Gearbox Software’s New Tales from the Borderlands is releasing this year, though its platforms and release date have yet to be confirmed. The company will attend PAX West in early September, so a reveal may be on the cards. In the meantime, various details on the story, Deluxe Edition and mature content have leaked courtesy of a recent classification by the Infocom Media Development Authority in Singapore.
Along with the previously confirmed PC, the sequel has also been rated for Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, PS5 and Nintendo Switch. Receiving an M18 (“Mature+18”) rating, the story is set on Pandora with three new characters (who are playable at different points). There’s Anu, a scientist who wants to harness a “crystal with healing powers” to help Octavio, her brother. Then there’s Fran, who owns a frozen yoghurt shop (yes, seriously). Both characters are united in their interest to prevent corporations from exploiting the crystal.
It’s unclear whether Octavio is the third protagonist but the gameplay is pretty uniform, focusing on dialogue and action choices. When facing enemy humans, robots or mutants, one must “successfully press a sequence of buttons in response to on-screen prompts to pass the encounter. Failing to do so often results in death, and the player needs to start from the previous checkpoint.” Which is pretty much in-line with the first game’s quick-time events.
Also, as expected of a Borderlands title, there’s some pretty extreme violence. “One example of such an encounter results in either a man stabbing a woman in the neck or on the top of her head; or the woman freezing the man and shattering him, leaving behind frozen fragments including a severed limb and head. There are also other strong depictions of violence with details of blood splatter, such as characters being shot in the chest or head, or stabbed in the eye with a pistol grip.
“In addition, there are depictions of gore such as a woman seen with a severed leg and a sequence where a character attempts to reattach a severed head to a corpse using a metal rod.” This is in addition to foul language, of course.
The Deluxe Edition contains a compilation of the first Tales from the Borderlands, along with the sequel. Additional bonuses haven’t been outlined, so stay tuned for more details at PAX West (hopefully).
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