The upcoming sequel New Tales From The Borderlands was further shown off at PAX West 2022, with the focus being on the gameplay. Gearbox revealed some new official footage to give us a look at what to expect from the interactive narrative title.
See the official gameplay here
In honour of the upcoming game, GAMINGbible spoke to Gearbox Software’s James Lopez and Frédéric Scheubel. As the game’s producer, Scheubel spoke about the challenges the team faced while developing the game during the Coronavirus pandemic. “Due to social distancing measures, we even had to rethink some scenes to make them work,” he explained.
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Despite the difficulty caused by Covid-19, motion capture was still used while developing New Tales From The Borderlands, and the gameplay footage really shows off the advantages of the medium, with the three protagonists - Anu, Octavio and Fran - all feeling real on the screen. Scheubel attributes this to the subtle movements and expressions of the actors.
Indeed, having to limit the size of the crew doesn’t seem to have been too detrimental to the development process. Despite having to constantly find ways of dealing with issues, they always managed to overcome them somehow. James Lopez, Gearbox Software’s director of production, explained how they would often “Apollo 13 a solution” when faced with a new, unexpected problem.
The result here appears to be a game with all the hallmarks of the original Tales From The Borderlands - interactive narrative, interesting characters, hilarious moments, minigames, etc. - but with a more modern flavour, from the new city location of Promethea, to the more seamlessly interwoven decisions in the gameplay.
Narrative choices and quick time events return, of course, with what Lopez describes as a mix of soft and hard fails. The former can have an impact on how the story unfolds, while the latter will result in a game over, so keep your wits about you at all times. (Or don’t, I’m not your boss.)
Despite the game starring three player characters, Lopez confirmed that New Tales From The Borderlands is a single-player game where one person controls all three heroes. When asked about the possibility of multiplayer, his answer was, “It’s a cool concept for sure, but it’s not something we had in mind.”
With the game launching next month on PC, Xbox consoles, PlayStation 4 and 5, and Nintendo Switch, it’s not long until we can see everything New Tales From The Borderlands has to offer. Personally, I’m particularly excited to see what Easter eggs are waiting to be found in the game, something which Scheubel explained has been included for series fans.
Topics: New Tales from the Borderlands, Interview, 2K Games