I remember playing the original Borderlands when it first came out & I loved it, including all the add-ons. I played the game through multiples times solo & in co-op, naturally when Borderlands 2 was announced I was excited. I felt gameplay wise it improved things over the original but the story, humor & characters were not as good. I decided to try the add ons & liked some of them, then they started creating loads of mini add-ons which were not so great, I became bored of it & never went back to playing it. When the Pre-Sequel was released I was fairly nonplussed about it & decide to give it a miss. However when I heard Telltale Games was doing a game on Borderlands I thought to myself, hmmm this might be interesting. Unfortunately it got lost in the pile of many games I wanted to play until recently when I saw it on special on XBOX Game Store.
How do you feel about ready meals, more specifically Chicken Curry? Well normally speaking it is passable as food, sates your hunger & tastes alright, it's good when you are in a bind or have no idea what else to eat. On occasion though you have a really tasty chicken curry ready meal, so good you want more of it, with naan bread, onion bhaji's & some poppadoms. Playing Tale of the Borderlands I had ask myself was it a barely passable ready meal or some tasty meal that made me want more?
The game is introduced & narrated by everyone's favorite weapons dealer Maaarcuuus! Bruce DeBose does his voice, there is something both comical & serious about it that works really well. The game has you take control of two characters. There is Rhys (voiced by the talented Troy Baker), company man, snappy dresser & Fiona (voice by the equally talented Laura Bailey), con artist who has a kind of has steam punk look about her.
Rhys has his best friend Vaughan (numbers man) & his other best friend Yvette (requisitions & lunch). The two are trying to help Rhys take control of Hyperion, unfortunately his nemesis, Vasquez (voiced by the hilarious Patrick Warburton) has other plans.
As with the Walking Dead & other Telltale Games the game is heavily story driven so I will need to spend a little time talking about it. I have split it all up by the episodes & have given a little taste of what each of them are about while trying not to give away any spoilers.
Episode 1 - Zer0 Mission
We are first introduced to Rhys & Fiona in flashback form, they have been kidnapped & their captor wants to know what brought them to this point. With the demise of Handsome Jack (Borderlands 2) there is a power vacuum building in the Hyperion company & one man in particular is looking to become top dog - Rhys. Unfortunately this won't be happening anytime soon due to his nemesis Vasquez taking the promotion for himself. Not prepared to take things laying down Rhys decides to head down to happy, safe Pandora to get himself some ol' fashioned revenge. Turns out company men have no business being on Pandora as he & his friend Vaughn quickly discover. Lucky enough they hobble together an alliance with two con artists; Fiona & her sister Sasha. Episode 1 finishes off with; betrayal, loss, a ghost & a treasure map.
Episode 2 - Atlas Mugged
Episode 2 starts with more questions from Rhys & Fiona's captor, we get to see the story from both of their perspectives & try to work who is telling the truth. It turns out sporks are handy not just for eating food, Rhys makes a frenemy & a treasure hunt begins. Episode 2 has a very intense start; things go from bad to worse for Rhys & Vaughn, Fiona & Sasha aren't fairing much better.
Episode 3 - Catch A Ride
The gang have just escaped from an Atlas facility, of course they think things can't get any worse, they are wrong. They discover Project Gortys which will help lead them to the treasure but only once it's fully completed. Robot hi jinx ensue & the group is taken on a scavenger hunt, unfortunately for Vaughan he ends up having a shocking time. The ending of episode 3 is unexpected & is by far the best episode so far.
Episode 4 - Escape Plan Bravo
The team are on the hunt for the final part of Project Gortys but it might be tougher than expected. It's time for a heist, as we all know every good heist needs, spaceships, high fives, skin pizza, travel sickness & cool slow motion walking. Of course it's not that simple & we end up seeing the ultimate power of the Hyperion home base - Helios.
Episode 5 - The Vault of the Traveler
Things are not looking good for Rhys & his frenemy is not too happy with him. Sacrifices are made, Project Gortys is brought to the next level, many battles take place & we finally get to see if the gang will get their treasure. We also discover who Rhys & Fiona's kidnapper is & why he captured you. It is an action packed & drama filled conclusion.
If you have played any of the previous games in the series you will be used to the art style, which is continued in Tales from the Borderlands. The character designs are interesting as always in Borderlands, Rhys was one of my favorite character designs, he has a robotic arm, echo eye implant & a two face style outfit. Some of the set pieces looks really good especially in the Jungle area in Episode 3 & the Road Trip montage in the same episode looked great. The design used for the intros & credits looked really cool.
All in all the visuals are exactly what I have got used in the Borderlands series, no more, no less. As the saying goes, if it ain't broken why fix it?
The music has many sides to it, sometimes it is subtle, sometimes it intense & other times it has a high octane action sound. Listening to the soundtrack again I can definitely here elements of the Walking Dead. There are some people who suggested it has a Firefly-esqe sound & I would have to agree but maybe that's because it feels like you are a bit of a space cowboy in the game. There are number of artists that makes up the sound in Tales of the Borderlands, they include:
Jared Emerson-Johnson; who was the composer for Telltales The Walking Dead, The Wolf Among Us & Sam & Max Season 1.
Additionally there were a number of artists who's songs made up the soundtrack, they include; Twin Shadow, Shawn Lee, Nino Moshella, Jungle, James Blake, The Rapture, Wilco, Halsey, The Weeknd, Ed Sheeran, Lana Del Ray, Sara Jackson-Holman.
There are many great pieces of music in the game, some of my favorites include; 'Boot Game', 'Caves', 'Dam Top', 'Purple Skag', 'Run Through the Desert', 'Lynchwood Sheriff', 'Jungle Chase'
'Tundra Express'. There were a number of songs that stood out for me; 'To The Top' by Twin Shadow,
'Kiss the Sky' by Shawn Lee & Nino Moshella, 'Busy Earin' by Jungle, 'Piece of the People We Love' by The Rapture. Overall a solid soundtrack with some interesting pieces of music.
Onto the meat, gameplay! Traditionally in Telltale games the action or quick time events are sporadic, the gameplay itself focuses on picking responses to what is being spoken about. In Tales of the Borderlands there is significantly more action sequences which makes things both different & really fun.
One of the features I really liked was Rhys's echo eye which is used to obtain more information on the world around you, more often than not the information give is really funny. One thing that seemed a little pointless was the inventory as it was not like you had a choice in what you could use. Also Fiona collecting money felt unneeded as what you could buy was not that good & did not really make the gameplay anymore enjoyable.
While I enjoyed the latest series of the Walking Dead I felt that Javier & Clementine did not get equal screen time where as with Rhys & Fiona I did not find this to be the case. I enjoyed the dynamic between the characters & it was interesting trying to work out what the real truth was. For me part of the appeal of Borderlands is the dark humor which has been a staple in the series. As with the other games it can be; gross, graphic, foul mouthed, intense, crazy & very funny.
There were two really stand out moments when playing; the first was the gun fight in episode 4, which I have to say hands down is one of my favorite shootouts ever, the second was the end boss fight which was not only fun but also felt a bit like Power Rangers.
There was some interesting gameplay that by & large worked well, it is something I would be interested to see used more in future Telltale Games.
So after 12 plus hours what did I think of my experience in Pandora? Honestly pretty good, I had a few issues when it came to story as I felt occasionally the pacing was off & a few gameplay elements felt a little unneeded but as a whole I really enjoyed it. I would be mildly curious to see if any of the story from Tales of the Borderlands will show up in Borderlands 3. Overall I give this game a monkey thumbs up!
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