Where It Fits

Tales from the Borderlands is a spin-off game by Telltale Games and was release a month after Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel. In the story, it comes after Borderlands 2, and before Borderlands 3.

Plot

Tales from the Borderlands has one of the better stories in the series because all the good writing from the Pre-Sequel accidentally got moved to the Tales folder at Gearbox.

While you play, you have to remember that this is a Telltale game, so all the decisions you make matter and will have an effect the story, but don't worry, this is a Telltale game, so none of your decisions matter or have an effect of the story.

Episode 1: Zer0 Sum

The game opens with Rhys walking in the desert, who is then knocked out by "the Stranger," who ties him up, drags him, and makes him tell him about the Gortys Project, which is our story. Remember this because it won't be relevant until the last episode.

Rhys Strongfork works for Hyperion as a middle manager alongside his friends Vaughn and Yvette.


Rhys is very excited because today is the day he gets promoted to Senior Vice President of Securities Propaganda, but hits a slight speed bump when he finds out his promotion has been stolen by his arch rival, Vasquez, who is voiced by Patrick Warburton and it is very distracting.

Vasquez hits a speed bump of his own when Rhys finds out he's planning on buying a vault key.

Rhys and Vaughn borrow 10 million dollars from Hyperion and head to Pandora to buy the vault key themselves.

They get a little lost and ask some locals for help, which goes as well as you'd expect, but Yvette sends down a loyal loader bot to save them.

Then, they find some kind of museum of dead bodies, one of which is Professor Nakayama, who was obsessed with cloning Handsome Jack and died by falling down stairs in the Hammerlock's Big Game Hunt DLC from Borderlands 2, the worst DLC ever.

They steal Nakayama's USB drive and meets up with his contact to make the deal.

Back in the present, the Stranger brings Rhys to a tied up Fiona, our other playable character. Fiona begins to tell her side of the story.


Fiona is a con artist who works alongside her sister, Sasha, and their very trustworthing mentor, Felix.

They're trying to sell a fake vault key to Hyperion for 10 million dollars.

They arrange the deal through a guy named August, who's voiced by Nolan North and is also very distracting.

When they go to make the deal, they're surprised when Rhys and Vaughn show up instead of Vasquez.

Rhys convinces them to sell him the key anyway, but disaster strikes when the key falls on the ground and shatters, revealing it as a fake.

Suddenly, a dubstep bandit named Bossanova bursts through the wall and steals the money.

August gets mad and tries to shoot everybody, but his aim is really, really bad.

Everyone gets into a big car and drives away. At first, Fiona & Co. don't trust Rhys and Vaughn, but Rhys says he can track the money by putting the USB drive they stole into his brain, which he does and dies for a bit.

Vaughn finds the money himself, which is being held by the dubstep guy as the grand prize of his death race.

They infiltrate the race, but Zer0 shows up and stabs the dubstep guy.

Amidst the confusion, Felix shows up and steals the briefcase, which is a very shocking twist.

Fiona warns Felix that the case has a bomb in it, and he throws it in the air and money explodes everywhere.

Desperate to get something good out of this situation, Rhys finds out they're standing above a secret Atlas facility.

They head inside and find a weird octagon thing that shows them a map of Pandora, and that's the end of Episode One.

Most game writers would be tempted to come up with a stupid plot device ot bring back Handsome Jack somehow, but I admire these writers for creating a wholly original story in the Borderlands universe that doesn't rely on established characters to be intere– okay, nevermind, he's here.

Episode 2: Atlas Mugged

Handsome Jack is back as an A.I. projection thing inside Rhys' head. Rhys is the only one who can see Jack, so everyone else just thinks he's crazy.

The rest of them figure out they've stumbled upon the "Gortys Project," and they have to head to Old Haven to uncover the next clue, which may or may not lead them to a vault.

They start driving to Old Haven, but Hyperion starts shooting moonshots at them and Rhys and Vaughn get knocked out of the car.

As they wander the desert, Vasquez comes down to kill them. Things look bad, but then Loaderbot swoops in and saves the day.

