Campo Santo Blog Post "Tales from the Borderlands: The Oral History"

OzzyUKOzzyUK Moderator
edited October 2017 in Tales from the Borderlands

Campo Santo have posted a blog post on their website called "Tales from the Borderlands: The Oral History" where they talk about the creation of Tales form the Borderlands, it seems a pretty long read and i haven't read it all yet at the time i am posting this but i thought i would share it as what i have read so far seems pretty interesting.

https://quarterly.camposanto.com/tales-from-the-borderlands-the-oral-history-d33bb5f146e6

Comments

  • edited August 2017

    While Harrison Pink's original storyline has some potential and could have been really cool, I'm glad they didn't go in that direction, mainly because I don't want to kill Vaughn.

    Reading this was very interesting, not only giving more insight into the behind the scenes and development of the game, but Telltale as a whole. Granted, it was stuff a lot of us knew, like people suddenly getting moved from team to team (Pierre/Nick with TWAU, Harrison with TFTBL), but it still shows the sort of mismanagement that goes on at Telltale. Teams that are constantly changing lead to many revisions and changes, sometimes it works (TWAU, TFTBL) and other times it fails (ANF).

  • edited August 2017

    Man, am I glad they changed the original idea, killing Vaughn would be heartbreaking. Though Vasquez as Rhys' father sounds funny as hell. :D

    Thanks for sharing, really interesting read. Made me miss TftB even more.

    i cri
  • NICK HERMAN
    [What] I remember being a huge problem was [on] Episode One, like literally three days before we weren’t allowed to touch the project anymore, Pierre comes to me — I think Guardians of the Galaxy had just come out. There’s a moment in the first episode where your friend Loader Bot can explode, and it’s based on a player choice. Pierre comes to me and says, “I don’t think we should let Loader Bot die.” I’m just like, “Well, okay. We’re 36, 48 hours away from this thing going live, what are you talking about? That choice is there.” And he said, “I think we might be blowing up our Groot.”

    Jeez, they cut it pretty close for Loader Bot. How different would it be had two days before they shipped the episode, they hadn't let him live?

  • Fantastic read. I really enjoyed relieving the memories, and that "summertime friends" comment really touched me.

    Thank you Guardians of the Galaxy for allowing Loader Bot to be safe. Also glad that they didn't kill off Sasha, but man they were close.

    The idea that Vasquez was originally going to be Rhys's father is interesting. While I'm happy with what we got, I'm intrigued. Also, the greed thing with Vaughn, man that suck big time.

  • that "summertime friends" comment really touched me.

    Fantastic read. I really enjoyed relieving the memories, and that "summertime friends" comment really touched me. Thank you Guardians of

  • Blind SniperBlind Sniper Moderator
    edited August 2017

    That was an extremely interesting read. At first, I was kind of skeptical of that level of live revision, but some of their choices did seem for the better (such as sparing Loaderbot from permanently dying in Episode 1 - #LoaderBros for life!)

    EDIT: I forgot to add, there's also a little bit of interesting Wolf trivia in here too.

  • This was a fascinating read, though the parts about the game being considered unsuccessful are concerning

  • Great read, but also a sad one, too. It's disappointing, that they had to fight to get the resurces they need to make it as good, as it is. But it shows, that Telltale had problems with its team management and the fact, that most of the writers and directors of Borderlands left Telltale after Borderlands concluded is more evidance, that there were a lot of things wrong with Telltale at the time.

  • edited August 2017

    Really hope that Telltale can resolve their management problems, would be amazing if they could pull off something like TFTB again, without people being thrown around from project to project and being overworked. But on a lighter note:

    Adam Sarasohn:

    I found a company that made custom stitched socks and made [Rhys’s Hyperion] socks for the entire studio. Then I made Borderlands holiday cards and sent a pair of socks to the voice actor leads. Apparently Troy was quite pleased.

    Ok we need details of what company that was.

    Also, to my knowledge, they haven't mentioned before that these two songs were being considered for the games:
    Episode 1 intro (TWAU)

    Episode 5 end credits (TFTB)

    Molly Maloney:

    Borderlands was lightning in a bottle. Everybody cared, so much.

  • That was a great read. Learning stuff like alternate song choices for Episode 1 and the credits theme and the original plans for Vazquez and Vaughn were very entertaining to discover. It is such a shame though that it didn't sell as well as Telltale hoped it would, therefore sidelining any hopes for a season 2. Well when Telltale wraps up with other major games like TWD S4, TWAU S2, Minecraft S2, and Batman EW, maybe they will go back to this,

  • I could see that alternate episode 5 credits working, but the bittersweet tone of First Aid Kit - My Silver Lining definitely works the best. It's too perfect.

    Ekelund21 posted: »

    Really hope that Telltale can resolve their management problems, would be amazing if they could pull off something like TFTB again, without

  • The Chromatics song was being considered for Wolf, not Tales.

    Ekelund21 posted: »

    Really hope that Telltale can resolve their management problems, would be amazing if they could pull off something like TFTB again, without

  • Oh, must've misread it.

    The Chromatics song was being considered for Wolf, not Tales.

