If you've ever been curious about Borderlands but haven't gotten around to giving it a go due to the eternal cash flow struggle, now would be a good time to turn your attention to the Humble Bundle. The collection revealed today includes the original Borderlands, plus The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned, Mad Moxxi's Underground Riot, and The Secret Armory of General Knoxx, all for whatever price you want to pay.

Those who beat the average purchase price will also get Borderlands 2, along with the Psycho Pack add-on, the Mechromancer add-on, the Creature Slaughterdome add-on, and a coupon for 75 percent off Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel in the Humble Store. And for 15 bucks or more, you can tack on the Borderlands 2 season pass, which includes the Captain Scarlett and her Pirate s Booty, Mr. Torgue s Campaign of Carnage, Sir Hammerlock s Big Game Hunt, and Tiny Tina s Assault on Dragon Keep add-ons, the Headhunter 5: Son of Crawmerax add-on, the Ultimate Vault Hunter Upgrade Pack 2, and a coupon for 25 percent off off stuff in the 2K Store.

"But wait!" he cried, waving his Ginsu knives at the assembled onlookers with mad abandon. "There's more!" As in more games that will be added to the bundle on June 30, the mid-point of the sale. Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel is the most obvious candidate, but it would be kind of strange to make it free in a bundle that also includes a coupon for the same game. Dare we hope for Tales From the Borderlands?

Money spent on the Humble Borderlands Bundle can be directed toward 2K Games, the Humble Bundlers, or the National Videogame Museum, at your discretion. The bundle is live now and runs until July 7.

Borderlands creator Matthew Armstrong has left Gearbox, he confirmed on Twitter over the weekend. As both creator and writer of the first game in the series, Armstrong was also involved in Borderlands 2 and Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel in various capacities. 

Things changed. No longer working at @GearboxSoftware. I will always love Gearbox, but it's adventure time.

— Matthew Armstrong (@MisterArmstrong) April 17, 2015

News of Armstrong's departure follows the closure of 2K Australia last week, the studio responsible for last year's The Pre-Sequel. With work complete on both The Pre-Sequel and the recent Handsome Collection for consoles, Armstrong told Game Informer that he'd taken the opportunity to leave at a time when he was "non-vital".

"I could leave without damaging Borderland or Gearbox too much if I did it at this moment, so now was the time," he said. "I think Gearbox will do great in the future, and I think Borderlands will stay strong and awesome. I've been thinking about it for a while. I'm not quitting out of anger or getting fired. It's just time for new adventures. I'm an inventor. I'm ready to make something new. Not just new to me, but new to everyone."

We're likely to see a Borderlands 3 at some point but probably not for a while: Gearbox only started recruiting for it in January. 

That happy looking fellow above is Paul Hellquist, who you may know as the Borderlands 2 creative director. He's standing in front of the Robot Entertainment logo because he's left Gearbox to join the Orcs Must Die! studio as a lead designer, it was announced today. That means Hellquist won't be working on any forthcoming Borderlands games, but he will be working on Orcs Must Die! Unchained.

Hellquist has quite the resume: before his senior role on Borderlands 2 he spent nine years at Irrational Games, during which time he worked as lead designer on BioShock. Now he'll work on the MOBA-esque Orcs Must Die! Unchained, which our Emanuel Maiberg went hands-on with last year. Robot Entertainment CEO Patrick Hudson says the next phase of that game's beta will be detailed soon.

As for a potential Borderlands 3, as of February last year Gearbox hadn't started development. "We know we want it and we know it should exist, but we don't know what it is yet," Randy Pitchford said at the time. If it's Borderlands you want though, 2K Australia's Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel arrived late last year, as did Telltale's Tales From The Borderlands.  

We like cheap PC components and accessories. But you know what we like even more? Expensive PC components and accessories that are on sale. We ve partnered with the bargainmeisters at TechBargains to bring you a weekly list of the best component, accessory, and software sales for PC gamers.

Some highlights this week: Ubisoft has a huge amount of games on sale starting at 40% off. You can get Bastion for only $3.75, and if you haven't played it yet then you probably should. Newegg has a 250GB Solid State Drive for only $112.99 and it comes with Borderlands 2 for free. And, in a similar deal to last week, XFX has another video card on sale that comes with your choice of three free games from a list that includes Alien: Isolation, Sniper Elite 3, and Tomb Raider.