Meanwhile, Fiona and Sasha make a pitstop to ask Scooter to repair their car, and learn they have a massive bounty on their heads.

Two bounty hunters show up and lose any semblance of being dangerous when Sasha bonks them on the head with a frying pan.

They chase Fiona and Sasha for a bit before Athena shows up and starts chasing them too, which actually is dangerous because it reminds me of the Pre-Sequel.

But don't worry, at the last second, Loaderbot drops in and saves the day... again

Everyone meets up in Old Haven where they find another abandoned facility, but Vasquez and August aren't far behind and they capture everybody and force them to activate the octagon thing.

When they combine the pieces, a small metal ball spawns. The facility is not too happy about the ball, and Rhys has to choose between trusting Jack to have the drones (the fun option) or trusting Fiona to come up with the worst plan ever: throwing a grenade at their feet.

Episode 3: Catch a Ride

Somehow, Fiona's plan actually works and everybody escapes the facility unscathed, excepted for Vaughn, who gets a little completely paralyzed, but don't worry, he's a main character and will be fine.

Too bad they run into some goons waiting at the entrance of the facility. Now it's finally time to meet the villain; Vallory, an evil gang leader lady who wants the Gorty's Project and only speaks in cliche villain dialogue.

Vasquez tells her that they nearly have everything to open the vault, Vallory says "then I guess I don't need you anymore," and turns around to aim a double-barreled shotgun point blank at his ribcage and kills him, leaving you with a screen covered in blood.

Suddenly, Athena comes in and kills all of Vallory's goons, forcing her to retreat and say "this isn't over."

Athena explains that she was hired by Felix to help Fiona and Sasha fulfull their "full potential."

Then, the Gortys Ball comes to life and turns into a cute robot that's also really dumb and oblivious.

Gortys says that her next upgrade is that way, so you go into a travel montage.

Welcome to the Dome of Filler Content. Interact with every single object in this room to progress, ride the world's slowest elevator, play a hacking minigame, and more!

Fiona gets the Gortys upgrade and meets Cassius, a scientist guy who unparalyzes Vaughn.

Just as things are getting really boring and emotional, Vallory shows up, but this time she has Brick and Mordecai with her.

Rhys and Fiona fight pretty well, all things considered, but Vallory has Brick, so she captures them.

Athena faces a fate worse than death: she's dragged away by Brick and Mordecai to go be in the Pre-Sequel.

Fiona tells Vallory that the Gortys Project is imprinted to them and that it'll never work with her, to which Vallory responds with, "why do you think you're still alive?"

Gortys complies with Vallory to save her friends, and says that her next upgrade is on the Helios Space Station.

Episode 4: Escape Plan Bravo

Vallory tells everyone to get her the last piece or she'll kill them, so Rhys concocts a plan to infiltrate Helios.

Fiona asks Scooter and Janey Springs to build her a rocker, while Rhys obtains Vasquez's severed face so he can use it to disguise himself as Vasquez.

Rhys, Fiona, Sasha, August, Gortys, Scooter, the bounty hunters from Episode 2, and A.I. Jack all board the rocket and head towards Helios.

The rocket's boosters suck up a dead body, which puts them at risk of blowing up, so Fiona and Scooter do a spacewalk to fix the ship.

Sadly, Scooter gets his hand stuck and Fiona is forced to jettison the unstable booster with Scooter still attached to it.

Like any good heist story, the plan goes wrong the second they get to their destination.

Turns out Yvette betrayed Rhys and is working with Vasquez, but now Vasquez is dead and Rhys is disguised as Vasquez, so she thinks she's talking to Vasquez and not the guy she betrayed, but she actually is talking to the guy she betrayed, and Rhys has to pretend that he planned to betray himself and–

Jack tells Rhys that he has a trapdoor below his office with a bunch of saws and stuff, so Rhys tells everyone to meet up at the trapdoor entrance so they can climb in.

