The Borderlands franchise has taken many twists and turns over its gaming life, and we mean that positively for the most part. The series came out of nowhere and showcased that there “Ain’t No Rest For The Wicked,” and they won gamers’ hearts pretty fast. The mix of FPS and RPG gameplay, combined with a wacky world and unique characters, helped the game stand out. Eventually, the game got sequels, spinoffs, and even narrative-focused titles from Telltale games. Now, New Tales From The Borderlands has arrived, and a new journey is ready to begin for players, one that will be affected by your choices.
In a dev diary, Lin Joyce, Head of Writing at Gearbox Software, talked about how she and the rest of the team worked the narrative to be compelling, fun and driven by player choice. One of the things she had to work on from the “narrative design” standpoint was looking at a scene the player was in and seeing what they could affect. For example, what would they influence, what could they interact with, etc.
Getting from the opening “blank pages” of the script/world to having a fully-fledged story wasn’t easy, so they learned into who the characters were to define what came next:
“As we’re going through the outline and narratively designing it, a lot of the creative process involved letting the characters tell you where they want to go and where the path of the story could split,” said Lin.
Lin made sure to note that the story had to be “flexible” as the game developed. Whether it’s video games, TV, or movies, script revisions will happen. Staying “rooted” too much can cause problems, and she knew that. So even as the story started getting wrapped up, she made sure that the team knew that things were flexible in case they came up with something better.
She also revealed that they brought in a bunch of people to do table reads and had them follow their own narrative path. So if she found out no one liked to pick a particular choice, they redid that choice so that it was more desirable.
In terms of choices, unlike the previous narrative-driven title in the series, New Tales From The Borderlands won’t “inform” players that they’ve made a “good or bad choice” or made an “impactful move.” Instead, they’ll have to make their choices and then live with them no matter where they go.
“We want people to play and experiment with the game and the story to learn a little bit more.”
Joyce even noted that not reacting in conversations or “failing” QTE events are valid choices in the story. Sometimes you’ll even want to fail these moments to get certain things to happen.
The game is out now for you to shape the story how you want.
Source: Borderlands
