You might not remember this but TellTale Games used to be a happier company. Before The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us shot the company to the top of the AAA stratosphere with their grim and depressing worlds, TellTale was better known for its sense of humor with properties like Sam & Max, Bone, Wallace & Gromit, and Monkey Island rounding out their arsenal. Now the release of their latest endeavor, Tales from the Borderlands, is giving the developer a chance to once again utilize their comedic chops.
Cards on the table, I’m not an enormous Borderlands fan. The games are competent enough with friends but I generally won’t play them by myself and even if I am playing with others the cutscenes and characters are really just there to impede your access to sweet loot. So needless to say I was somewhat skeptical when I heard that a company known for their storytelling was going to take a crack at a series where the storytelling is more nuisance than necessity. Luckily my skepticism has proved unwarranted as the developer has done an excellent job of creating a cast of misfit characters who are easily standouts in the entire Borderlands series to date.
The game tells its story from two contrasting points of view, there’s Hyperion corporate ladder climber Rhys (pronounced “Reese”) and his grudging con artist ally Fiona. At the start Rhys is living a comfortable life aboard Hyperion’s ridiculous moonbase “Helios” until he discovers that not only has the promotion he was expecting been snatched away from him by the biggest asshole on the station (played excellently by Patrick Warburton) but he’s also effectively going to be demoted to janitorial services in the process. Plans change after Rhys learns that his nemesis is planning to purchase a vault key from some folks down on Pandora. After recruiting his best friend Vaughn, the two steal some money from Hyperion and head off to purchase the vault key for themselves. As it turns out said key is being sold by the previously mentioned con-artist Fiona, and, well you can probably imagine how that works out.
The game is remarkably Borderlands-esque and fans will no doubt appreciate little touches like boss introductions.
The game plays in a fashion very similar to The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us. Over time TellTale has mostly bid farewell to the complex and sometimes inane puzzles that are intrinsic to adventure games, instead opting to put most of their focus on the increasingly elaborate narratives. Tales from the Borderlands continues this tradition so if you haven’t been enjoying their recent titles this probably won’t do anything to change your mind.
There are some action segments to be had, but no gunplay like you might expect, in fact only one of your playable characters has a gun, which has a single shot that you can choose to use or save during the episode (I’m sure that I’ll regret wasting mine at the earliest opportunity).
I mentioned before that the game has a great sense of humor, and I’d elaborate upon that by saying it’s much better than the pop-culture and meme laden jokes littering the core Borderlands series. There’s even a fair bit of self referential humor with situations like scanning a Porto-potty to find that its chances of containing loot are “surprisingly high”.
Speaking of which, if you’re a Borderlands fan there’s plenty to like here. From little touches like giant glowing gold cylinders over dropped cash to returning characters, notably Zero from Borderlands 2 in this episode, and a second character who I’ll keep to myself so as not to spoil anything. TellTale has done an excellent job at keeping what’s fun about Borderlands, and in a lot of ways improving upon it.
Rest in peace puzzles, we hardly knew ye.
Tales from the Borderlands isn’t quite perfect in my mind. I was a little disappointed that the story eventually falls back on the Borderlands classic “let’s open a vault” scenario, but even so chapter one has proven remarkably competent and I’m excited to see what TellTale has in store for the coming four episodes. If you’re either a fan of Borderlands, or a fan of TellTale’s adventure game model I’d definitely recommend checking this out. As usual we won’t assign a review score until all five episodes are out, but as of episode 1 things are looking pretty promising. Of course on Pandora, things rarely go according to plan…