But before he gets there, he's intercepted by some angry accountants and 1v100s them in a finger gun war.

After the massacre, Rhys and Fiona meet up at the trapdoor, and Rhys climbs up to Jack's office while Fiona holds the door open, but Fiona's interrupted by Yvette, who's captured Sasha and figured out their little scheme.

When Rhys gets in Jack's office, Jack is all like "fullfil your destiny and take your place at my side," and Rhys is like, "you're a psychopath, why would I trust you," and Jack is like "so be it, Jedi."

Jack hacks Rhys' arm (oh, yeah, he has a robotic arm, by the way) and forces him to sit in his evil throne, and plugs Rhys into the space station and transfers his A.I. consciousness into Helios itself.

Now, Jack controls the space station and he's like, "now witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational battle station."

Episode 5: The Vault of the Traveler

Jack tries to saw Rhys in half to install an immortality endoskeleton inside his flesh, but Rhys moves to the left a bit and escapes.

Everyone meets back up, and Yvette is there too because they're totally cool now, but a door randomly closes and separates everyone.

Fiona and Sasha take the Gortys upgrade back to the ship, but get betrayed by the bounty hunters, but then August betrays the bounty hunters, and they have a shootout, but then bounty hunter 1 shoots Loaderbot, takes the ship and leaves everyone else stranded.

Meanwhile, Rhys goes to Helios' power core and shuts it off, effectively ensuring Jack dies with it.

Unfortunately, that means Helios is gonna crash on Pandora and kill everybody aboard, but, hey, at least Jack's dead once and for all.

Loaderbot gets everybody to an escape pod, but dies tragically.

Fiona crash lands and finds out that Vallory installed the final upgrade, which made Gortys into a giant mech, and also summoned the vault, which came complete with a ginormous alien monster, the Traveler protecting it.

Gortys can't beat the Traveler, so the only way to get rid of it is to blow up Gortys., which will despawn the vault.

Vallory is holding the rocket launcher, but don't worry, I'm sure she'll be poetically killed by the consequences of her own evil scheme.

Gortys slams her fist on Vallory and kills her.

Fiona and Sasha blow up Gortys, and the Traveler disappears.

Meanwhile, Rhys finds Jack in the rubble of Helios, and Jack installs himself inside Rhys' head yet again.

Jack tries to strangle Rhys with his own robot arm, but Rhys pulls his arm off and removes all his cybernetics so Jack no longer has a host, effectively killing him for good.

Then, you make a fateful choice: does Rhys crush the chip containing Jack, or keep it for possible future use?

Statistically speaking, 53.4% people chose to destroy the chip, but I'm willing to bet a million dollars that keeping it is the canon choice, that way, the writers can bring Jack back in a future game.

After Helios is destroyed, everyone goes their separate ways, and Rhys decides to rebuild the Atlas Corporation, and starts walking aimlessly through the desert.

Hopefully you remembered the Stranger, because we're back in the present.

The Stranger brings Rhys to Fiona, and the trio walk to an unknown destination while they tell the story I just told you.

Bounty hunter 1 shows up with Vaughn as his prisoner. Then, the Stranger kills bounty hunter 1, and Vaughn's gang of refugees shows up and takes the Stranger as their prisoner.

They unmask the Stranger and find out it was Loaderbot the whole time, who secretly survived by uploading himself to Jack's immortality suit.

Loaderbot just wanted to know the truth about why Fiona blew up Gortys. Satisfied, he proposes that they repair Gortys and summon the vault again to kill the Traveler, get the loot, and free Gortys.

They assemble a team for this dangerous mission, including a special mystery vault hunter: Claptrap. Because you craft the team, you don't have to choose him (thankfully).

The team summons Gordys mech, and Rhys and friends pilot it while Fiona and Sasha go inside of the Traveler to blow it up from the inside.

Its organs explode, and Gortys finishes the job by hitting it with a giant laser sword.

Finally, Rhys and Fiona enter the vault, and find a very fancy looking treasure chest. They open it together, and inside they find... the final credits.