Campo Santo Blog Post "Tales from the Borderlands: The Oral History"
OzzyUK
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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
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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).
Man, am I glad they changed the original idea, killing Vaughn would be heartbreaking. Though Vasquez as Rhys' father sounds funny as hell.
Thanks for sharing, really interesting read. Made me miss TftB even more.
i cri
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 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.
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:
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:
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.
The Chromatics song was being considered for Wolf, not Tales.
Oh, must've misread it.
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.
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.
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.
No. Oh no. [glances at ANF]
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
I'm glad that Guardians of the Galaxy released when it did...
Stop it, you're making me feel.
Game of Thrones should've took notes.
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.
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.