Telltale Games and Gearbox Software Team Up for New Borderlands Game #SXSW

When two of the video game industry’s most lauded companies embark on a journey together, you know something special is going to happen. Telltale Games, in conjugation with Gearbox Software, has a present for Borderlands fans later this year, and it looks better than any diamond pony. Tales From the Borderlands is going to be a new twist on the popular shooter series from Gearbox. A few of the Developers from both teams were on hand at SXGaming to give fans an overview of what they’ve been creating.

Of course, when Telltale is involved, you can’t expect too many teasers. The company prides themselves on their story-driven games, as well as keeping details close at hand until launch day. Here’s what we know: Tales From the Borderlands will take place on Pandora, after the events of Borderlands 1 and 2. Everything that happened in the previous games and DLC is established canon. But, this is not Borderlands 3.

There are two main protagonists, which the story will center around. Fiona and Rhys are larger than life figures, with their own big fish stories to tell. “You never really play what actually happened, you’re playing this Big Fish version of what happened,” Telltale’s Kevin Bruner told the audience. Neither character is a vault hunter, though it appears Rhys works for Hyperion and Fiona’s a bit of a con artist. Both will have a unique set of skills that will aide them in getting what they want out of any given situation.

While no gameplay was shown, knowing Telltale’s style of gameplay, we should expect a mix of action-adventure with story-driven elements like those found in The Wolf Among Us. Bruner elaborated a little on what they hope to achieve with Tales,”We want to keep things cinematic, and have action sequences tell stories. We got better between Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us, and I think we’ll get better as we move into Borderlands, because you have to have crazy, over-the-top action scenes, or it’s not a Borderlands game.”

Gearbox writer Anthony Burch spoke about how the ability to expand the world of Pandora would bring a richer experience to the fans. Of course, a Borderlands game wouldn’t be Borderlands without a mass cache of guns, but with Telltale’s involvement, we can expect some new ways to get out of tricky situations, “Having the ability to say that Borderlands can be more than just shooting people in the face repeatedly, but maybe shooting people in the face repeatedly and talking to them was kind of a cool possibility.”

Tales From the Borderlands is due out later this year.