Max Level: Tales From the Borderlands is Telltale’s venture into the world of Gearbox’s critically acclaimed series, Borderlands. Telltale is recently coming off from a successful second season with The Walking Dead, so I was overjoyed to find out that I had the opportunity to play the highly anticipated game at this year’s PAX Prime.
Today Telltale Series has confirmed to TechRaptor that it has laid off a number of employees, while the games currently in development remain in the pipeline for the time being.
Sadly, this is Deja vu, with Telltale going through this type of thing before in 2018 - thoughts are with those affected. Games companies and all sectors always follow each other, with the bad press reducing as each new announcement is made - sad times we live in.
Supermassive Games has failed to innovate since its breakout hit Until Dawn and its games are getting more stale, something that sadly echoes Telltale Games' downfall.
Trash article. More jaded commentary from individuals that play so much of something, they get pulled out of the very thing they liked before. Or think everyone is as jaded as them with the genre. Thing is, the developer wouldn't be making these games if they didn't think there was an audience. And, they are not in financial trouble as Tell Tale was. Try again.
Critiquing is fine as we want developers like Super Massive to stay the course of making good games. Especially after rushing games out too quickly after their break out hit. But to go on and say they are on a decline when the very game they just released was received well by the gaming community is jumping the gun. Not only that, but Until Dawn: Rush of Blood was a hit on PSVR fool. Not everyone gets nausea from VR.
Not only that, but the ignorant opinion that Quantic Dreams has declined when Detroit: Become Human is a great game for its genre, was received well by gamers and sold well, speaks volumes about this person's opinion.
Tell Tale's biggest mistake was attaching their works to huge existing IP that requires big royalties. They didn't invest in bringing new ways to interreact with their games or even improvements to graphics/mo-cap.
Supermassive is the complete opposite. Their games are completely original works, they own their own titles, there is a level of exploration in their games and the graphics continue to be worth a look.
Agreed. This article is complete garbage. The games it compares The Quarry to are hardly competitors and nowhere in the league of the game.
These type of games are about the choices and the story. Some of the later releases may have faltered in those areas making them not as good as the original. But i don't see how this author wants them to innovate. It just seems like the author wants to play a different genre. What they need to do is come up with better stories and choices.
The reason that telltale fell into financial ruin was the amount of money they had to pay out for the big License fees. Batman, Borderlands, walking dead, they had to pay through the nose to get rights to use them. Supermassive don't have that problem, although I would love them to do a Nightmare on Elm street, Friday the 13th or Halloween game, the rights to those properties would likely be too much to warrant the cost.
Dumb, uninformed take.
Telltale went under due to, mainly, piss poor management. They grew the team way too big, and took on way too many projects at one time; stretching the key talent far too thin.
Then constant crunch pushed much of said key talent to move onto other studios.
Tied into the fact they kept utilizing antiquated tech instead of moving onto a new, modern engine.
None of this applies to Supermassive, thus a pointless and uninformed article we have here.
From VGC: "Gearbox has announced that it’s working on a new Tales from the Borderlands game.
Released in 2014 and developed by Telltale Games, the original Tales from the Borderlands is a five-part episodic game set on Pandora between the events of Borderlands 2 and Borderlands 3.
Gearbox is developing the “all new Tales from the Borderlands adventure”, which will be published by 2K later this year."
Wish they’d come up with a fresh IP all together. While the animation is fine, the story and “cheeky” characters, and millions of weapons just don’t do anything for me. It’s time for something non-borderlands related in my opinion. With each sequel they seem to take the route more is better, and that’s just not always the case.
This is a tales from the borderlands game. Not a actually proper Borderlands game. It's not a FPS or anything like that it's a story driven game with player choices.
Like the Telltales Walking Dead. Or Telltales Guardians Of the Galaxy or Minecraft Story Mode and The Wolf Among Us.
I gotcha, but it’s still tales from the “Borderlands”. I get that it doesn’t play the same. I’m just tired of seeing the same animation over and over, it’s like Gearbox’s only art-style now. Just saying I wish they’d try some thing new artistically or aesthetically. They’re just trying to tentpole Borderlands to be its own metaverse with the spin-offs, when to me a new IP from them would be way more intriguing. Just 1 dude’s opinion. No harm meant by it.
Well, sort of. This one is being developed by Gearbox directly, not Telltale, so we’ll have to see if they actually stick to the original’s design.
In honestly quite cautious/skeptical about this one. Nuanced and balanced writing is not what I would describe as a forte for Gearbox, especially coming from BL3
You are right with what you explained, but I get what he is saying, borderlands is getting very same-y with each new game and it would be nice to have something new.
I wish they would go back and develop that Furious 4 game that they decided to cancel. They were also supposed to develop a final Brothers in Arms game but there's been no word on that in a decade.
Did that game really do okay? Isn’t that what made telltale collapse? I played the first episode and it was kinda terrible. Had no desire to finish it.
Hard disagree from me. Wolf among us was brilliant. The first walking dead was good. The rest were sub par imo.
Wolf Among Us was my favorite . I’d put Walking Dead and Borderlands close to each other .
Fair enough. I can concede that it wasn’t TT game of thrones awful. I’m glad telltale is focused on making a full WAU2. It was the right move.
First Tales from the Borderlands is my favorite game I loved so much I bought it on PS3, PS4, and XB1. The intro to episode 4 was so friggin good I never knew who Twin Shadow was until I heard that intro.
I just find it funny TT games become so oversaturated because there was so many of them coming out, yet it seems now that TT are back in the game they are slowly doing the same mistake which lead to their original downfall.
Maybe focus on one or two projects, get them finished and start another.
Also they just constantly rely on existing franchises rather than doing something brand new from scratch.
Telltale aren't making this though. And as far as I'm aware, Telltale are only making Wolf Among Us 2 and The Expanse. Am I forgetting one? Wolf Among Us isn't out til next year, too, and The Expanse is probably beyond that. Now if they were doing another Walking Dead, Batman, Game of Thrones, Minecraft, and Guardians all within a few years... then I'd be worried.
Still there's only so much you can do with the point and click genre
If they were pushing the genre then fine but each game they just don't even bother.
The article just mentions Telltales making the first game this second game is being done by Gearbox themselves and published by 2K. How is Telltales over saturated? I didn't even know they were still around until an article popped up on here stating they were working on the Wolf Among Us 2 and maybe one other game. Back when Telltales was a thing yes they were over saturated working on The Walking Dead, Batman and Batman 2, Guardians of the Galaxy, Game of Thrones, Minecraft and Tales from the Borderlands. And you could tell that some of their games were crap Game of Thrones was boring, Batman on PS3 episode 2 or 3 had a hiccup on PS3 and so did Game of Thrones. Guardians of the Galaxy was a good game. You say there is only so much you can do with a point and click game yes that is correct but the same could be said about Supermassive Games and the games. Man of Medan, Little Hope, House of Ashes, and Until Dawn you can only do some much with their style of games as well. As long as it has a good story, good characters who cares as long as you're enjoying the game.
