Title: Tales from the Borderlands: Episode One
Format: PS4, Xbox One, PS3, Xbox 360, PC, Vita, Mac
Release Date: November 25, 2014
Publisher: TellTale Games
Developer: TellTale Games
Price: $4.99
ESRB Rating: M
When TellTale Games first revealed that they were developing a spinoff series of the Borderlands franchise, I was pretty skeptical. I've never played the franchise for it's story, I played those games for the great gunplay and endless loot grabs. TellTale has managed to make me invest a ton of head space for the intriguing lore of Pandora, catching me off guard, and realizing that this is probably their best game yet.
Story and Presentation:Telltale has beautifully set up a plot that feels like a Borderlands campaign. It moves between plot points with little downtime in between. This is the first time that we've gotten to play two different characters in a TellTale game, and it proved to be a great way to engage the player in both storylines. Rhys is a Hyperion employee, and everyone on Pandora hates the company. He's viewed as another pawn in a much bigger organization thats destroying lives. As Rhys, you have to choose whether to exploit that powerful connection or appeal to others by being vulnerable, telling them how the company has screwed you over in the past. Fiona appears to have little vulnerability other than love for her family, but it's up to you how successful she is as a professional con artist. These two fit perfectly into the Borderlands verse. The game begins with the pair being interrogated, each asking for their side of a story involving an elaborate con and a lot of money. That's about all I can say without spoiling anything. I quickly took a liking to both of the characters, each giving you a different perspective on the happenings occurring around them. Unfortunately, the supporting cast in this first episode feels less real than Fiona and Rhys. Vaughn, Rhys's sidekick, often overshoots “funny” into “annoying.” Villain August doesn't feel threatening just yet, and Fiona's sister just isn't that interesting. As a person who never really delved deep into the backstory in Borderlands, I still found the game to be interesting, and by the end, I couldn't wait to experience more of the narrative. The game looks great, and it plays very nicely. I finished the episode on the PS4 version, and it ran very well. I didn't get a lot of the technical bugs and hiccups I found while playing the Xbox 360 version of The Walking Dead and Wolf Among Us. Obviously, the console versions have benefitted from the extra horsepower. The soundtrack is solid as well, it feels like it was pulled directly from the original Borderlands score, which was great.
Core Gameplay:TellTale Games have had pretty much the same gameplay mechanics for the past 5 years now, but with each new release, we always get much needed improvements and tweaks. Tales from the Borderlands feels more like the Wolf Among Us than the Walking Dead, and that's because of how much action is present. The game features lengthy action sequences that are a blast to play through. While there is no shooting in the traditional Borderlands sense, there are opportunities to operate heavy machinery and fire off a round or two. These scenarios require fingers always on thumbsticks, chaining together the familiar moving and ducking commands from Telltale's previous episodic game series'. You're running away, jumping onto moving vehicles, grasping for weapons, and slamming them into an attacker's face, and dodging bullets. You don't have a lot of time to make decisions either, the game is very fast paced, and constantly wants to push you along, but I never felt rushed. As in other Telltale games, players have a limited amount of time to select one of four dialog or action options when dealing with other characters. The way the studio has tweaked its choice system for Tales from the Borderlands adds another layer of depth to the already solid foundation. Both Rhys and Fiona are telling their side of a tale and, as a result, provide different details about what happened. You have the option to choose how each character will be perceived in the universe. Length wise, it was a little over two hours, which falls in line with previous games.
Final Thoughts:
Tales from the Borderlands is an excellent time to be had, and it really caught me by surprise. With the close release window to Games of Thrones, I payed more attention to what would be happening in Telltale's rendition of Westeros. But after playing TFB, I'm actually more excited to experience more of Rhys' and Fiona's story.
+Perfectly recreates the look and feel of Borderlands +Great Writing +Fun, Lengthy Action Sequences +More Control Over the Characters S&S Rating: 9/10 @whatsPlay
