forums "paint a portrait of a publisher that is constantly releasing buggy and even outright broken games", seemingly lacking the resources to fix or even monitor most of them.


title: Telltale Games

text: Telltale moved to an improved version of their engine around early 2016, partially implemented first in "" and completed for the release of "Batman: The Telltale Series". The updated Telltale Tool provided direct support for DirectX 11 features, including physics-based models, texture mapping and blending, and dynamic lighting and shadows. The changes also helped automate and integrate a game's development across all departments within Telltale, and specifically helped to reduce memory use in some scenes, which had been identified as part of the technical bugs on some consoles' versions.


title: Telltale Games

text: In mid-June 2018, "Variety" reported that Telltale was moving away from the Telltale Tool and instead toward the established Unity game engine. The "Stranger Things" game was expected to be the first to use the Unity-based engine.


title: Telltale Games

text: Telltale helped other developers to publish their games. Under the moniker Telltale Publishing, Telltale entered into a publishing deal with Jackbox Games to bring the console versions of "The Jackbox Party Pack" to retail markets, and with The Fun Pimps to publish "7 Days to Die" for consoles; according to "Variety", this publishing deal was as financially successful for Telltale as the first "The Walking Dead" season. On August 18, 2016, Telltale published "Mr. Robot:1.51exfiltrati0n" by Night School Studio. During the company's restructuring in 2017, the publishing branch of Telltale had been put on hiatus but was expected to be reused once the company regained its financial stability.


title: Telltale Games

text: The release of the first season of "The Walking Dead" in 2012 is considered to have created a resurgence in the adventure game genre, which had been languishing since about 2000. Dontnod Entertainment found the episodic approach to storytelling to be an ideal way to present "Life Is Strange", and it has allowed them to release supplementary stories within the series in smaller pieces. Telltale's approach to branching stories has often been criticized, with choices ultimately having little effect on a game's overall narration, often being summarized as "choices don't matter"; players may make choices to save a character from death early in a game, but only to have that character die later for the game to have a cohesive plot and making the player's effort to save the character meaningless, for example.


title: Telltale Games

text: Former employees of Telltale Games have gone on to adapt the narrative aspects of these games into their own products. Sean Vanaman and Jake Rodkin, co-writers of the first season of "The Walking Dead", decided to leave to pursue independent game development, founding Campo Santo in 2013 and releasing "Firewatch", a critically praised narrative-driven exploration game. Adam Hines and Sean Krankel, both writers for Telltale, left to launch Night School Studio in 2014, subsequently releasing "Oxenfree" which heavily used a "walk and talk" mechanic as part of its gameplay. Four former employees that had left before the studio's closure—Michael Choung (who had briefly spent time at Night School), Dennis Lenart, Nick Herman, and Pierre Shorette—formed AdHoc Studio with the intent to develop live-action interactive video games, following in Telltale's footsteps. AdHoc has since become involved with the new Telltale Games by LCG to help with the narrative and cinematic elements of "The Wolf Among Us 2". Telltale co-founder Dan Connors created a new studio in 2019, Skunkape Games, made up of himself and former Telltale employees Rodkin, Randy Tudor, and Jonathan Sgro. The studio is currently working on remastering Telltale's "Sam & Max" games with assistance from other members of the original development team, beginning with the remaster of "Sam & Max Save the World" in December 2020.


title: Young adult fiction

text: Young adult fiction (YA) is a category of fiction written for readers from 12 to 18 years of age. While the genre is primarily targeted at adolescents, approximately half of YA readers are adults.


title: Young adult fiction

text: The subject matter and genres of YA correlate with the age and experience of the protagonist. The genres available in YA are expansive and include most of those found in adult fiction. Common themes related to YA include friendship, first love, relationships, and identity. Stories that focus on the specific challenges of youth are sometimes referred to as problem novels or coming-of-age novels.


title: Young adult fiction

text: Young adult fiction was developed to soften the transition between children's novels and adult literature.


