Date played: January 11th
Platform: PS4
Session fun rating: 9/10
Tales from the Borderlands is an interactive story game by Telltale, the people behind the excellent The Walking Dead interactive stories.I bought this game during the PSN holiday sale for less than 10$ for all 5 episodes, so that was a pretty good deal, and it had some positive buzz on the internet.
Last night, I played through the first episode. As the title suggests, the game is set in the Borderlands universe, the shooter/RPG hybrid games from Gearbox Software. The hero is Rhys, a man who works for Hyperion, a big evil corporation. He is about to receive a promotion, but when he gets to the meeting with his boss, things go very wrong.
His real boss was thrown out of the airlock into space by Rhys' rival, Vasquez. The smug son of a bitch laughs in Rhys's face, demotes him to janitor and when I started to confront him, he punched me out. Rhys is kind of a cyborg... He's got a robotic arm and an eye implant that lets him scan objects and interact with software. Using this cool eye thing, he gathered some info on a deal Vasquez was trying to complete where he was about to buy a vault key, the legendary loot caves of planet Pandora. To get revenge for his demotion, Rhys teams up with his friends, Vaughn and Yvette, to steal the deal for themselves.
Vaughn is a financial officer for Hyperion, so he steals the money needed for the deal, ten million dollars. Yvette, a procurement officer, secures a shuttle for transport to Pandora, a car and a powerful stun baton for her friends.
There was a confrontation with bandits where Yvette sent down a giant robot to help us fight. This was a cool sequence because it required some quick action, but also some decisions, like the type of weapons the robot uses and which targets he attacked. There's a lot of stuff going on in this game, so I'll skip some details, but long story short, the deal didn't work out and the money is stolen by bandits.
That's when the second main character is introduced, Fiona. She is a professional thief, born and raised on Pandora with her sister Sasha. They were raised by Felix, a criminal with a knack for fixing and hacking electronics. It turns out, the vault key was a fake that had been built by Felix. Sasha became close with a man named August, who has connections to Vasquez. Fiona sells the fake vault key to August, who then sets up the deal with Vasquez. Then Rhys and Vaughn meet with August to buy the key.
The game does some interesting stuff with perspective and story telling. Basically, the whole setup is that Rhys and Fiona are held captive by a mysterious man. They then tell their part of the story to the man. Sometimes, they contradict each other, so I get to see and play both sides of the story. It's also really fucking hilarious in general. The writing is excellent, with good jokes and great timing. It helps that there are some very good voice actors involved, like Troy Baker and Nolan North. Honestly, I even laughed out loud more than once, a feat that is pretty damn rare in video games.
The rest of the episode sees Rhys, Fiona, Vaughn and Sasha team up to get the money back from the bandits. I fought some monsters, charmed some bandits and met Zer0, a vault hunter. This all culminated in a hilarious, over the top sequence in a bandit combat race with motorcycles, cars, buggies and trucks. It felt like a parody of Mad Max or something... In the end, Felix betrayed us and tried to steal the money during the race, but it was booby trapped and exploded. The money is gone, Felix escaped and the team is stranded with no money and no vault key.
At the very end of the episode, with the help of Rhys' bionic eye, they discover a secret room under the arena and find a real, genuine map to a vault.
Platform: PS4
Session fun rating: 9/10
Tales from the Borderlands is an interactive story game by Telltale, the people behind the excellent The Walking Dead interactive stories.I bought this game during the PSN holiday sale for less than 10$ for all 5 episodes, so that was a pretty good deal, and it had some positive buzz on the internet.
Last night, I played through the first episode. As the title suggests, the game is set in the Borderlands universe, the shooter/RPG hybrid games from Gearbox Software. The hero is Rhys, a man who works for Hyperion, a big evil corporation. He is about to receive a promotion, but when he gets to the meeting with his boss, things go very wrong.
His real boss was thrown out of the airlock into space by Rhys' rival, Vasquez. The smug son of a bitch laughs in Rhys's face, demotes him to janitor and when I started to confront him, he punched me out. Rhys is kind of a cyborg... He's got a robotic arm and an eye implant that lets him scan objects and interact with software. Using this cool eye thing, he gathered some info on a deal Vasquez was trying to complete where he was about to buy a vault key, the legendary loot caves of planet Pandora. To get revenge for his demotion, Rhys teams up with his friends, Vaughn and Yvette, to steal the deal for themselves.
Vaughn is a financial officer for Hyperion, so he steals the money needed for the deal, ten million dollars. Yvette, a procurement officer, secures a shuttle for transport to Pandora, a car and a powerful stun baton for her friends.
There was a confrontation with bandits where Yvette sent down a giant robot to help us fight. This was a cool sequence because it required some quick action, but also some decisions, like the type of weapons the robot uses and which targets he attacked. There's a lot of stuff going on in this game, so I'll skip some details, but long story short, the deal didn't work out and the money is stolen by bandits.
That's when the second main character is introduced, Fiona. She is a professional thief, born and raised on Pandora with her sister Sasha. They were raised by Felix, a criminal with a knack for fixing and hacking electronics. It turns out, the vault key was a fake that had been built by Felix. Sasha became close with a man named August, who has connections to Vasquez. Fiona sells the fake vault key to August, who then sets up the deal with Vasquez. Then Rhys and Vaughn meet with August to buy the key.
The game does some interesting stuff with perspective and story telling. Basically, the whole setup is that Rhys and Fiona are held captive by a mysterious man. They then tell their part of the story to the man. Sometimes, they contradict each other, so I get to see and play both sides of the story. It's also really fucking hilarious in general. The writing is excellent, with good jokes and great timing. It helps that there are some very good voice actors involved, like Troy Baker and Nolan North. Honestly, I even laughed out loud more than once, a feat that is pretty damn rare in video games.
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| Fiona fights in the arena, wearing an iconic bandit mask |
At the very end of the episode, with the help of Rhys' bionic eye, they discover a secret room under the arena and find a real, genuine map to a vault.
