14 DAY TRIAL // 
Telltale Games was mostly known for making old-school point-and-click adventure games in franchises like Sam & Max a few years ago, but with the debut of The Walking Dead, the developer has shown that it can not only adapt the old genre's mechanics to tell a novel interactive story, but it can also work really well within established universes, such as the one made by the actual "Walking Dead" comics.
Afterwards, the studio rolled out The Walking Dead Season 2, as well as The Wolf Among Us, an adventure experience based on the popular "Fables" comic book series.
Now, the studio is branching out even more, bringing forth Tales from the Borderlands, an adventure video game based on the first-person shooter titles made by Gearbox Software. With the promise of intense adventure gameplay, not to mention respect for the source material, the new title is certainly looking good.
Does it manage to tell a fanciful tale or should the skags devour it? Let's find out.
Story
Tales from the Borderlands takes place after the events of Borderlands 2, meaning that those looking to make some sense of what's going on should certainly play the shooters released in the series so far. Unlike those initial titles, however, you aren't playing as vault hunters hell bent on killing anyone who gets in their way.
Instead, you alternatively control two main characters who tell their versions of the events that happened during the actual game. First up, there's Rhys, a Hyperion employee who, like many of his colleagues, is struggling to climb the corporate ladder now that Handsome Jack is out of the picture. He's sent to Pandora after a series of events and must now recall just what happened while he was on the planet.
Secondly, there's Fiona, a smooth-talking con artist that managed to stay alive and profitable in Pandora, at least until Rhys showed up. The pair of characters is quite well done, and because each tells the story in their own way, you can see how they view certain events and, of course, make choices about what they do during the plot.
The whole story is fast-paced and manages to evoke plenty of the charm that made the shooters from Gearbox so successful. It's also great to see the planet from the perspective of an almost regular person, not a powerful vault hunter, although, as the name of the episode implies, Zer0 from Borderlands 2 makes an appearance as part of a seemingly normal quest for him.
The plot is really solid and there are quite a few intense moments, not to mention a lot of different choices that can be made by both Rhys and Fiona. The action never lets up and you certainly get to do quite a lot of things in the 3+ hours campaign.
Gameplay
In terms of gameplay, there are plenty of classic Telltale mechanics at work. You walk around, you have conversations, and you struggle to stay alive during the different action moments of the game. The mechanics are a bit smoother now, no doubt benefiting from new elements or features that weren't able to appear in previous projects.
The dialog is also intense and you get to make quite a few interesting choices in terms of what Rhys and Fiona say and what they actually do. Each comes with different abilities, as Rhys can even summon a loader to fight for him thanks to the Hyperion space station, while Fiona can use her scammer charm to get out of tricky situations.
The dialog is also hilarious, to say the least, and the action is over the top, in the classic Borderlands way. You also get to see characters from the campaign as well as enemies, such as bandits or psychos, get fleshed out in the story.
Of course, like in previous Telltale experiences, what you choose and do is going to have a consequence sooner or later, so expect to spend quite some time debating over whether or not something needs to be done. Bluffs will be called but keeping your cool can be quite hard in some situations. Silence, of course, is an option but it's rarely worth it to keep your mouth shut.
There are quite a few quick-time events in the campaign but they are mostly relatively easy to do and don't require that much button-mashing or split-second reflexes.
Seeing as how guns are quite popular on Pandora, you also get to carry around a pistol, but there's only one bullet in it, and it can be used just in the case of an emergency. This simple mechanic can make a world of different but also puts a heavy burden on the player. Just how big of an emergency is the current situation? Will something even worse happen afterwards? All these questions work really well in the game and players are in for a great experience.
Visuals and sound
Telltale Games already used the cel-shaded style to great effect with The Wolf Among Us or The Walking Dead, and this time around it manages to recreate almost flawlessly the similar style employed by the original Borderlands titles. Characters look great, animations run much more smoothly than they do in previous games, and the facial expressions are infinitely better than those in the past Telltale titles.
The soundtrack is really well done, managing to perfectly complement the action while not feeling out of place, especially when compared to the scores of the previous Borderlands titles. Rhys, played by Troy Baker, and Fiona, played by Laura Bailey, sound really good although some of the other supporting cast aren't really that impressive.
The Good
- Great characters
- Hilarious dialog
- Intense action
- Plenty of choices
- Great visuals and animations
The Bad
- Some dialog choices aren't properly represented
- Quite a few loading screens