title: Young adult fiction

text: The history of young adult literature is tied to the history of how childhood and young adulthood has been perceived. One early writer to recognize young adults as a distinct age group was Sarah Trimmer, who, in 1802, described "young adulthood" as lasting from ages 14 to 21. In her children's literature periodical, "The Guardian of Education", Trimmer introduced the terms "Books for Children" (for those under fourteen) and "Books for Young Persons" (for those between fourteen and twenty-one), establishing terms of reference for young adult literature that still remain in use. Nineteenth- and early twentieth-century authors present several early works that appealed to young readers, though not necessarily written for them such as Lewis Carroll, Robert Louis Stevenson, Mark Twain, Francis Hodgson Burnett, Edith Nesbit, JM Barrie, L. Frank Baum, Astrid Lindgren, Enid Blyton, and CS Lewis.


title: Young adult fiction

text: Though young adult literature had existed since at least Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House" series, which was published in the 1930s, teachers and librarians were slow to accept books for adolescents as a genre.


title: Young adult fiction

text: The Heinlein juveniles were science fiction novels written by Robert A. Heinlein for Scribner's young-adult line, beginning with "Rocket Ship Galileo" in 1947. Scribner's published eleven more between 1947 and 1958, but rejected the thirteenth, "Starship Troopers". That one was instead published by Putnam. The intended market was teenage boys, but a fourteenth novel, "Podkayne of Mars" (1963), featuring a young girl as the protagonist, is sometimes listed as a "Heinlein juvenile", although Heinlein himself did not consider it to be one.


title: Young adult fiction

text: In the 1950s, "The Catcher in the Rye" (1951) attracted the attention of the adolescent demographic although it was written for adults. The themes of adolescent angst and alienation in the novel have become synonymous with young adult literature.


title: Young adult fiction

text: "A Wrinkle in Time," written by Madeleine L'Engle in 1960, received over twenty-six rejections before publication in 1962, due in part to it being neither a children's nor adult's book, and featuring a teenage girl as the protagonist at a time when most science fiction targeted teenage boys.


title: Young adult fiction

text: The modern classification of young-adult fiction originated during the 1960s, after the publication of S. E. Hinton's "The Outsiders" (1967). The novel features a truer, darker side of adolescent life that was not often represented in works of fiction of the time, and was the first novel published specifically marketed for young adults as Hinton was one when she wrote it. Written during high school and published when Hinton was only 16, "The Outsiders" also lacked the nostalgic tone common in books about adolescents written by adults. "The Outsiders" remains one of the best-selling young adult novels of all time.


title: Young adult fiction

text: Author and academic Michael Cart argues that the 1960s was the decade when literature for adolescents "could be said to have come into its own". This increased the discussions about adolescent experiences and the new idea of adolescent authors. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, five very popular books were published: "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" (1969), an autobiography of the early years of American poet Maya Angelou; "The Friends" (1973) by Rosa Guy; the semi-autobiographical "The Bell Jar" (US 1963, under a pseudonym; UK 1967) by poet Sylvia Plath; "Bless the Beasts and Children" (1970) by Glendon Swarthout; and "Deathwatch" (1972) by Robb White, which was awarded 1973 Edgar Award for Best Juvenile Mystery by the Mystery Writers of America. The works of Angelou and Plath were not written for young readers.


title: Young adult fiction

text: As publishers began to focus on the emerging adolescent market, booksellers and libraries began creating young adult sections distinct from children's literature and novels written for adults. The 1970s to the mid-1980s have been described as the golden age of young-adult fiction, when challenging novels began speaking directly to the interests of the identified adolescent market.


title: Young adult fiction

text: In the 1980s, young adult literature began pushing the envelope in terms of the subject matter that was considered appropriate for their audience: Books dealing with topics such as rape, suicide, parental death, and murder which had previously been deemed taboo, saw significant critical and commercial success. A flip-side of this trend was a strong revived interest in the romance novel, including young adult romance. With an increase in number of adolescents, the genre "matured, blossomed, and came into its own, with the better written, more serious, and more varied young adult books (than those) published during the last two decades".


title: Young adult fiction

text: The first novel in J.K. Rowling's seven-book "Harry Potter" series, "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone", was published in 1997. The series was praised for its complexity and maturity, and attracted a wide adult audience. While not technically YA, its success led many to see Harry Potter and its author, J.K. Rowling, as responsible for a resurgence of young adult literature, and re-established the pre-eminent role of speculative fiction in the field, a trend further solidified by "The Hunger Games" trilogy by Suzanne Collins. The end of the decade saw a number of awards appear such as the Michael L. Printz Award and Alex Awards, designed to recognize excellence in writing for young adult audiences.


