How the story of New Tales From the Borderlands will be like “4D Chess”.

To hear Lin Joyce, senior author of the forthcoming Gearbox Software New stories from the Borderlands, Explain it, the job the players will do with their characters is “like a kind of 4D chess” only applied to narrative roleplaying.

This means players take on the personae of three characters and make choices and reactions that players feel are appropriate for them. Then they will be assigned to do it react to those choices they made while commanding another member of this trio of protagonists.

These reactions are not “good” or “bad” in and of themselves; Joyce says that any hard mistakes where a player makes the wrong decision are confined to a few quick events elsewhere in the game. For dialogue – which includes reading body language and facial expressions from the full performance capture – players can branch out their narrative with a gut feeling of what they would be doing in that moment, or they can attempt to piece together a multi-character relationship that lasts Consider things they have done and said before.

“So what I think I would do as Anu,” explained Joyce, one of the new heroes, “might apply to Anu, but it might make Octavio angry. Then I also play as Octavio.”

Octavio is the wily and cynical counterpart of his altruistic sister. “So how am I going to react to these things now as Octavio?” Joyce said. “There’s a lot of interaction there, and it’s up to you too. Claim – do you care for the group or not? So there’s a lot of 4D chess happening again.” To be clear, the player has no control over character switching. That can happen moment by moment (as opposed to chapter by chapter), but that’s where the game is in charge.

Image: Gearbox Software/2K Games

New stories from the Borderlands kicks off what could be a pivotal year for the franchise as a whole. The shooter series has already been adapted by Gearbox Software and was well received Tiny Tina’s Wonderlandwhich launched in late March and has performed as well as Gearbox boss Randy Pitchford said investors (of parent company Embracer Group), the studio “clearly” views it as a “new franchise for itself.”

If the door is open, you take z New stories from the Borderlands‘ approach to narrative design and open storytelling to make it more than a spin-off. Gearbox, while licensing the Borderlands universe and characters, took the Stories from the Borderlands IP back from original developer Telltale Games when that studio closed its doors in 2018.

Joyce, a Ph.D. in interactive storytelling (with minor degrees in English), was brought on board Gearbox in 2020 and is now its lead writer. Gearbox, she said, wanted to expand on the core experience she’s had Stories from the Borderlands successfully while at the same time breaking away from a rigid engine with limited interaction points. Make no mistake, the story was task one.

Image: Gearbox Software/2K Games

“The policy was Hey, we have this IP now; can we do something about it?‘ Joyce said. “For me, we’re just looking at what we could do to make this a 2.0 version of the old Telltale game.” That involved building New stories from the Borderlands in Unreal Engine 4, as opposed to a more customized point-and-click setup. It included performance capture, which allowed Joyce to write with a little more nuance and less depiction, certainly without the lyrical callouts of Stories from the Borderlands this reminded the players that they had said something that an NPC would likely remember.

“We’ve had a lot of conversations where we’ve been philosophical about how differently we’re using them, even though they’re the same tools?” said Joyce. “So not every QTE is what we would call a hard fail; There is a chance the story will continue there. We call these soft fails. This is something we haven’t really seen before. There are other things where we present you with a choice or opportunity for action and you may not want to take that action. The right action might be inaction.”

New stories from the Borderlands will also have other interactive elements to deepen the gameplay experience, so players don’t just experience a conversation fest or a scavenger hunt for onscreen details – two areas where the Telltale games, for all their acclaim, often broke down. Pierre-Luc Foisy, new storiessaid the lead gameplay designer that the three protagonists Anu, Octavio and their friend Fran have all the gadgets that should highlight their personality. Fran runs a “gadget-crammed hover chair”; For example, Octavio has a smartwatch; Anus Wearable Computing is a line of tech goggles.

Foisy said that will mix with the writing and acting to give players an indication of whether they made the right decision or made a decision that is making things harder for themselves. “It will be less robots and more human emotions so you can understand OK, here when I do this QTE – it doesn’t feel in character. It doesn’t feel like the right choice,” Foisy said.

Image: Gearbox Software/2K Games

New stories from the Borderlands will also stand out from the main series as it’s not set on a post-apocalyptic resource-depleted world or orbiting ships doing the exploitation. It is on Promethea where the Maliwan arms company invaded in 2019 borderland 3. Joyce said Promethea was chosen as the setting early in the story’s development new storiesand the decision to use three playable protagonists was made to give players a more complete picture of a more complex setting.

“Although they share a common goal, they don’t share the same motivating forces or personalities,” Joyce said. “That meant we could play with their group dynamics more, and group dynamics are pretty central to this story and how it unfolds.”

New stories from the Borderlands Launches October 21st on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, Xbox One and Xbox Series X.