Hardware:

— The Samsung 840 EVO 250GB SSD is over 40% off, only $112.99 on Newegg, and comes with Borderlands 2 for free.

— Similar to a deal last week, the XFX Double D R9-270X-CDFC Radeon R9 270X 2GB Video Card is $154.99 on Newegg after a $30 rebate, and comes with three free games. The choices include Alien: Isolation, Star Citizen, Sniper Elite 3, Thief, Tomb Raider, and many more.

— The Acer S241HLbmid 24 LCD Monitor is 30% off, $139.99 on Newegg.

— The Motorola SB6141 SURFboard DOCSIS 3.0 Cable Modem is $89.99 with free shipping on Newegg s ebay page.

— Get the HP Omen 15XT Touch Gaming Laptop for $1674.99 with free shipping coupon code PC599Q4

Games:

— Get Bastion for $3.75 over at Gamersgate.com.

— Steamworld Dig is 75% off, $2.49 on Steam, for the next 48 hours only.

— Ubisoft is having a weeklong sale on Gamersgate.com on a bunch of games, including Watch Dogs, Rayman Legends, and Trials Fusion.

— The Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm expansion is $16.97 at Gamestop.

— Majesty Gold is only $2 on GreenManGaming.com after a using the coupon code NOVEMB-ERGMGX-20XOFF

For more tech deals, visit techbargains.com.

A note on affiliates: some of our stories, like this one, include affiliate links to online stores. These online stores share a small amount of revenue with us if you buy something through one of these links, which help support our work evaluating components and games.

If for some reason you're interested in Borderlands 2 but have yet to play it, then here's good news: the game is free on Steam this weekend. Even better, if you enjoy the game there's a hefty 75 per cent discount on both Borderlands 2 and its Game of the Year edition during that period. Naturally, you'd be better off going for the latter as the DLC packs include a wealth of extra content.

The free weekend is timed perfectly to get indecisive punters aboard the Borderlands train ahead of the October release of Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel. Indeed, the game is now available for pre-purchase on Steam. You can play as Claptrap, which is great, because it means you can send the annoying robot to his death.

We had a hands-on session with the pre-sequel recently, describing it as "familiar, but fun". It releases October 14.

Every week, keen screen-grabber Ben Griffin brings you a sumptuous 4K resolution gallery to celebrate PC gaming's prettiest places.

Famously, Gearbox changed Borderlands' visuals at the eleventh hour, completely re-doing the character models and textures to turn it from an ugly caterpillar into a bazooka-firing butterfly dipped in a vat of leaky glowsticks. Gearbox further loosened their belt for the sequel. They continue the first game's cel-shaded mania but notch up the environmental variety, with arctic wastes, gleaming metropolises, bone-dry dust bowls, and green goo-filled mines. It makes for a game that delivers plenty of spectacle.



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Borderlands' Pandora is a weird place, filled with slag-spewing skags, cyborg ninjas, sarcastic robots and psychotic midgets. After watching the first 30 minutes of Telltale Games' next series Tales from the Borderlands in an E3 demo, I think Pandora's about to get even weirder. But not because Telltale is introducing an alien zoo of new creatures rather, because the combination of Telltale storytelling and Gearbox insanity is 100% as bizarre as everyone thought it would be.

In established Telltale fashion, Tales will be a five-part episodic story. It runs on the same engine as The Walking Dead, The Wolf Among Us, and older Telltale adventures, with familiar dialogue choices (mapped to A, B, X, Y on a gamepad) and quicktime event action scenes. Unlike Telltale's two current series, though, there are few agonizing moral-based decisions to make on Pandora. Greed is expected with a side of slapstick, hold the logic.

As Telltale's president Kevin Bruner pointed out to me after my demo, Telltale's history is rooted in comedic games like Sam & Max and Strongbad. They can do funny. But the 30 minutes of Tales from the Borderlands didn't quite convince me that Telltale has Gearbox's sense of humor completely dialed in.

The surface-level elements are there. Characters are introduced with Borderlands' signature stylish freeze-frame and witty description. There are skags and bandits and cartoony cel-shaded wastelands. But most of the dialogue in the 30 minutes of Tales I saw (probably a 60/40 cutscene/game split) was clever without really being funny. Some of the other dialogue tried hard for for funny, but fell flat. Only a few lines and visual gags really made me laugh. There was a lot of exposition, which didn't help I can see the game doling out jokes at a more comfortable pace once its main cast of characters are established.