title: Young adult fiction

text: The category of young adult fiction continues to expand into other media and genres: graphic novels/manga, light novels, fantasy, mystery fiction, romance novels, and even subcategories such as cyberpunk, techno-thrillers, and contemporary Christian fiction.


title: Young adult fiction

text: Since about 2017, issues related to diversity and sensitivity in English-language young adult fiction have become increasingly contentious. Some fans frequently criticize authors – including those who themselves belong to minorities – for "appropriating" or wrongly portraying the experiences of minority or disadvantaged groups. Publishers have withdrawn several planned young adult novels from publication after they met with pushback on these grounds from readers on websites such as Goodreads. Authors have reported harassment, demands to cease writing, and death threats over social media. To prevent offending readers, publishers increasingly, though with mixed success, employ "sensitivity readers" to screen texts for material that could cause offense.


title: Young adult fiction

text: Many young adult novels feature coming-of-age stories. These feature adolescents beginning to transform into adults, working through personal problems, and learning to take responsibility for their actions. YA serves many literary purposes. It provides a pleasurable reading experience for young people, emphasizing real-life experiences and problems in easier-to-grasp ways, and depicts societal functions.


title: Young adult fiction

text: An analysis of YA novels between 1980 and 2000 found seventeen expansive literary themes. The most common of these were friendship, getting into trouble, romantic and sexual interest, and family life. Other common thematic elements revolve around the coming-of-age nature of the texts. This includes narratives about self-identity, life and death, and individuality.


title: Young adult fiction

text: There are no distinguishable differences in genre styles between YA fiction and adult fiction. Some of the most common YA genres include contemporary fiction, fantasy, romance, and dystopian. Hybrid genres are also common in YA.


title: Young adult fiction

text: Social problem novels or problem novels are a sub-genre of literature focusing and commenting on overarching social problems. They are typically a type of realistic fiction that characteristically depict contemporary issues such as poverty, drugs, and pregnancy. Published in 1967, S.E. Hinton's "The Outsiders" is often credited as the first problem novel. Following this release, problem novels were popularized and dominated during the 1970s.


title: Young adult fiction

text: A classic example of a problem novel and one that defined the sub-genre is "Go Ask Alice" by Anonymous (pseudonym for Beatrice Sparks) published in 1971. "Go Ask Alice" is written in first-person as the diary of a young girl who experiences a lot of problems while growing up. In order to cope with her problems, the protagonist begins experimenting with drugs. Modern examples of problem novels include "Speak" by Laurie Halse Anderson, "Crank" by Ellen Hopkins, and "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" by Stephen Chbosky.


title: Young adult fiction

text: The distinctions among children's literature, young adult literature, and adult literature have historically been flexible and loosely defined. This line is often policed by adults who feel strongly about the border. At the lower end of the age spectrum, fiction targeted to readers aged 8–12 is referred to as middle grade fiction. Some novels originally marketed to adults are of interest and value to adolescents, and vice versa, as in the case of books such as the "Harry Potter" series of novels.


title: Young adult fiction

text: Some examples of middle grade novels and novel series include the "Percy Jackson & the Olympians" series by Rick Riordan, "The Underland Chronicles" by Suzanne Collins, and "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" by Jeff Kinney. Some examples of young adult novels and novel series include the "Harry Potter" series by J. K. Rowling, "The Hunger Games" trilogy by Suzanne Collins, the "Alex Rider" series by Anthony Horowitz and the "Mortal Instruments" series by Cassandra Clare.


title: Young adult fiction

text: Middle grade novels are typically for the ages of 8–12. They are usually shorter, and are significantly less mature and complex in theme and content than YA. YA novels are ages 12–18, and tackle more mature and adult themes and content. Middle grade novels usually feature protagonists between the ages of 10 and 13, whereas young adult novels usually feature protagonists from 14 to 18.


title: Young adult fiction

text: YA has been integrated into classrooms to increase student interest in reading. There is a common misconception that YA lit is solely for "struggling" or "reluctant" readers and should be reserved for remedial classes. Studies have shown that YA can be beneficial in classroom settings. YA fiction is written for adolescents and some believe it to be more relevant to students' social and emotional needs instead of classic literature. Use of YA in classrooms is linked to:


title: Young adult fiction

text: Students who read YA are more likely to appreciate literature and have stronger reading skills than others. YA also allows teachers to talk about "taboo" or difficult topics with their students. For example, a 2014 study shows that using Laurie Halse Anderson's novel "Speak" aided in discussions on consent and complicity. Those who read about tough situations like date rape are more emotionally prepared to handle the situation if it arises. It is important to use diverse literature in the classroom, especially in discussing taboo topics, to avoid excluding minority students.


