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

To hear Lin Joyce, the head author of Gearbox Software’s forthcoming New Tales From the Borderlands, clarify it, the job gamers will be doing along with her characters is “like a kind of 4D chess,” simply utilized to narrative role-playing.

That means gamers will be inhabiting the personae of three characters, making choices and reactions that gamers imagine are acceptable for them. Then, they’ll additionally be tasked with reacting to those choices they made after they’re answerable for one other member of this protagonist trio.

Those reactions aren’t “good” or “bad” in and of themselves; Joyce says that any laborious failures, the place a participant makes the mistaken resolution, are restricted to some quick-time occasions elsewhere in the sport. For the dialogue — which incorporates studying physique language and facial expressions from full efficiency seize — gamers might department their narrative with a intestine name for what they’d do in that second, or they’ll attempt to piece collectively a multi-character relationship that takes under consideration the issues they’ve achieved and mentioned earlier than.

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

Octavio is the streetwise and cynical counterpart to his altruistic sister. “So, how am I now going to respond to these things as Octavio?” Joyce mentioned. “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 participant shouldn’t be accountable for the character-switching. That may be achieved moment-to-moment (versus chapter-to-chapter), however the sport is in cost there.

Image: Gearbox Software/2K Games

New Tales From the Borderlands launches in what may be a pivotal yr for the franchise general. Already, Gearbox Software’s shooter collection has been tailored in the well-received Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, which launched in late March, and which has carried out so properly that Gearbox boss Randy Pitchford instructed buyers (of dad or mum firm Embracer Group) the studio “clearly” considers it a “new franchise unto itself.”

The door is open, one assumes, for New Tales From the Borderlands’ method to narrative-driven design and open-ended storytelling to make it greater than a by-product. Gearbox, although it licensed the Borderlands universe and characters, took the Tales From the Borderlands IP again from authentic developer Telltale Games when that studio closed its doorways in 2018.

Joyce, a Ph.D. in interactive narrative methods (with subordinate levels in English), was introduced aboard Gearbox in 2020 and is now its head author. Gearbox, she mentioned, needed to increase the core expertise that made Tales From the Borderlands profitable, whereas additionally loosening it from what had been a inflexible engine with restricted factors of interplay. Make no mistake, the story was job one.

Image: Gearbox Software/2K Games

“The directive was, Hey, we have this IP now; can we do something about it?” Joyce mentioned. “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 constructing New Tales From the Borderlands in Unreal Engine 4, versus a extra bespoke point-and-click setup. It concerned efficiency seize, which freed Joyce to jot down with slightly extra nuance and fewer exposition, definitely with out the textual callouts from Tales From the Borderlands that reminded gamers they’d mentioned one thing an NPC was more likely to bear in mind.

“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 mentioned. “So, not every QTE is what we would call a hard fail; there is an opportunity for the story to continue there. We call those soft fails. That’s not something we’ve really seen before. There are other things where we present you with a choice, or the possibility for an action, and you might not want to take that action. The right action might be inaction.”

New Tales From the Borderlands will additionally produce other interactive components to deepen the gameplay expertise, so gamers aren’t simply getting a talk-fest or a scavenger hunt for some element on the display screen — two areas the place the Telltale video games, for all their acclaim, usually broke down. Pierre-Luc Foisy, New Tales’ lead gameplay designer, mentioned the three protagonists, Anu, Octavio, and their pal Fran, all have units that ought to spotlight their personalities. Fran operates a “gadget-packed hover chair”; Octavio has a smartwatch, for instance; Anu’s wearable computing is a set of Tech Glasses.

Foisy mentioned that will mix with the writing and the appearing to present gamers a tipoff to whether or not they’ve made the proper name or a selection that’s going to make issues tougher on themselves. “It will be less robotic, and more human emotion, so you can understand, OK, here, if I do this QTE — it doesn’t feel in character. It doesn’t feel like the right choice,” Foisy mentioned.

Image: Gearbox Software/2K Games

New Tales From the Borderlands will additionally stand aside from the most important collection as a result of it isn’t set on some postapocalyptic, resource-exploited world, or orbiting vessels doing the exploiting. It’s on Promethea, the place the arms firm Maliwan invaded throughout 2019’s Borderlands 3. Joyce mentioned Promethea was chosen early on in the story drafting as the setting for New Tales, and the resolution to make use of three playable protagonists was made to present gamers a fuller image of a extra complicated setting.

“Although they share a goal, they do not share the same motivating forces or personalities,” Joyce mentioned. “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.”

New Tales From the Borderlands launches Oct. 21 on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.