A new Tales from the Borderlands is coming this year

Gearbox boss Randy Pitchford revealed at PAX East today that a brand-new Tales from the Borderlands game is in development at Gearbox and will be out later this year.

"Because of the success and our love for Tales, and because of our interest in developing the Borderlands universe in new ways, we thought it would be fun and exciting to dive into the format of interactive fiction once again," Pitchford said during a presentation at PAX (via Gematsu).

"This time, we’re doing it to imagine all new characters and all-new stories from the Borderlands. So soon we’ll be announcing an all-new game set within the Borderlands universe and presented in that style of interactive fiction."

The new Tales From the Borderlands is being developed in-house by Gearbox Software, and it will be very interesting to see how that works out. The original game was notable in part for being a Borderlands that wasn't designed and written by Gearbox: It was released in 2014-15 by Telltale Games, a studio that specialized in narrative-focused adventures. And it was really good—good enough to make even a grumpy game reviewer acknowledge that its ironic wackiness was a lot of fun. The big question right now is whether Gearbox can recapture that magic on its own.

2K Games, which will publish the new Tales from the Borderlands, made it official on Twitter:

Despite the uncertainty about the switch from Telltale to Gearbox, the reaction to the announcement has been very positive. Fans have been waiting a long time for a new Tales from the Borderlands: As good as it was, we never got a sequel, and just a few years after the release of the final  episode, Telltale was gone completely.