Trust and tequila: An oral history of Tales from the Borderlands and Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel

If you end up grabbing drinks with Gearbox Software at one of the major video game industry events throughout the year, you have an 80 percent chance of making a new Borderlands game. If you’re already friends with the people there, that number jumps to 100.

At least that’s the impression I got when I talked to the studios behind Tales from the Borderlands (out this summer) and Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel (out Oct. 14), two games coming to PC and consoles that aren’t being made by the studio that built the original series. They couldn’t be more different from one another. Tales is an episodic adventure game from The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us developer Telltale Games, and 2K Australia is making The Pre-Sequel, an open-world first-person shooter that closely follows its predecessors. The chronological timeline of the series goes like this: Borderlands, The Pre-Sequel, Borderlands 2, and Tales from the Borderlands.