Was Tales From The Borderlands Considered A Failure?

Telltale Games has released a number of engaging titles over the past few years, including the most recent season of its Batman arc, The Enemy Within, which just launched yesterday. But one particular fan favorite continues to be Tales From the Borderlands, which provided an alternate look at the universe that Gearbox Software has built with its first-person action/adventure games.

That said, Campo Santo recently compiled an interview with a number of developers from Telltale and Gearbox to talk about the game, and, to our surprise, it may not have been as much a financial success as we were expecting it to be.

Season Director Nick Herman expressed as such, noting, “At that point, the sales for Tales from the Borderlands weren’t great. They were decent, it’s not like we were losing money, but compared to something like The Walking Dead, it wasn’t on the same level.

“The mentality was, we’ve got to wrap this season up quick, because we need to move on to some other things, and we’re holding on to staff, and it didn’t  –  I couldn’t let go, and let the season just end either abruptly or not pay off the things we were setting up.”

That said, by the time the fifth episode of the series rolled around, 95 percent of its staff moved on to another project before its completion. “We had at least one person from every department working on the game,” noted Herman. “But that’s a very small team for an episode.”

Overall, the team considered the game a failure internally, despite strong reception from the fans. “After the first week or so, the adrenaline wore off, and I realized I had no clue what came next. I hadn’t really thought about what happened after Borderlands, and as I looked at what was on the horizon, I had a hard time getting excited for the next thing. Tales was my life for two years, and internally it was perceived as a failure. Critically it was a huge success, but from a sales and production standpoint, it wasn’t awesome.

“So after all that, there wasn’t a whole lot of high fives and crowd surfing, but I guess we already knew that stuff would be absent at the finish line. [Season Writer Pierre Shorette] and I talk about how it’s hard enough to just make a shitty thing; that’s like 75% of the work. I guess it just seems crazy to not push for that last 25% and give yourself a shot at making something special.”

You can check out the full report here, but when it comes to seeing another season of Tales From the Borderlands, it may not likely be in the cards for Telltale. Still, we’ve seen crazier things – we’re getting The Wolf Among Us Season 2 next year.

Tales From the Borderlands is available now for PC, Xbox One, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4 and mobile devices.