New Tales from the Borderlands

Lore & Background

New Tales from the Borderlands is a graphic adventure game in which the player moves the protagonist around the environment, explores surroundings, completes quick-time events, and makes narrative choices that may change the story's outcome. Each of the three playable protagonists has unique gadgets: Anu uses high-tech glasses to scan objects; Octavio can browse social media pages and hack devices; Fran can freeze enemies using her hoverchair. The game retains the episodic structure of the original Tales from the Borderlands, but all five episodes were released at once, similar to Life Is Strange: True Colors. Its art style looks closer to that of Borderlands 3 than the original Tales, and the game is powered by Unreal Engine 4.

The story follows three protagonists on Promethea: altruistic scientist Anuradha “Anu” Dhar, her adopted brother Octavio Wallace-Dhar who seeks fame and fortune, and Francine “Fran” Miscowicz, a frozen yogurt shop owner who uses a hoverchair. After Tediore forces attack, the trio allies to find a Vault. They discover a green shard with healing capabilities, enter a reality game show to pitch it, and eventually confront Tediore CEO Susan Coldwell, who plans to use the shard to power a superweapon. The game features multiple possible endings depending on player choices, including outcomes where protagonists die, go separate ways, or start a new business together.

Reader's Guide

New Tales from the Borderlands received 'mixed or average' reviews on Metacritic. Critics criticized the dated gameplay formula and the lack of impact of choices, while reactions to the story and writing were mixed. The game was developed by Gearbox Studio Québec, which had no prior experience with branching narratives; the team hired key members of the original Tales from the Borderlands development team and a doctor in interactive fiction as lead writer. The writing team modified the script to focus on three core characters after many actors were unable to complete motion capture work, resulting in a more intimate story. Gearbox considered the game a standalone product and spiritual successor, designed so players did not need to have played other Borderlands games to understand the story. The game includes returning characters such as Rhys Strongfork and Marcus Kincaid, and a cameo by Fiona Dillon. The Deluxe Edition bundled the game with the original Tales from the Borderlands.

Did You Know?

• The writing team hired a doctor in interactive fiction, Lin Joyce, as lead writer.
• All five episodes were released simultaneously on October 21, 2022.

The Birth of Game-to-Screen Adaptation

The earliest forays into adapting video games for television were modest, low-budget productions that prioritized faithfulness over spectacle. The 1982 Pac-Man animated series, produced by Hanna-Barbera, is widely regarded as the first such adaptation, loosely drawing from Toru Iwatani's 1980 Japanese arcade title. Just a year later, Ruby-Spears Productions delivered Saturday Supercade, an anthology format featuring four 11-minute segments based on arcade classics like Frogger and Donkey Kong. 1984 saw two simultaneous launches: Dragon's Lair, a fantasy miniseries from Ruby-Spears based on the LaserDisc game, and Pole Position, a sci-fi racing miniseries from DIC Enterprises and MK Company. The latter made history as the first game adaptation to win an Emmy Award. These early efforts were characterized by their relatively low production costs and their attempt to translate interactive gameplay into a passive viewing experience, setting a template that would be refined over the following decades.

The Nintendo Wave and Animated Dominance

Following the 1983 video game crash and Nintendo's 1985 introduction of the NES to American audiences, animated television adaptations of Nintendo titles surged in popularity during the late 1980s. The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! (1989) pioneered a hybrid format blending live-action snippets with animation, and its success spawned spin-offs like King Koopa's Kool Kartoons, which earned a Los Angeles Emmy nomination. The Legend of Zelda animated serial drew from both the original NES game and The Adventure of Link, mixing those settings with original characters. Captain N: The Game Master (1989) wove together characters from multiple Nintendo titles, followed by The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 (1990) and Super Mario World (1991), the latter marking the final animated series directly adapted from a Nintendo game. Beyond Nintendo, 1993 brought Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog and its related series from Sega, plus the Double Dragon animated series based on Technōs Japan and Tradewest's action-adventure franchise.

Live-Action Pioneers and the Carmen Sandiego Legacy

The transition to fully live-action television adaptation came with Eugene Levy's 1990 sitcom Maniac Mansion, loosely based on Lucasfilm Games' 1987 title. However, the most critically celebrated live-action game adaptation was Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?, a PBS game show based on Broderbund's computer game series. Its first season earned two Daytime Emmy Awards in 1992, including Outstanding Achievement in Art Direction/Set Decoration/Scenic Design. Over its five-season run, the show accumulated eight Daytime Emmys from 24 nominations and received a Peabody Award, which described it as "a uniquely creative and influential use of television on a topic of primary importance." A successor, Where in Time Is Carmen Sandiego?, followed in 1996. In contrast, the live-action film landscape of the mid-1990s was far less successful. The 1993 Super Mario Bros. film, released May 28, failed both critically and commercially, unable to recoup its $48 million budget. Films like Double Dragon and Street Fighter (both 1994) similarly struggled, attempting to translate interactivity into a fixed medium with mixed results, and their collective failures made game developers wary of granting adaptation rights.

The Modern Renaissance of Game Adaptations

The late 2010s marked a turning point for video game adaptations in film and television. Detective Pikachu (2019) and Sonic the Hedgehog (2020) both achieved critical praise and box-office success, revitalizing an industry that had been cautious since the 1990s and 2000s failures. A key shift was the growing narrative depth in modern video games, which gave screenwriters richer source material and allowed filmmakers to prioritize storytelling over gameplay mechanics. This approach proved effective: The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023) and A Minecraft Movie (2025) both became box-office successes in the 2020s. On the television side, a new wave of critically acclaimed adaptations emerged, including Castlevania (2017–2021), Arcane (2021–2024), The Last of Us (2023–present), and Fallout (2024–present). These series, like their film counterparts, focused on the narrative elements of their source games rather than attempting to replicate gameplay, establishing a positive creative trend that has reshaped how studios approach the adaptation of interactive media into linear storytelling formats.