Here's the ending of Tales From The Borderlands explained. Gearbox Software has had something of a wild ride in terms of critical popularity. They developed the acclaimed Half-Life: Opposing Force and the PlayStation 2 port of the original. They're also behind the well-received Brothers In Arms series of games, but they were also responsible for finishing off and releasing the infamously delayed Duke Nukem Forever in 2011. The final game proved to be hugely disappointing to fans who had waited so long, but Gearbox suffered another critical blackeye with Aliens: Colonial Marines.
This was another title that had been in development for years, with the resulting Alien: Colonial Marines game being a mediocre, buggy shooter that bore little resemblance to impressive early gameplay videos. One fan-favorite franchise from Gearbox is the Borderlands series, which began with the first game in 2009. Borderlands was a colorful, sci-fi themed first-person shooter with satisfying combat and humorous writing. Sequels like Borderlands 2 and Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel followed, with the most recent entry being 2019's Borderlands 3, which received solid reviews. A movie to be directed by Eli Roth (Hostel) is also in development.
Probably the most underrated entry in the franchise is Tales From The Borderlands, which was an episodic series developed by the now-defunct Telltale Games (The Walking Dead). Tales From The Borderlands drops the FPS gameplay and is instead a point and click style adventure where players have control over how certain parts of the story play out. The plot is told in flashback by heroes Rhys and Fiona, with Rhys being a Hyperion employee who gets caught up in a scheme to buy a Vault Key. This how he meets con artist Fiona, with the two later teaming up for a series of wild adventures to find the Gortys Project and a mysterious Vault.
Tales From The Borderlands also sees the return of Borderlands 2 villain Handsome Jack, who is now a hologram installed in Rhys' cybernetic implants and is a like a Devil whispering in his ear throughout the story. In the final episode "The Vault of the Traveler" Handsome Jack is up to his old tricks and tries to hijack Rhys' body by implanting a robot skeleton into him. Rhys escapes and crashes the space station Helios into Pandora in an attempt to destroy Jack for good. This still doesn't work as Jack is uploaded into his cybernetics, including his eye. Rhys chooses to remove his cybernetic parts, though players have the choice to leave Jack trapped in Rhys' eye or crush it, leaving the door open slightly for Jack to return again.
Tales From The Borderlands' big finale sees Rhys, Fiona and Gortys - who was revealed to be a robot in previous episodes - arrive at the Vault of the Traveler. The titular Traveler is a monster protecting the vault, with Gortys sacrificing herself to trap the monster. The game then shifts back to the present day, with Rhys, Fiona, Loader Bot, Claptrap, and others succeeding in rebuilding Gortys, entering the Vault and killing the monster. The game ends on a cliffhanger, with Rhys and Fiona finding a treasure chest inside the vault, which they open and are teleported elsewhere.