In each story the place a want is granted – whether or not by some primary-coloured goon protruding a lamp, a creepy piece of fairground leisure, or a chunk of cursed bushmeat – there’s all the time an ironical sting within the story. You want for well being and it seems you may’t die. You want for a private chef, but it surely seems he solely does offal. You want every part you contact to show to gold, then it’s going to flip on the market’s no solution to flip it off – or it kicks in simply as you go to the bathroom, that form of factor. You ought to, because the saying goes, watch out what you want for.
I’m sorry I wanted for New Tales From the Borderlands, everybody.
Tales From The Borderlands is an interactive narrative journey set within the Borderlands universe, the place you select dialogue choices, actions, and go or fail quick-time occasions. These accumulate over the course of a number of episodes and finally contribute to the end result of the story. It is, and I can not stress this sufficient, incredible, particularly as a result of how good it’s got here as a shock when it launched in 2014. Tales From The Borderlands is just not solely one of the best Telltale game, but in addition one of the best Borderlands game, in all probability as a result of it wasn’t made by Gearbox. I’ve needed extra Tales From The Borderlands for nearly a decade now. Gearbox have seen match to make one, in-house, and presumably out of revenue slightly than want, or any affection for the title.
New Tales From The Borderlands is an interactive narrative journey set within the Borderlands universe, the place you select dialogue choices, actions, and go or fail quick-time occasions. And it fuckin’ sucks.
As earlier than, you play a number of characters, switching management between them as they do various things within the story: anxious pacifist scientist Anu, her (heavy air-quotes) street-smart adoptive brother Octavio, and bloodthirsty fro-yo store proprietor Fran. They are additionally accompanied by a robotic known as LOU13, pronounced Louis. For causes I will not go into, the unlikely trio workforce as much as steal a therapeutic crystal from a vault, attempt to monetise their discovery, and finally save the world from each the bloodthirsty head of the Tediore megacorp, and an odd entity dwelling contained in the crystal.
I actually do not like being very imply about games. So within the pursuits of each brevity and readability, I’ve determined to current the remainder of this overview as an inventory of issues I like, and an inventory of issues I didn’t like.
Good issues about New Tales From The Borderlands
- The character designs are cool. I favored that Fran, who will get one of the best non-compulsory skins, is a
wheelhoverchair person however can be a really bodily character who will get essentially the most historically heroic moments - The voice performing is generally first rate, and the mocap means lots of the animations really feel idiosyncratic, as is befitting the universe and characters
- The banter between the Tediore drone guards is fairly humorous, though it occurs each time two or extra Tediore guards are on display screen and is subsequently topic to diminishing returns
- I just like the weirdo Tediore guard who’s a superfan of the in-universe miniatures game Vaultlanders, who turns up in more and more unlikely locations to battle the characters (this like doesn’t prolong to the mini-game in query itself)
- There is one (1) joke accomplished by the above character involving Octavio hiding in a field that made me snigger out loud
- There’s an offended shouty gun on legs known as Brock, who goes “bang!” when he shoots; he can keep
- LOU13, who’s an murderer bot, may also keep. Although he is on skinny ice due to the played-out jokes about plugging into information ports being like intercourse
Things about New Tales From The Borderlands I didn’t like
- Rhys from the unique Tales is in it, after he was introduced again for Borderlands 3, and I do know it isn’t the New Tales devs’ fault, however the entire thing may be very “Look how they massacred my boy!” for me
- If there are a number of cases the place characters say one thing like “oof, capitalism, am I proper?”, that is a sign that you haven’t created an efficient or insightful critique of capitalism
- Octavio’s introduction has a run of jokes that made me immediately hate him, together with telling a late middle-aged girl that her new cybernetic leg is “hearth!” after which she lifts it up and it is also a flamethrower, omg, lol
- There are a number of cases the place a joke begins after which they type of… loop again and do the joke once more, in the course of nonetheless doing the joke the primary time? Like, it is laborious to clarify. There’s a bit the place Octavio is in jail and Brock the shouty gun is yelling at him to be much less depressed as a result of it isn’t as enjoyable torturing him, and Brock and the guards preserve stating that at totally different factors in the course of the bit, however Brock additionally will get mad when the guard provides Octavio a scented candle to cheer him up
- IDK, simply, typically it is like among the individuals concerned had no expertise of jokes, but needed to write some after the idea of jokes was defined to them. Possibly by Randy Pitchford
- Similarly, it’s usually clear {that a} joke was conceived with out actual reference to the individuals within the scene or their characterisation, that means e.g. Anu will routinely turn out to be extraordinarily silly for about 30 seconds to facilitate a humourous and/or literal misunderstanding (the misunderstanding won’t be humourous)
- LOU13 is concurrently a brilliant superior murderer bot who’s able to monitoring the participant characters’ relationships via particulars as small as facial expressions – to the extent he grades these relationships with a rating – and, fucking, Drax from Guardians Of The Galaxy
- Multiple characters don’t get a decision, together with the recurring Vaultlanders fan that I really favored
- The most attention-grabbing issues on this game occur off display screen, in a method that whispers of not being allowed time or price range. Fran fights a bunch of sharks and you aren’t getting to see it.
- Even so, New Tales From The Borderlands can consider fuck all so that you can do as a participant. I needed to do a QTE to bang helplessly on the bars of a cage. At least as soon as I received bored sufficient and robotically tried to skip ahead on a video progress bar that did not exist.
- The fundamental MacGuffin is a crystal that immediately heals, rendering the bit the place a fatally wounded character does the “go with out me, there is not any time” sacrifice virtually insultingly silly
- A fundamental character died on the finish of mine, off display screen, and I do not know what I may have accomplished otherwise or which elements performed into that
- Also a bunch of instances if I failed a QTE it resulted in success anyway, or instantaneous dying and reload – slightly than like, consequence to cope with, which I assumed was the entire level of this sort of game?
- At one level LOU13 asks one other character “Are you enjoying a kind of insipid interactive narrative video games?”
- It would not even do the cool music video bits in the beginning of chapters correctly! That’s like one of the best little bit of precise Borderlands! How do you mess that up?!
Look, I do know making virtually any game is a labour of affection, however I spent like every week being unhappy and never realizing why, till I completed this game and realised I used to be joyful as a result of I did not must play it day-after-day after work anymore. All this does is show that Gearbox can’t be trusted with their very own IP anymore. The very existence of New Tales From The Borderlands is a simpler critique of company construction and the pitfalls of capitalism than any of the content material of any Borderlands game. Apart from one of the best one. Just play Tales From The Borderlands.