Developer: Telltale Games
Publisher: Telltale Games, 2K Games
Platform: Xbox One, PS4 (, PC, Xbox 360, PS3 - are digital only)
Tested on: Xbox One
Tales from the Borderlands: A Telltale Game series – Review
Telltale Games is quite known for its story based games, especially those based on other popular series or franchises, offering even more story for fans of said titles. That being said, with the Borderlands games being one of 2K’s flagships the last few years, and its already funny storylines, it was a great opportunity for 2K Games to allow Telltale Games to come up with a plot of their own that perfectly suits the Borderlands universe. While the initial episode was released in 2014 and the fifth and last one hit the digital stores in October 2015, 2K decided it was time to create a physical edition with all episodes on one disc. It seems Pandora’s box will be opened once more.
Story
With the pesky Atlas corporation out of the way, it’s Hyperion that pulls the strings on Pandora, at least from their protected moon-base Helios. This brings us to one of the lead characters, Rhys, who has finally been granted that promotion he always wanted, and thus he is able to climb the ranks within Hyperion. Little did he know that his supervisor was actually just murdered by Vasquez, the guy that hates your guts, and vice versa. Well, you still get that ‘promotion’ and a change of scenery as you’re going from a respected job to janitor. Fame and fortune seem out of reach, at least until Vasquez receives a rather dubious phone call from a man named August. It seems he has a vault key up for sale, but it will cost ten million in order to get it. In order to screw Vasquez over, Rhys and Vaughn head down to Pandora, with the funds Vaughn secured thanks to his mad accounting skills. Vault keys are very much desired and it would, if handed to the right guys at Hyperion, terminate Vasquez’s career, and probably life, and propel Rhys forward once again.
On Pandora however, we meet Fiona and her sister Sasha, and their ‘guardian’ Felix, who like to con people. Their latest con involves creating a fake vault key to sell to the highest bidder. Seeing they want to draw as little attention as possible, they need an unsuspecting dummy with resources and contacts to pull the entire thing off, and this is where August comes into play. While Sasha introduces Fiona to August as a ‘close archeologist friend’, things seem to be headed the right way, until Rhys and Vaughn show up, the fake vault key shatters and everyone is trying to run for their lives with as little bullet holes in their bodies as possible. Of course, not only Hyperion will want their money back, Vasquez will want to cover things up and August, well he doesn’t like to be lied to. All in a day’s worth on Pandora.
As will be explained below, the story has some fixed points but it will mostly revolve around the choices you make, allowing the story to branch out in many different directions. If you like to see all of the different routes, you’ll be able to replay the game a lot and still have a reasonably new experience every time.
Graphics
The style from the Borderlands games has become a rather iconic one, which gets empowered even more thanks to the cel shading that’s being used. The characters all have a rather humoristic design, often highlighting the characteristics of the character’s personality, making it immediately clear who is a genius, a douche or someone you’d better avoid at any cost. While the overall style of the original Borderlands series is copy pasted quite neatly, there are also portions that are animated a bit more poorly than the original games. Vehicles move a tad more awkwardly and certain gestures feel quite stiff. Other than an occasional frame drop, there isn’t much that Telltale Games hasn’t done to offer the same quality as the main series.
Sound
Seeing the game is all about story, it’s only natural that it comes with great and convincing voice acting. It’s easy to say that all acting performances, be it characters that only offer one line of text, or those that accompany you from start to finish, are top notch and dialogues are very fluent, making sure there are no awkward pauses or unnatural sounding sequences. The voice actors, especially those in important roles, have often worked together in the past, be it on the LEGO Marvel games, Skylanders and so on, yet it has to be said that Patrick Warburton feels a bit overused at times. While he is a great (voice) actor, his very unique sounding voice feels a bit out of place for his character Vasquez.
All of the above is accompanied by a proper soundtrack where ambient noises complete the picture all while some more known pop songs are thrown into the mix, to highlight certain scenes or events.
Gameplay
Tales from the Borderlands is a episodic story driven game where your choices have a lot of consequences. While plowing through the dialogue-based story there will be a decent amount of ‘quick time events’ and some rather old school point and click mechanics. This means, for the most part, it’s sit back and enjoy, but pay proper attention as you’ll have to responds rather quickly when presented with a choice or when the quick time events kick in.
To be precise, the game is actually all about making the choices that will suit your own personality. If you want to be a colossal cunt, go for it, and try to make the shit hit the fan as often as you can, if you’d like to make friends or take a more pacifistic route, then the game also offers you plenty of choices to do so. That being said, due to the many options you’ll be presented with, the game will be altered drastically depending on what you choose to do. Thanks to this you’ll either love what’s about to unfold in front of you, or you simply hate the actions you’ve made, because it’s not always clear what the outcome will be. Luckily, the game offers a rewind function where you can replay a chapter of the episode where you made a choice you’re not happy with. Nonetheless, in the end it’s all a great excuse to replay the game once more, to see what another route has to offer. All of that aside, keep in mind that when presented with choices you’ll only have a few seconds before you have to decide the course of action.
The quick time events are pretty straightforward and most of the time only pop up during combat sequences. Seeing the game isn’t an actual ‘action’ game, you will be limited to aiming from time to time, or pressing the right button onscreen or in case of dodging attacks, flicking the stick in the right direction. This is rather simplistically presented, but it makes sure you keep your focus on the game, and more than often there’s enough time to respond.
From time to time, you’ll be allowed to roam the premises a little bit, granting you the chance to gawk at all the things the area has to offer, or simply go for the objective the game sets for you. More than often you’ll be presented with very simply puzzles or items you’ll have to pick up, simply to make the story progress again. While these scenes are a fun change of pace, it would have been nice if the overall movement etc was a bit more fluent.
With five episodes worth of content, you’ll be set for roughly eight to ten hours, if you’re a one playthough kind of guy, if not, the game has loads of content to offer. Seeing you originally had to wait several months before a new episode was available, the bundle makes things rather easy to have them all in one place.
Conclusion
Tales from the Borderlands: A Telltale Game series is a great addition to the Borderlands franchise, even though it leaves its First Person Shooter roots behind. You’ll be treated to an abundance of storytelling and options, which will steer the story depending on the choices you make, all accompanied by the iconic appearance of the other Borderlands games. If you like good storytelling and an interesting plot, you’ll like your stay on the desolate Pandora.
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