Despite how much this looks like Borderlands, Tales doesn't much feel like Borderlands, because the jokes and gags come at Telltale's measured pace, without the manic speed of Gearbox's kid-in-a-joke-store delivery. Surprisingly for a game set on Pandora, I think storytelling, and not comedy, will be the real strength of Tales from the Borderlands. I shouldn't be surprised by that at this point it's Telltale but I was anyway, because this is a very different type of storytelling for them.

Tales will divide its time between two protagonists: Fiona, a grifter I didn't see much of, and Rhys, a cocksure Hyperion suit working his way up the corporate ladder. The "Tales" in the title are actually tall tales, as Fiona and Rhys prove to be unreliable narrators talking up their past adventures. At one point, Rhys punches a man in the chest and rips out his heart, only to have Fiona interject with a sarcastic "That's totally not what happened." Then she provides her point of view.

This is where player choice plays a big role. In this scene, Fiona's perspective brings up four dialogue options, and each one will affect how the overarching story plays out. The idea that both characters are making up embellished stories, none of which are the proper "truth," is an absolutely perfect approach to the Borderlands world.

Instead of brawling like Bigby Wolf, Rhys can call in a Hyperion robot to fight for him.

The QTE action scenes are as minimally interactive as ever, and the comedy doesn't feel quite on, but the storytelling is as good as ever. Telltale also seems deeply devoted to mining the Borderlands lore for cool characters and backstory, which is something I didn't know I cared about until today. Gearbox throws out so many jokes, it's easy to forget that there's a pretty cool sci-fi world underneath the pile of screaming psycho midgets. Tales is a reminder that there's more to Borderlands than guns and humor.

Telltale aims to release Tales from the Borderlands this Autumn at the same $25 per season, with new episodes coming out "roughly monthly."

Stay up to date with the very latest PC gaming news from E3 2014

The only thing potentially sillier than this Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel trailer would be the expectation that it would be anything other than silly. As you watch, you'll hover on a knife's edge between thinking "this is brilliant," and "this is genuinely the worse thing that I've ever seen, and everybody involved should be arrested." Which way will you fall? There's only one way to find out...



No, I'm still not sure.

Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel takes place between first and second games, and is also set on the moon. If that sounds like something that would interest you, listen to Tim and Evan discuss what they've seen of the game, read our interview with Randy Pitchford, or just play Borderlands 2 again while imagining it has less gravity.

If you'd rather see a (slightly) more informative trailer for the game, you'll find last week's Handsome Jack teaser below.



Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel is due out on October 17th

When Irrational Games closed earlier this year many assumed it would mark the end of the BioShock series. While critically adored, 2013 s BioShock Infinite did not attract the astronomical sales figures video game publishers expect nowadays. But according to Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick, a future for the series has not been ruled out. In fact, during an address at the Cowen and Company analyst conference last week, attended by Gamespot, he explicitly stated that the future of the series lay in the hands of 2K Marin.
"We haven't given any colour on how you should think about yet except we do believe it's beloved. We think it's important certainly something that we're focused on; something 2K Marin will be responsible for shepherding going forward.
I think there's a lot of upside in that franchise," Zelnick continued. "It hasn't necessarily been realised yet. And the question for the future, assuming we decide to answer the question, would be 'How do you stay true to that creatively?'; 'How do you do something exciting?'; and 'How do you do expand the market?'. That would be the natural drill. We're starting from a good point on it. And certainly it's been a great piece of business for us; it's been a profitable piece of business."
Zelnick also commented on Take-Two s strongest performing IPs: Red Dead Redemption, Grand Theft Auto and Borderlands. While there s still no news on whether Rockstar will release PC editions of Red Dead Redemption or Grand Theft Auto 5, Zelnick did say that both were permanent franchises: evidence enough that a Red Dead Redemption sequel will appear one of these days.
He also took an opportunity to engage in one of the video game world s favourite pastimes: sledging Duke Nukem Forever. Noting that Take-Two s success rate is unusually high due to their careful approach to nurturing IPs, Zelnick admitted that Duke Nukem Forever was a mistake.
"We have a really high hit ratio. It's probably not realistic to believe it could be much higher than it is, he said.
We've had precious few flops. And at least, of the few I can think of - and I can think of a few, sadly - at least one of them was just a misguided decision on my part, which was Duke Nukem.