SXSW and Telltale Games Pull Back the Curtain (a bit) on "Tales From the Borderlands"

Love Borderlands? Love The Walking Dead? Telltale Games has got you.

Photo Removed
Complex Original

Blank pixel used during image takedowns

Photo Removed

"You never really play what actually happened, you're playing this Big Fish version of what happened," Telltale's Kevin Bruner said of Telltale's upcoming Borderlands spinoff, Tales from the Borderlands.

While on the ground here in Austin for SXSW,  Telltale Games and Gearbox Studios came together to host a panel about the highly anticipatedTales from the Borderlands. The panel gave us our first real look at the pair of playable protagonists who narrate the new title.

Unfortunately, their perspectives and recounting of events don't always corroborate. Players will be given two versions of events, both from unreliable narrators.

"In The Walking Dead, you're given two choices and you don't want either one. And that's more about morality and deciding who lives and who dies," Telltale's Kevin Bruner went on about the importance of decision making, "In Tales from the Borderlands, your decisions come in the form of who to back-stab, who to double-cross.You're given two choices and you're going to ask yourself 'Why can't I have both?'"

Rhys, a cybernetically enhanced Hyperion employee is a company man used to life on the orbiting 'H' space station above Pandora. Fiona is a grifter and confidence man of the first degree, but is one the run and quickly running out of places to hide.

These two characters are the two very different embodiments of Pandora, but they are both out for themselves first and foremost.Set on Pandora after the events (and all of the DLC) of Borderlands 2, players will follow Rhys and Fiona through a very different Pandora than players are used to seeing.

Your actions and decisions from Borderlands 2 will carry over in some, as yet reveled way. And Tales from the Borderlands will be entirely canon and fit in with the larger Borderlands universe.

There will be comedy. The same dark, gallows humor that the Borderlands series is famous for will definitely be present. Also, guns.

"It wouldn't be a Borderlands game without guns, but it will be in a Telltale kind of way," Lead Designer and Co-Story Lead of Tales from the Borderlands Harrison Pink confirmed during Saturday's panel.

Gearbox's Anthony Burch explained that the game will be about the people just trying to get by on Pandora. The people in the background who have their lives and homes completely destroyed when  vault hunters come through like a force of nature. Tales from the Borderlands is about the people scraping and scamming just to get by.

The panel didn't reveal much in terms of trailers, screens, or gameplay. But we were told very explicitly that Fiona and Rhys are NOT vault hunters.

But, there will be new vault hunters introduced.

"Borderlands can be more than just shooting people in the face repeatedly," Burch said. "That it could be shooting people in the face repeatedly and then talking to them is a cool possibility for us."

And finally, what about Claptrap?

"We can't say anything concrete, but it wouldn't be a Borderlands game without him."

RELATED: "The Walking Dead" Season 2 Episode 1 Hands-On Impressions

RELATED: Five Questions We Want Answered in Season 2 of Telltale's "The Walking Dead"

RELATED: Telltale Is Developing Game of Thrones Games

Latest in Pop Culture