As you may have surmised from reading some of my other posts, I’m a huge Borderlands fan. I love the game, I love the tone, I love the stories, and I love the unique world Gearbox has created. So, when Tales from the Borderlands was announced I bit my tongue and hoped for the best. Yeah, feel free to stone me for this, but I really didn’t like Telltale’s The Walking Dead. It didn’t feel like a game to me, and the story-telling felt stilted and unnatural, as if the game were constantly yelling at me: THIS IS THE TIME TO MAKE A CHOICE THAT HAS PROFOUND MEANING. YOU LIKE DECISIONS, AND DECISIONS ARE WHAT MAKE THIS A GAME!
It’s not that I don’t enjoy stories in games. One of my favorite genres is Survival Horror, a highly-narrative genre. Heck, I think I was one of five people that actually really liked the overly-ambitious and narrative-driven Heavy Rain! The quick time events and the more free-form navigation in that game made it feel like I was doing something other than simply riding the rails to the next choice—something I constantly felt in The Walking Dead. All this to say that, when I got Tales from Borderlands, I was really hoping that the Borderlands part of the equation would outweigh the “Tales” part. As you might be able to guess from the tense in that last sentence, that’s not the case.
Sure, all the writing and “charm” from the Borderlands series is there. Comebacks and one liners soar like majestic eagles and the sarcasm meter is off the charts in all the right places. I didn’t get particularly far in my power hour of play (for reasons I’ll discuss below), but even in the initial scenes players are able to lay the seeds of who “their” Rhys will become- a cut-throat looking-out for number one loner or a more compassionate, team-driven member of a partnership. Of course, the game was sure to beat me over the head with the obvious bat, letting me know at key moments and after certain decisions that other characters “will remember that”. Thanks game, thanks. It’s important for me to know when my witty comebacks don’t mean anything, and when NPCs will be sure to never let it go.
And this is really the crux for me: clicking menu options just doesn’t engage me. I may as well be watching a “Let’s Play” for all that I’m invested in the actual action of the game. In the first hour the quick time events seemed few and far between, meaning that most of my time was spent choosing answer choice “C” (when in doubt, it’s always “C”) and trying to care as much about my responses as the other characters seemed to. So, unfortunately, the Borderlands elements (the narrative, characterization, art style, dialogue, etc) ultimately don’t outweigh the Tales elements (the mechanics).
So, I didn’t get very far in Tales from the Borderlands. I want to, because I really enjoy the world and the setting. At the same time, in my hour of game play I had to repeatedly remind myself that I was actually playing a game, as I kept getting bored during cut scenes and then getting startled when a dialogue prompt or quick action popped up- oh hey! There’s something going on here! I had almost forgotten…
If you enjoy Telltale games and haven’t played a Borderlands game, I’d highly recommend this- you’ll get a great introduction to the world and the writing that make Borderlands such a cool place. If, however, you’re already well-versed in this universe, I’d suggest skipping Tales and going back to replay some DLC. My recommendation is Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep (possibly the best DLC in any game, ever).
