How New Tales From the Borderlands’ story will be like ‘4D chess’

To hear Lin Joyce, the head writer of Gearbox Software’s forthcoming New Tales From the Borderlands, explain it, the job players will be doing with her characters is “like a kind of 4D chess,” just applied to narrative role-playing.

This means that they will assume the roles of three characters and make decisions and react accordingly. Then, they’ll also be tasked with Reacting to these decisions they made when they’re in command of another member of this protagonist trio.

Those reactions aren’t “good” or “bad” in and of themselves; Joyce says that any hard failures, where a player makes the wrong decision, are limited to some quick-time events elsewhere in the game. For the dialogue — which includes reading body language and facial expressions from full performance capture — players may branch their narrative with a gut call for what they’d do in that moment, or they can try to piece together a multi-character relationship that takes into account the things they’ve done and said before.

“So, what I might think I would do as Anu,” — one of the new heroes, Joyce explained — “might be true to Anu, but it might make Octavio mad. Then, I’m also playing as Octavio.”

Octavio, his streetwise and cynical sister is altruistic. “So, how am I now going to respond to these things as Octavio?” Joyce said. “There’s a lot of interplay there, and it’s also up to you. Do you maintain — like, are you nurturing the group, or not? So there’s lots of, again, 4D chess happening.” To be clear, the player is not in control of the character-switching. This might happen from moment to moment (as opposed chapter-to–chapter), but it is up to the game.

Gearbox Software/2K Games

Stories from the Borderlands: New Tales This could prove to be an important year for the franchise. Already, Gearbox Software’s shooter series has been adapted in the well-received Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, which launched in late March, and which has performed so well that Gearbox boss Randy Pitchford told investors (of parent company Embracer Group) the studio “clearly” considers it a “new franchise unto itself.”

It is possible to open the door, as one presumes. Stories from the Borderlands: New Tales’ approach to narrative-driven design and open-ended storytelling to make it more than a spinoff. Gearbox licensed Borderlands’ characters and universe but did not take the rights. Stories from the Borderlands IP was returned to Telltale Games by the original developer after that studio shut down in 2018.

Joyce is a Ph.D. candidate in interactive narrative systems with subordinate English degrees. She was hired to Gearbox as its chief writer in 2020. Gearbox was looking to improve the experience of its core customers, said Joyce. Stories from the Borderlands It was successful while at the same time loosing its rigidity and limiting points of interaction. It was no accident that the story was job 1.

Gearbox Software/2K Games

“The directive was, This IP is ours now. What can we do?” Joyce said. “On my side, we just look at what could we do to make that, like, a version 2.0 of the old Telltale game.” That included building Stories from the Borderlands: New Tales Unreal Engine 4 is a much more customized point-and-click system than the one previously described. Joyce could write more with less detail and less repetition thanks to performance capture. Stories from the Borderlands that reminded players they’d said something an NPC was likely to remember.

“We had a lot of conversations where we looked at, philosophically, like even if these are the same tools, how are we using them differently?” Joyce said. “So, not every QTE is what we would call a hard fail; there is an opportunity for the story to continue there. These soft failures are what we call them. That’s not something we’ve really seen before. Other situations may present options or offer you the chance to make an action. You might choose not take those actions. The right action might be inaction.”

Tales from the Borderlands — New Tales will also have other interactive elements to deepen the gameplay experience, so players aren’t just getting a talk-fest or a scavenger hunt for some detail on the screen — two areas where the Telltale games, for all their acclaim, often broke down. Pierre-Luc Foisy, New Tales’ lead gameplay designer, said the three protagonists, Anu, Octavio, and their friend Fran, all have devices that should highlight their personalities. Fran operates a “gadget-packed hover chair”; Octavio has a smartwatch, for example; Anu’s wearable computing is a set of Tech Glasses.

Foisy said that will blend with the writing and the acting to give players a tipoff to whether they’ve made the right call or a choice that’s going to make things harder on themselves. “It will be less robotic, and more human emotion, so you can understand, Ok, please do this QTE — it doesn’t feel in character. It doesn’t feel like the right choice,” Foisy said.

Gearbox Software/2K Games

Tales from the Borderlands will also stand apart from the main series because it isn’t set on some postapocalyptic, resource-exploited world, or orbiting vessels doing the exploiting. It’s on Promethea, where the arms company Maliwan invaded during 2019’s Borderlands 3. Joyce stated that Promethea was selected early in story writing as the setting. New TalesPlayers will get a better understanding of the setting if they have three different protagonists.

“Although they share a goal, they do not share the same motivating forces or personalities,” Joyce said. “So that meant that we could play with their group dynamic more, and group dynamics are pretty central to this story and how it develops.”

Stories from the Borderlands: New Tales October 21 launches on Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 (Windows PC), Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and PlayStation 5.