title: Young adult fiction

text: Literature written for young adults can also be used as a stepping stone to canonical works that are traditionally read in classrooms, and required by many school curriculums. In "Building a Culture of Readers: YA Literature and the Canon" by Kara Lycke, Lycke suggests pairing young adult literature and canon works to prepare young adults to understand the classic literature they will encounter. YA can provide familiar and less alienating examples of similar concepts than those in classic literature. Suggested pairings include Rick Riordan's "Percy Jackson" series with the Iliad or the Odyssey, or Stephenie Meyer's "Twilight" with "Wuthering Heights". When discussing identity, Lycke suggests pairing Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter" with Sherman Alexie's "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian."


title: Young adult fiction

text: Mature themes in young adult fiction are often challenged. Conservative activists and religious groups criticize young adult fiction for violence, sexual content, homosexuality, and topics such as suicide. Speculative young adult fiction is sometimes targeted by critics for religious reasons, including religious debates over the Harry Potter series. Criticism is also leveled at young adult fiction authors for alleged insensitivity to marginalized communities or cultural appropriation.


title: Young adult fiction

text: English language young adult fiction and children's literature in general have historically shown a lack of books with a main character who is a person of color, LGBT, or disabled. In the UK 90% of the best-selling YA titles from 2006 to 2016 featured white, able-bodied, cis-gendered, and heterosexual main characters. The numbers of children's book authors have shown a similar lack of diversity. Between 2006–2016, eight percent of all young adult authors published in the UK were people of color.


title: Young adult fiction

text: Some consider diversity beneficial since it encourages children of diverse backgrounds to read and it teaches children of all backgrounds an accurate view of the world around them. In the mid-2010s, more attention was drawn to diversity from various quarters. In the several years following, diversity numbers seem to have increased: One survey showed that in 2017, a quarter of children's books were about minority protagonists, almost a 10% increase from 2016.


title: Young adult fiction

text: Jack Zipes, a professor of German and literature, has criticized the standardized nature of young adult fiction in Western society. He writes that to become a phenomenon, a work has to "conform to the standards of exception set by the mass media and promoted by the culture industry in general." Zipes notes the similarities between Harry Potter and other well known heroes, such as Superman, David, Tom Thumb, Jack the Giant Killer, Aladdin, and the characters of Horatio Alger.


title: Young adult fiction

text: Chris Crowe, a professor of English and young adult literature, describes criticism of young adult fiction as fear that the genre will replace classic works. He cites the availability of poorly written young adult fiction, as well as the genre's recency making it difficult for it to establish itself against classic literature.


title: Minamata (film)

text: Minamata is a 2020 biographical drama film directed by Andrew Levitas, based on the book of the same name by Aileen Mioko Smith and W. Eugene Smith. The film stars Johnny Depp (who also produced) as W. Eugene Smith, an American photographer who documented the effects of mercury poisoning on the citizens of Minamata, Kumamoto, Japan. The film premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival on February 21, 2020. It was released in the United States on February 11, 2022, by Samuel Goldwyn Films. At the 94th Academy Awards in 2022, the film ranked third place in the Oscars Fan Favorite contest.


title: Minamata (film)

text: In 1971, the American photographer W. Eugene Smith, who was famous for his numerous "photographic essays" published in "Life", has become a recluse. While on a separate assignment, a passionate Japanese translator, Aileen, urges Smith to visit Minamata to photograph and document the disease. Smith is finally convinced to do his best to unmask the devastating effects of corporate greed, an accomplice of the local police and government.


title: Minamata (film)

text: Smith travels to Minamata in Japan to document the devastating effect of mercury poisoning and Minamata disease in coastal communities. This disease is caused by industrial pollution linked to the activities of the chemical company Chisso. Armed with only his Minolta camera against a powerful company, Smith must win the trust of the broken community and find the images that will bring this story to the world. While there, Smith becomes the victim of severe reprisals. He is therefore urgently repatriated to the United States. However, this report will make him an icon of photojournalism.


