JASON REIS GAME DESIGN
Tales from the Borderlands
Gameplay/Content Programmer
Tales from the Borderlands was an adventure game based on a popular co-op FPS looter, but the creative team was creating a more complex character-driven narrative game (told from from the perspective of unreliable narrators you alternate playing as, influenced by Rashoman) with an action comedy heist. I'm very proud of what was achieved here.
The role I served in as a content programmer focused on technical solutions in proprietary Tool and Lua for unique interactions, buttons/menus, adventure game systems (inventory, money), turrets, action beats, as well as scene setup (walk areas, trigger and button placements, camera adjustments in adventure mode), save and conversation logic.
Action Sequences
There are still some important details to communicating a good feel to the interactions that work in partnership with the animation and scene and frame; human reaction speed, matching the action on screen and feel so that it connects with the players expected motion to respond, without a dedicated button and prior action mapped already. This team also wanted to expand beyond similar standard interactions used in prior products for these action sequences, and we achieved that. Here are two alternate Episode 3 beginnings I wired up that have two different action sequences. (Final cinematics polish occurred after I had left the studio.)
On the left, Rhys trusts Handsome Jack's AI and assumes momentary control of the facility; until Jack goes rogue. Rhys is left with control of a little "dumpy" droid, which he makes the most of. (Roller coaster shooting gallery.) On the right, Rhys goes with Fiona's plan, a Smoke Grenade to lose the bad guys, followed by a tight, stealthy turret dodging (cover timing challenge) crawl through the undertunnels of the facility. They converge at a tense cinematic conclusion to their escape so these had to feel chaotic and harrowing.
Adventure & Exploration
Telltale's origins are in adventure games. So despite some of the format changes to become more cinematic adventure beats remained part of the product. Some episodes still presented longer, more elaborate search and puzzle style adventure sections, and here is one of the more complex examples I worked on with this style of play.
This is from Episode 2; lots of station cameras, logic tracking (what you do, what order you do it in, to ensure proper response and progression) and in this case, inventory management. Nothing too difficult compared to other things I've worked on, but these kinds of segments can get fairly complex, and are frequently reworked, so it fit under game programmer responsibilities of ensuring things are working quickly and reliably for others to iterate on. They need to work right all the time, so as to not derail the iterative or review process.
Shops
I wrote the shop system for the game in Lua. Here it is in action. It mimics the experience in the mainline series to some extent, though no procedurally generated content is involved here. Money and inventory and save system were also written. Can't have a Borderlands game without Vending Machines!