Tales from the Borderlands PS4 PlayStation 4 1

Some top Telltale staffers have cast some light on Tales from the Borderlands – and it’s raised some questions about the culture at the company. Many of you may remember that it took ages for episodes in the critically acclaimed series to deploy, and that’s because after less-than-stellar sales the development was reduced to a “skeleton crew”.

“About halfway through, we made a deal with the studio that if they let us go on, we would give up like 95 per cent of our staff as long as they let us maintain a skeleton crew,” one of the series’ directors Nick Herman revealed in an oral history with the Campo Santo Quarterly Review. “We had at least one person from every department working on the game. But that's a very small team for an episode.”

While it’s a testament to the staff’s commitment to the project – almost everyone worked a ton of extra hours to see it through, apparently – it’s frightening to us that Telltale was seemingly ready to pull the plug on the project after Season Passes had been sold. What would have happened if it weren’t for the dedication of those remaining few?

As it turns out Tales from the Borderlands is one of Telltale’s best series – despite it being one of its poorest commercial performers. “It's not like we were losing money, but compared to something like The Walking Dead, it wasn't on the same level,” Herman added, and so staff were presumably pulled onto Game of Thrones and Minecraft: Story Mode instead. That went well, eh?

[source quarterly.camposanto.com, via eurogamer.net]