title: Minamata (film)

text: On October 23, 2018, it was announced that Johnny Depp would star in the drama film as the photojournalist Eugene Smith and the film will be written and directed by Andrew Levitas. Originally slated to be paid $6 million for the role, Depp renegotiated down to $3 million in order to keep the film under-budget.


title: Minamata (film)

text: Filming began in January 2019, with Bill Nighy, Minami Hinase, Hiroyuki Sanada, Tadanobu Asano, Ryo Kase and Jun Kunimura added to the cast. Filming took place in Japan, Serbia and Montenegro.


title: Minamata (film)

text: "Minamata" had its world premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival on February 21, 2020. In October 2020, MGM, through its relaunched American International Pictures banner, acquired US and Vertigo Releasing acquired UK distribution rights to the film. It was scheduled for release on February 5, 2021 in the US and on February 12, 2021 in the UK, but it was postponed to an unspecified date and to August 13, respectively.


title: Minamata (film)

text: On July 26, 2021, Levitas sent MGM a letter alleging that it had decided to "bury the film" in response to the decline in the public image of Depp, and urging MGM to give the film a wider distribution and promotion. An MGM spokesperson told Deadline, ""Minamata" continues to be among future AIP releases and at this time, the film's US release date is TBA." On December 1, 2021, Iervolino & Lady Bacardi Entertainment and Samuel Goldwyn Films announced that they had acquired US distribution rights to the film from MGM and were planning to release it on December 15. The release was later pushed back to February 11, 2022.


title: Minamata (film)

text: The city of Minamata, Kumamoto, declined to lend its name as a supporter to a local screening held in August 2021 organized by volunteers, prior to the nationwide release of the film in Japan in September 2021. The city told "The Asahi Shimbun" that it was uncertain whether the film depicted historical events accurately and was conducive to dispelling discrimination and prejudice against patients. Kumamoto Prefecture, on the other hand, supported the screening.


title: Minamata (film)

text: The film's score was composed by Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto. Minamata's director Andrew Levitas said that "Ryuichi was my dream collaborator – he would be on any film – but on this mission in particular, there could be no one else…The music quite literally needed to represent both the absolute best of humanity as well as the worst…In my opinion, Ryuichi was able to elegantly ride this razor’s edge and deliver on this concept entirely".


title: Minamata (film)

text: On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 78% based on 74 reviews, with an average rating of 7.3/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "Heartfelt yet jumbled, "Minamata" pays uneven tribute to a remarkable real-life story better served by the documentary treatment." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 55 out of 100, based on 16 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".


title: Minamata (film)

text: Jane Fredbury from "The Canberra Times" said that "Despite his outsize star profile, Depp manages to be convincing as a war-hardened photojournalist committed to exposing corporate crime, and doesn't distract from the issues", ultimately awarding the film four out of five stars. Peter Debruge of "Variety" gave "Minamata" a positive review, calling it "impressive if somewhat less-than-nuanced" and mentioning that "Depp plays it surly throughout, dominating those around him". Peter Bradshaw of "The Guardian" said that ""Minamata" is a forthright, heartfelt movie, an old-fashioned 'issue picture' with a worthwhile story to tell about how communities can stand up to overweening corporations and how journalists dedicated to truthful news can help them" awarding the film three out of five stars. Collider stated that "Minamata" is "well paced, beautifully filmed and does have an appealing classic feel to it, but it still lacks that spark to propel it from informative to all-consuming" while reporting that Depp "does manage to successfully convey the complexities of Eugene's current headspace and how this assignment unearths his early determination". "Sydney Morning Herald" awarded the film four stars out of five stating Depp's performance "is full of grace and grit".


title: Minamata (film)

text: Noel Murray of the "Los Angeles Times" mentioned that "Taken on its own merits — as an accessible if ahistorical dramatization of an environmental tragedy — “Minamata” does what it sets out to do very well" describing Depp as "quite good" while The Wrap stated that "Moments of connection and the power of photography to tell a story shine through, though there are also instances where the cinematic storytelling becomes a bit heavy-handed" calling Depp's performance as "his most tender, most mature work in years". Austin Chronicle reported that "Minamata" was "... a rare return to form for Depp" while "The Washington Post" awarded the film two and a half stars out of four stating that "Levitas makes choices that distract from the central crisis. But when he pays attention to the victims, “Minamata” finally comes into focus".


title: Minamata (film)

text: However, Kevin Maher of "The Times" (UK) awarded "Minamata" two out of five stars, mentioning that "The professional redemption of Johnny Depp will have to wait", while Deborah Young from "The Hollywood Reporter" wrote that "Director Andrew Levitas and his co-screenwriters dramatize a riveting story using a mass of groan-worthy genre clichés that ill-serve the truth they are trying to recreate". She did give positive remarks about Depp's performance as "he effortlessly captures the bohemian contrariness of the brilliant war photographer Gene Smith as he approaches the end of his career plagued by debts, alcohol, nightmares and disillusionment". "The New York Times" mentioned that ""Minamata" is often undermined by its protagonist, whose boorish ways clash with Japanese culture and distract from its central message". while Brian Tallerico of "RogerEbert.com" stated that "Minamata is weighed down by self-important direction that loses the human beings in this story by prioritizing the headlines" although he praised Depp's performance by saying that "Leading man Johnny Depp is up to the challenge, and he gives a finely tuned performance here that kind of feels like his first "old man" turn" awarding the film ultimately two stars out of four.


title: Basilisk

text: In European bestiaries and legends, a basilisk ( or ) is a legendary reptile reputed to be a serpent king, who causes death to those who look into its eyes. According to the "Naturalis Historia" of Pliny the Elder, the basilisk of Cyrene is a small snake, "being not more than twelve inches in length", that is so venomous, it leaves a wide trail of deadly venom in its wake, and its gaze is likewise lethal.


title: Basilisk

text: The basilisk's weakness is the odor of the weasel, which, according to Pliny, was thrown into the basilisk's hole, recognizable because some of the surrounding shrubs and grass had been scorched by its presence. It is possible that the legend of the basilisk and its association with the weasel in Europe was inspired by accounts of certain species of Asiatic snakes (such as the king cobra) and their natural predator, the mongoose.


title: Basilisk

text: The word originates from the Greek form "basilískos" (; ), which means "little king", "little prince", "chieftain", or "young ruler", from two components βᾰσῐλεύς (basileús, “king”) and -ῐ́σκος (-ískos, diminutive). It was also considered to be synonymous with the cockatrice.


title: Basilisk

text: The basilisk is called "king" because it is reputed to have on its head a mitre, or crown-shaped crest. Stories of the basilisk show that it is not completely distinguished from the cockatrice. The basilisk is alleged to be hatched by a cockerel from the egg of a serpent or toad (the reverse of the cockatrice, which was hatched from a cockerel's "egg" incubated by a serpent or toad). In Medieval Europe, the description of the creature began taking on features from cockerels. It has a venomous strike and in some versions of the myth, it has the ability to breathe fire.


title: Basilisk

text: One of the earliest accounts of the basilisk comes from Pliny the Elder's "Natural History", written in roughly 79 AD. He describes the catoblepas, a monstrous cow-like creature of which "all who behold its eyes, fall dead upon the spot", and then goes on to say,


title: Basilisk

text: Isidore of Seville defined the basilisk as the king of snakes because of its killing glare and poisonous breath. The Venerable Bede was the first to attest to the legend of the birth of a basilisk from an egg by an old cockerel; other authors added the condition of Sirius being ascendant. Alexander Neckam (died 1217) was the first to say that not the glare but the "air corruption" was the killing tool of the basilisk, a theory developed a century later by Pietro d'Abano.


title: Basilisk

text: Theophilus Presbyter gave a long recipe in his book, the "Schedula diversarum artium", for creating a compound to convert copper into "Spanish gold" ("De auro hyspanico"). The compound was formed by combining powdered basilisk blood, powdered human blood, red copper, and a special kind of vinegar.


title: Basilisk

text: Albertus Magnus in the "De animalibus" wrote about the killing gaze of the basilisk, but he denied other legends, such as the rooster hatching the egg. He gave as source of those legends Hermes Trismegistus, who is credited also as the creator of the story about the basilisk's ashes being able to convert silver into gold. The attribution is absolutely incorrect, but it shows how the legends of the basilisk were already linked to alchemy in the 13th century.


