Highlights
- Borderlands EchoVision Live will be an interactive community-led game where the audience determines the characters' fates, adding a new level of player choice to the franchise.
- The decisions made in EchoVision will be final and not decided by one person, making the game's multiple endings even more significant.
- The events of EchoVision may impact the mainline Borderlands story, as characters from spin-off games have played major roles in the franchise before.
The Borderlands franchise has a rich storyline that somehow gets more outrageous as years go by, and the three mainline games already have hours worth of content that players could go through. As if that wasn't enough, spin-off titles have expanded the franchise, including the episodic graphic adventure Tales From the Borderlands and its successor.
In the first game, players control protagonists Rhys and Fiona as they team up and take a wild adventure to find a Vault. The second game sees players take on the role of Anu, Octavio, and Fran in a battle against Tediore, with both games focusing on player choice. Similar to Telltale's The Walking Dead, many players immersed themselves in choosing how each Tales' story would unfold, and the possibilities were endless given the bombastic nature of the franchise. This likely played some role in why the next Borderlands project will be another interactive title called Borderlands EchoVision Live.
The Power of Choice in Both Borderlands Games
Announced during San Diego Comic Con 2023, Gearbox Software has partnered with Genvid Entertainment to develop Borderlands EchoVision Live. It will be an interactive community-led game where the audience will determine the characters' fates. The story will revolve around eight all-new characters, who are aspiring Vault Hunters that will have to team up to fend off bandits as they find a way out of Greywater Junction. It will be the latest title in the growing gaming genre, alongside games like Silent Hill Ascension.
Borderlands EchoVision Live may not be out yet, but it's already clear that it will take the power of choice to the next level. In Tales From the Borderlands, players could replay the game as many times as they would want to uncover certain interactions between characters and different endings. Various endings were present in New Tales From the Borderlands too, but endings are the result of a plenitude of choices made before then. This was what made the games worth replaying. But in EchoVision, it was made clear that all the decisions over the course of the interactive series would be final and not decided by one person.
Borderlands EchoVision Live gives the audience a chance to participate and make a significant mark in the Borderlands universe. The exact format of the media remains to be seen, but there's a good chance the audience will be voting for each outcome. One could assume that it might be similar to Tales From the Borderlands' choices for certain scenarios, yet made even more bombastic due to the volatile nature of audience interaction.
What will be interesting to see is how the events of Borderlands EchoVision Live fit into the mainline story. What's great about the spin-off games is the fact that they're not one-off titles, and the characters could later be part (or at least referenced) in the main Borderlands game. The best example is Rhys from Tales From the Borderlands, who becomes a major character in the third game. It's possible that the aspiring Vault Hunters from EchoVision might play some kind of role in Borderlands 4 or another spin-off, and that just adds even more volatility to the community-based interaction. Many fans may flock to defend a certain character come hell or high water, potentially putting them at odds with another fan-favorite character.
Borderlands' rich world has certainly made for interesting experiences that longtime fans have been immersed in for years. This also gave developers like Gearbox and Telltale Games the freedom to experiment with different game modes and genres to further expand certain the story. After all, the live interactive nature of the upcoming Borderlands EchoVision Live will definitely bring something new to the table without alienating avid players of the franchise. And despite the different format, it might even become a hit among fans of episodic games.
Borderlands EchoVision Live is in development.