Ahead of the PAX West reveal of gameplay for New Tales from the Borderlands, I had the chance to sit down with members of the Gearbox team and see the action for myself and quiz them on a few things. But first check out this new trailer that is full of character.

Walking me through the game were Lin Joyce, Head of Writing, Gearbox Software and Frédéric Scheubel, Producer, Gearbox Studio Quebec, which is the studio that is leading the development of this new title.

Before we got into the gameplay, there was so explanation on the characters and setting, to help put context around what I was set to see. Something that the team were clear to highlight though, there is no direct connection between the original Tales release and this one, even though some characters may show up.

As far as the setting goes, the game is set roughly a year after the events of Borderlands 3 and with those events causing chaos throughout the galaxy, Tediore use the absence of power, in order to invade a planet which is set to host a vault, with plans to open it.

This is where our new trio of heroes come into play, though heroes may not be the right word, opportunists fits better. As the default leader and balance of the group we have Anu, a scientist who dislikes violence of any kind, her younger brother Octavio, who wants to be famous and is happy to use any scam scheme to do so and anchoring the group is Fran, a purveyor of Frozen Frogurt and someone who thoroughly dislikes all the corporations.

The trio come together, when they learn of the plan of Tediore to unlock a vault and realise, that if they can get there first and obtain what is inside, they can each have their plans sorted, no more violence for one, plenty of cash for another and the tools for vengeance for the third.

While this game is sequel-ish to the original game, it is setting out to do things a bit differently, one of the big changes is that the game will not throw text on the screen, telling you if someone will remember your choice. Instead the developers opted to use facial queues, something that happens in real life conversations, to show if someone is happy, sad or something else with the choice you make.

In the presentation I got, the question about weather to proceed steathly or savagely was raised and in choosing the option put forth by Fran, Octavio looked downhearted. In the past game and other games form Telltale, that would be when someone would remember that, but here you can see the disappointment on the face of Octavio and it feels more natural for it.

With the plan in place, the action kicked off with Fran leading the charge in her chair and when she got close to a soldier, a quick time event was triggered, but sadly failure was on offer hear and it resulted in Fran being shot dead. This is one of the hard cut endings that the game offers, a time when you can get a character killed, resulting in the reloading of a checkpoint and trying again.

Failure is not always going to end with a character dying, sometimes failure will just take you down another path, which Frédéric explained.

“There are a lot that are acknowledged the story, which open a new branch of story telling. For example later on, Fran can get shot in the shoulder, not like this time where she was shot in the heart, but just the shoulder. If she dodges, the game continues down the main path of the story and if she fails to dodge then you get to see other sequences, dressing her wound or finding a way to heal her later on. So there are other branches that come out of those events, if you fail.”

With the checkpoint reloaded, the stealthy option was chosen this time and it lead the group down the path, this time avoiding the sentry and pushing forward in secret, but ahead lay another guard, this one without a clear way to sneak past. Now if this was a 3rd person game, or even a main line shooter, the player may opt to try and find away on their own, but as the path is pretty set in this game, choice is your only option and Octavio decided to embrace his inner Solid Snake and use a box to try and sneak past and of course, that failed.

This lead to the most curious encounter that has ever graced a screen from any of the Borderlands titles and given how insane some of them have been, that is saying something. Welcome to Vaultlanders, a collectable figure game, where players will battle it out in order to prove who is better and for those who play the game, they play hard.

There are around 20 of these figures to collect and they feature characters like Zane, Rolland, Lillith, Handsome Jack and more, with each of them having stats for attack and defence. When you engage in a fight, the viewpoint shifts to something along the lines of the 3d mode from Street Fight 3D for the Nintendo 3DS, a not-quite over the should viewpoint. The fighting plays out much like other fighting games, with characters executing moves based on the quick time event button presses.

With victory won, a new figure was added to the collection, because that is part of the way of the vaultlander and the team could move on. I won’t go into to much more of the gameplay, as it worth watching. But watching it did raise some questions for me, so I put them to the developers.

One question I wanted to know the answer to, was around the hard failures that could arise, would the game help you out, if you keep getting stuck on these?

“There is no automatic adjustment of the difficulty level, however going through the settings and adjusting the difficulty level of the quick time events, will make it way, way, way easier. The easiest level of the events is any input will succeed, which we feel is a good way for players who have difficulty with those, to get through those” - Frédéric

So being able to lower the requirements on the quick time events is just one way the developers are opening things up to let gamers with disabilities or those who don’t do well under pressure to enjoy the game. The levels vary as well, if you still want to press all the buttons, in the order required, but just need more time, the game can accommodate that option for you.

Something else that I had to know was around the connection to past games, because with four mainline shooters, one dice enabled adventure and of course, the previous Tales from the Borderlands, there are characters and events that are quite famous. So I asked, would we get a chance to see and interact with characters of old?

“So there will be familiar faces, and generally speaking when those faces appear, their bodies do with them, but yes you will get to talk to some familiar faces from the Borderlands universe.” - Lin

I did also make a joke to the developers that now we are getting a second Tales entry, a Borderland Grand Prix is clearly the next spin-off required, as kart racers are where most series go for spin-offs. But while it was a joke, Frédéric made mention that they do have an expert that he could talk to.

Please note, that is not confirmation of a Borderlands Kart Racer, but it was nice to hear that they thought the idea was great. With our time at an end though, Frédéric teased more about what is coming.

“There are things that we didn’t show you, our free-walk sequences and there is customisation as well, as well as so many diverse characters that you haven’t met yet, we hope you enjoy those characters as well” - Frédéric

New Tales form the Borderlands is shaping up to be an interesting experience, with new characters and threats, locations and a collectable figuring game, there is a lot going on. Of course, there isn’t too long to wait for this one, as the game is set to release this October 21st for all platforms and if you don’t have the first game yet, getting the Deluxe Edition of this one, will add that to your gaming library as well.