If Telltale Games have proven one thing over the past few years its that they know how to make a videogame off existing licensed material. With names such as Back to the Future, Jurassic Park, The Walking Dead and the Fables comic books under their belt already and soon to be tackling Game of Thrones, they are dev who know what they are good at and people want them to adapt their well known stories into videogames. So what happens when they have to adapt a videogame into a videogame?
The Borderlands franchise has been something of an accidental success, from a simple RPG/FPS hybrid that simply existed to mock itself it has become one of this generations most influential new IP's, allowing itself to evolve into new areas each instalment and not afraid to take risks when making a new entry, and Tales reflects that kind of attitude perfectly.
Turning a series famous for its open world shooting and dungeon crawling style loot based gameplay into a linear point & click adventure game must have been no easy task but the opening chapter to Tales from the Borderlands proves that its not a genre that defines the game but the people behind it.
Taking place after the events of Borderlands 2, you play as Rhys and Fiona. Two dirty lying cheaters who come from polar opposite ends of the societal class system. Rhys being an ex-Hyperion executive (more on that in a second) and Fiona being a swindler living on Pandora, two two meet through trying to screw different people over and being forced to work together to meet a common goal.
Rhys' motivation stems from having recently lost his job at Hyperion, trying to get the recently deceased Handsome Jack's job. After being conned out of it by his nemesis Vasquez, Rhys' plans to get back at him by stealing the Vault Key Vasquez is planning to buy. However when Fiona interrupts the deal and the money is stolen by a bandit boss, Bossanova; Rhys, Fiona and their various acquaintances must join together to get back what they all want...the money.
I cant really delve too much more into the story as Fiona's motivations are treading into spoiler territory and as usual with Telltale games, its all about the story. But Tales provides one of the best starts to a Telltale series to date and also a great expansion to the Borderlands universe.
Its recommended you are a Borderlands fan when going into Tales as many events from previous games are brought up and have quite a significant impact on the story. However if you are a newcomer things are explained reasonably well enough for you to be able to follow what's going on.
Tales will feel very familiar for those of you who have played a Telltale game before, specifically The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us. You move your character around with the left stick, move your cursor with the right and interact with the face buttons. Tales is also action sequence heavy so expect to see more of them QTE's and fast paced cursor movement.
Alongside this are new gameplay additions specific to Tales. First up you have Rhys' ECHO Eye, this allows him to scan objects in the environment and interact with computer terminals. He also has a mechanical arm which allows him to interact with various Hyperion equipment including the Hyperion mainframe and loader bots.
Fiona can loot cash from loot crates and dead bodies and then spend that dough on various story related objects, the fancier the object the more expensive it is.
None of these new abilities, besides perhaps the ECHO eye is explored much in this first episode and therefore does make their inclusion seem questionable as they don't add much to the experience, hopefully however this will change in upcoming episodes.
Tales from the Borderlands retains the series trademark cel-shaded visual style, though this has been common place in the last three Telltale games, it does come off as more Borderlands than Telltale. Tales is also the most reliable Telltale game in terms of technical performance in a long time. Yes there are still frame rate hiccups and yes the lip syncing is still miles and miles off where it should be. But the loading times are significantly smaller and the frame rate dips are a lot less frequent and nowhere near as drastic as they were in previous titles.
That being said, there has been no graphical upgrade from TWAU & TWD, meaning its still running on that same engine it has been for the past few years now.
Putting the technical hitches aside, the sound design is good. The characters vocal performances, from both new and returning, is superb and the background music is nice to listen to, really helping to add atmosphere. There were times however when the action started getting a bit hectic where the sound would cut out for a few seconds or become distorted, so make sure your volume isn't up too loud on your fancy new speaker system.
For a first episode, Tales from the Borderlands does nearly everything right. With its only setbacks being that the new mechanics weren't introduced enough and that the same technical issues Telltale have had for years are still plaguing new games. Besides that and the fact that returning character only seem to be there for fan service rather than actual plot development, Tales from the Borderlands could be one of Telltale's best series yet.
Tales from the Borderlands
Episode 1: Zer0 Sum – 9/10
+Great New Characters
+Still Retains the Borderlands Humour
+Looks the Part
+...Just Borderlands
-Technical Issues