title: Basilisk

text: Geoffrey Chaucer featured a "basilicok" (as he called it, possibly in relation to the cock) in his "Canterbury Tales". According to some legends, basilisks can be killed by hearing the crow of a rooster or gazing at itself in a mirror. The latter method of killing the beast is featured in the legend of the basilisk of Warsaw, killed by a man carrying a set of mirrors.


title: Basilisk

text: Stories gradually added to the basilisk's deadly capabilities, such as describing it as a larger beast, capable of breathing fire and killing with the sound of its voice. Some writers even claimed it could kill not only by touch, but also by touching something that is touching the victim, like a sword held in the hand. Also, some stories claim its breath is highly toxic and will cause death, usually immediately. The basilisk is also the guardian creature and traditional symbol of the Swiss city Basel (). Canting basilisks appear as supporters in the city's arms.


title: Basilisk

text: Leonardo da Vinci included a basilisk in his Bestiary, saying it is so utterly cruel that when it cannot kill animals by its baleful gaze, it turns upon herbs and plants, and fixing its gaze on them, withers them up. In his notebooks, he describes the basilisk in an account clearly dependent directly or indirectly on Pliny's:


title: Basilisk

text: Then Leonardo noted of the weasel "this beast finding the lair of the basilisk kills it with the smell of its urine, and this smell, indeed, often kills the weasel itself."


title: Basilisk

text: Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa wrote that the basilisk "is alwayes, and cannot but be a male, as the more proper receptacle of venome and destructive qualities."


title: Basilisk

text: According to the tradition of the Cantabrian mythology, the ancient "Basiliscu" (as they called it) has disappeared in most of the Earth but still lives in Cantabria, although it is rare to see it. This animal is born from an egg laid by an old cock just before his death exactly at midnight on a clear night with a full moon. Within a few days, the egg shell, which is not hard, but rather soft and leathery, is opened by the strange creature, which already has all the features of an adult: legs, beak, cockscomb, and reptilian body. Apparently, the creature has an intense and penetrating fire in its eyes such that any animal or person gazing directly upon it would die. The weasel is the only animal that can face and even attack it. It can only be killed with the crowing of a rooster, so, until very recent times, travelers carried a rooster when they ventured into areas where it was said that the basilisks lived.


title: Basilisk

text: A basilisk is said to have terrorised the inhabitants of Vilnius, Lithuania during the reign of Grand Duke Sigismund August. In his book "Facies rerum Sarmaticarum," 17th century Vilnius University historian Professor Adomas Ignacas Naramovskis (Adam Ignaci Naramowski) describes how boughs of rue, a plant believed to have the power to repel basilisks, were lowered into the creature's lair. The first two boughs lowered into the lair turned white, indicating that the creature remained alive, but the third bough retained its characteristic green colour, indicating the basilisk had been killed. Nineteenth-century historian Teodoras Narbutas (Teodor Narbutt) claimed the location of the creature's lair had been at the intersection of Bokšto, Subačiaus and Bastėjos streets, near Subačius Gate. Legend has it the basilisk haunts the bastion of the city wall located there.


title: Basilisk

text: Some have speculated that accounts and descriptions of cobras may have given rise to the legend of the basilisk. Cobras can maintain an upright posture, and, as with many snakes in overlapping territories, are often killed by mongooses. The king cobra or hamadryad has a crown-like symbol on its head. Several species of spitting cobras can incapacitate from a distance by spitting venom, most often into the prey's eyes, and may well have been confused with the hamadryad by their similar appearance. The Egyptian cobra lives in the desert and was employed as a symbol of royalty.


title: Basilisk

text: The basilisk appears in the English Revised Version of the Bible in Isaiah 14:29 in the prophet's exhortation to the Philistines reading, "Rejoice not, O Philistia, all of thee, because the rod that smote thee is broken: for out of the serpent's root shall come forth a basilisk, and his fruit shall be a fiery flying serpent."


title: Basilisk

text: The King James version of the Bible states, "out of the serpent's root shall come forth a cockatrice, and his fruit "shall be" a fiery flying serpent".


title: Basilisk

text: In Psalm 91:13: "super leonem et draconem" in the Latin Vulgate, literally "You will tread on the lion and the dragon,/ the asp and the basilisk you will trample under foot", translated in the King James Version as: Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder: the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet", the basilisk appears in the Septuagint and the Latin Vulgate, though not most English translations, which gave rise to its inclusion in the subject in Early Medieval art of "Christ treading on the beasts".