  • Read the whole thing and found it to be a very interesting insight on developing games in Telltale. It's dumb that they consider it to be a failure, especially compared to The Walking Dead tho, but it's also understandable considering how expensive it was to make.

    This article also goes to show the problems that Telltale needs to surpass. There's obviously a lot of problems with the management but despite the development hell it went through, the game was a huge success critically. Also the engine as well. They had to jank their way into making a depth of field system that isn't even really depth of field. It's literally just blurring out parts of the scenes by hand like you would a photo in Photoshop.

    Despite how unlikely it seems especially now with this new info, I hope that Telltale returns with a second season without any executive meddling and a sizable budget (however unlikely this is).

  • Really great read. I'm even more a fan of the game reading about the passion and heart that the creative people put into this game. It really shined through and resulted in what I think was the best Telltale game by a mile. Business is business and it's disappointing that it was considered a failure internally, but it certainly was not a failure as far as artistic integrity is concerned.

  • Having a small, passionate team is probably what made the game so great. It's a shame that it didn't sell more, but it will always have a place in our hearts.

  • edited August 2017

    That was an interesting article. It's cool once again to hear how certain design concepts came into fruition, as well as the founding of the games themes in writing and through songs. Also nice to hear about the other possible storyline with Vasquez as your father (lol) and having to kill Vaughn by the end of the season. Ouch. Glad they didn't do that.
    But hearing that it was somewhat of a financial failure due to the time spent on choice branching and their budget for VFX... It makes me wonder how their Guardians and Batman: TEW series are doing given that they both have a good supply of branching and diverse environments with lots of detail.

    Plus, reading about their disappointing management of dev time for each game is heartbreaking. Having them be thrown from Wolf to Tales, to TWD2 finale.. Must be very difficult. Especially if you're going to be stuck there after doing such a good, fun job at making one series that is completely different (tonally) than the other. Makes me look at Telltale and say: "Slow down. Ease off of the pedals and stay in the one lane. If your devs are having a good time and are handling work on one series.. let them stay." While the product known as TFTB was very good, it seemed to be not so good for the devs being thrown around in the office. One game at a time is good, and have separate teams working on it.

    What’s Borderlands about if you’re just a regular guy and you see the player? They’re going to be the scariest thing that’s ever been in front of your eyes.

    I find it cool how Telltale decided to take the path of the 'nobodies' and make a story about that. It worked really well, and was a nice way to portray the Borderlands world through Telltale's mechanics.
    It's interesting to play as the character on the side. Experiencing events that you shouldn't be worthy of but know you can make it out of. It's how I feel a possible Doctor Who game should be.. if they ever make one. Sure, everyone would want to be the hero -- the one who saves the day with just his knowledge and mind.. but playing as the companion would be very interesting. We don't have the knowledge of countless alien races, now do we?

    Hopefully sales from other games boosts their income, and they one day manage to return to the world of Pandora and beyond. I'd love play as Rhys and Fiona accompanied by Vaughn and Sasha. They make quite the team.


    PIERRE SHORETTE
    It turned out that if you have a surly, shitty teenager that you are doing a lot of stuff for, and they are unappreciative of it, that sucks. That makes you feel real bad.

    No. Oh no. [glances at ANF]

    ADAM SARASOHN
    [It] was tanking the entire game.

    OH NO. Guess no one else picked up on that in the future.
    But I am glad they made that change.

  • I don't even wanna think about Gortys behaving like Gabe
    shivers

    AChicken posted: »

    That was an interesting article. It's cool once again to hear how certain design concepts came into fruition, as well as the founding of the

  • I'm glad that Guardians of the Galaxy released when it did...

    dojo32161 posted: »

    NICK HERMAN [What] I remember being a huge problem was [on] Episode One, like literally three days before we weren’t allowed to touch the

  • Stop it, you're making me feel.

    dojo32161 posted: »

    that "summertime friends" comment really touched me.

  • If we could use characters from the Borderlands IP but they were untouchable, then we felt like a spinoff. We felt inessential. But if we could affect their lives, and potentially kill off one of them, then our story had a profound impact in Borderlands going forward, and that’s what we wanted.

    Game of Thrones should've took notes.

  • DeltinoDeltino Moderator
    edited August 2017

    To be fair, I dunno if the bigwigs at HBO would have been okay with that. I could understand Gearbox being cool with letting something like that slide, but one of the most popular shows on TV? Having a character die/get injured/etc in some lesser known game instead of the actual show? I imagine that the idea was probably suggested at some point... and immediately shot down.

    Cocoa2736 posted: »

    If we could use characters from the Borderlands IP but they were untouchable, then we felt like a spinoff. We felt inessential. But if we co

  • Yeah I know they know they had no way of actually of impacting characters from the main series, but that just goes to make Telltale's GOT seem like an inessential spin off as the quote says. It doesn't help that the game actually gives you the choice to attack a major character from the main series at one point, when nearly all players know it won't work due to their plot armor.

    Deltino posted: »

    To be fair, I dunno if the bigwigs at HBO would have been okay with that. I could understand Gearbox being cool with letting something like

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