Wrapping up its episodic launch in 2015, Tales from the Borderlands was an actual triumph for Telltale Games because it was an excellent mix of the developer’s cinematic stylings with the humor that made its earlier point-and-click adventures shine. While it nonetheless had Borderlands‘ signature ridiculousness — such as memey humor and over-the-top violence — it was anchored by a strong script and stellar characters that elevated its story beyond the often-trite source material. Seven years later, Telltale has died and been resurrected and Borderlands is still going strong with an upcoming movie and some spin-offs, one of which is a follow-up to the 2015 adventure game plainly titled New Tales From The Borderlands. However, this sequel sadly doesn’t reside as much as the excessive bar its predecessor set.
New Tales stumbles out the gate in two methods: its format and first “episode.” The “episodes” are extra like chapters that abruptly cease the motion and are vestiges of the previous since this sport was launched unexpectedly and not over a interval of months. Regardless of its classification, its debut chapter begins weakly and does little to make you care about its predominant solid. Adopted siblings Anu and Octavio fall into commonplace archetypes — Anu is an uptight scientist whereas her brother is all avenue smarts and obsessive about turning into well-known — and they’re joined by Fran, an annoyingly violent frozen yogurt retailer proprietor that appears terminally attractive for everybody she meets.
There are some makes an attempt at exploring every character’s previous trauma, however the writing isn’t adept sufficient to do something significant with the themes of self-worth and connection that the narrative circles round. Due to a scarcity of appeal and personalities which are by no means absolutely fleshed out, these hole characters are a far cry from the unique’s charming trio of Rhys, Fiona, and Vaughn. The solely memorable character is L0U13, voiced by Temapare Hodson, who’s a robotic murderer that finally has a disaster of consciousness and supplies the one efficient levity in a script filled with missed jokes. The serviceable story itself is somewhat tame, too, primarily as a result of it’s being pulled alongside by a shallow crew.
Given Gearbox’s experience in frenetic shooters, there was a chance for the sequel to interrupt away a bit from Telltale’s system, which had begun getting stale when the studio collapsed in 2018. Instead, Gearbox is following that established blueprint, not bothering to attempt to innovate or freshen it up — as an alternative hoping that particular form of style fatigue has simply subsided up to now 4 years. From the button presses that decide dialogue to the quick-time occasions that make up its motion, this very a lot seems like a middling Telltale sport that was unearthed and marketed as one thing new.
The solely modifications to this well-trodden system are damaging ones. There’s a definite lack of “They will remember that” prompts after vital selections, making it obscure how character bonds are developed. There are additionally annoying quick-time occasion hints that provide you with a warning to once they’re about to happen, which takes out all of the shock and solely clutters up the display. And regardless that these can fortunately be turned off, they’re made even sillier by the truth that lacking many QTEs doesn’t even matter as the identical outcomes nonetheless appear to play out on-screen regardless.
A few minigames have additionally been added into the combo, akin to Octavio utilizing his jailbroken cellphone to hack into varied machines and Anu smacking her customized gun to make it work (like The Fonz did in Happy Days however decidedly much less cool). These are principally simply time wasters, although, as there’s nothing to them — the hacking particularly seems like a remnant from the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 period — and at the least the smacking is humorous the primary time you do it. Additionally, there are small battles between miniature figures that may be discovered within the few open environments as collectibles. They sound high-quality, however these are far too easy because you simply mash the assault button and then swipe in instructions to dodge assaults in fairly forgiving QTEs, so these wind up being painfully uninteresting somewhat than a neat addition.
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While the shortcomings are obvious, the sport advantages from how loads of the fatigue that burdened Telltale’s later efforts has evaporated within the years since. There are just a few of some of these video games nonetheless round, akin to Supermassive Games’ horror-themed ones, but it surely was genuinely nice to play one which had extra colourful characters and didn’t revolve round always murdering members of the solid. There’s nonetheless worth to strolling round an setting, chatting with different characters, and fixing small puzzles. That’s a superb signal for the upcoming The Wolf Among Us sequel, as New Tales from the Borderlands‘ biggest issues are the dull writing and unremarkable story rather than the framework.
New Tales from the Borderlands would be easier to swallow if it wasn’t attempting to observe up the most effective cinematic journey video games ever made. Instead, we get a compelled episodic construction to a sport that isn’t episodic, a solid of characters which are extra attention-grabbing on paper than they’re in execution, and a narrative that finally lacks stakes since there’s no private funding in what occurs to a few dangerous those who aren’t all that likable. This is Gearbox doing its greatest imitation of Telltale’s system and developing brief with little to no concepts on methods to modernize the system seven years later.
SCORE: 5.5/10
As ComingSoon’s overview coverage explains, a rating of 5 equates to “Mediocre.” The positives and negatives wind up negating one another, making it a wash.
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