A little late to the party, but at NYCC we were able to get a hands on demo of Telltale Game’s newest adventure Tales from the Borderlands, and it simply doesn’t disappoint.
Going in entirely unsure of how Borderlands would work with Telltale’s distinct form of storytelling, I can with the utmost confidence say that it more than works, it excels. Tales from The Borderlands as a dark sci-fi comedy is refreshing departure from the incredibly serious Walking Dead and the noir of Wolf Among Us. It’s tremendously funny, intriguing and perfectly captures the tone and feel of Borderlands.
The opening alone feels distinctly borderlands, even complete with the running over of a skag. Our protagonist Rhys and his pal Vaughn smash onto Pandora, decimating a bandit in the process and travel to a nearby bandit town.
We relentlessly mocked a bandit with a greasy face who turned out to be their leader that prompted Rhys to deploy a Hyperion Loader. What follows is a thrilling and highly comical action sequence where you control the Loader to some extent and massacre every bandit in town. Selecting targets and riddling them with bullets, rockets and sass has never been so much fun. The Loader delivers a constant commentary that gets progressively funnier and more referential as it’s slowly damaged by gunfire.
As the whole grease face fiasco comes to a close Rhys and Vaughn find themselves in a bizarre museum/house of oddities. You wonder through and experience some genuinely creepy displays. The creepiest of all is the Hunter S. Thompson proprietor, who will catch you way off guard, trust me.
A complicated series of events eventually leads us to a man walking away with the vault key and two choices become available; take the vault key by force or blow his mind. We chose ‘blow his mind’ expecting his head to explode in some manner. What happens is one of the most glorious things we’ve ever experienced, we were literally howling with laughter. I won’t dare spoil it, you’ll have to play it to find out.
The final sequence delivers a surprisingly intriguing twist. What we played was actually Rhys relaying the story to Fiona and a mysterious gas mask wearing individual, who appears to be holding the two hostage.
Fiona buts in, telling Rhys that he’s lying and that she was there. We then took control of Fiona and were given four options of what actually happened, whichever you pick becomes a reality. We picked ‘A Vault Hunter showed up’ and Zero from Borderlands 2 exploded into the scene ending our demo.
We went in skeptical and left true believers. Tales from The Borderlands is an exceptionally funny romp that should be on Telltale and Borderlands fans radar. Hell, even if you’ve never played a Telltale or Borderlands game I still whole-heartedly recommend Tales from The Borderlands.
It’ll premiere later this fall (not this month) and will be available on consoles, PC/Mac, mobile, tablet, and more – all the same content and experience. Owners of Tales from the Borderlands will also unlock content in Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel!