There is an argument that 2014’s Tales from the Borderlands is actually the best game in the Borderlands series. Well wait. Please do not enter angry comments yet. please listen.
Sometimes you just want a video game with a capital V capital letter where you just have to run, jump, shoot, loot, etc. The right Borderlands game is for you to choose and play on that front. It’s a safe option. But it’s hard to ignore that there’s a somewhat inverse relationship between the tightness of gameplay and the quality of writing in this franchise.
Within their respective genres, Tales is probably the most successful game in the series, considering what they’re trying to do: fun, interesting stories, likable characters, and sometimes downright moving. No one was more surprised than us about Telltale Borderlands game? Madness! But it worked.
Fast forward eight years and here we are with New Tales From The Borderlands. Not a sequel to Telltale’s original, but an alternate reality version of the same idea. What would have happened in 2014 if instead of partnering with Telltale in its heyday to make a more story-driven game in the Borderlands franchise, Gearbox had made it themselves? .and it is garbage.
It takes place after Borderlands 3, but you don’t need any knowledge of previous Borderlands games to understand the story. New Tales has his three playable characters that you can control at different points in your 10-hour adventure.
Anu is a smart but anxious scientist and a pacifist who inexplicably works for an arms manufacturer. Frozen He is a yogurt seller and has a hoverchair, Fran, who has anger management problems. And then there’s Octavio, the hipster idiot introduced to us in a cutscene. He blames the pizza vendor for his “problematic” exaggerated Italian accent. It’s as disgusting as it sounds.
The three heroes aren’t much more than characters, as they’re little more than vague gags to follow. Anu, for example, is the smartest person in the gang to the point where he has to be an idiot to make a joke. One minute she’s solving a complex physics problem, the next she doesn’t know how a door handle works. And that’s the punch line. smile.
Fran and Octavio are similarly troubled. Fran’s entire character is based around talking about frozen yogurt, creepily offering people mouth-to-mouth when it’s not clearly necessary, and beating people up hard. Octavio does the dumbest thing imaginable in every situation to stretch the story out a little longer. Forget what it looks like. They get about 10 minutes out of that ginger.
A side character is a mixed bag. Having moral woes about how a robotic assassin makes a living, he’s probably the most balanced and interesting character in the game. There is a woman who often yells at me. She has a talking gun that says “bang!” every time you shoot. Most of the side characters disappear halfway through the game, reappearing in the final chapter, or simply go nowhere.
Rhys from the original Tales from the Borderlands has a small role in the first chapter. If you think what they did to him in Borderlands 3 was a slap in the face to fans of Telltale games, this won’t make you feel… better. New Tales from the Borderlands isn’t content with just ruining its own character, it retroactively ruins the original Tales by turning the protagonist into another Borderlands Gag™. Thank you.
Sometimes there are stories that need to be told in between silly comedy routines. It contains a magical rock that has powers to help humanity, but there are bad guys who want to use it for their own nefarious purposes. There are long, boring sections where nothing remotely interesting happens to move the story forward.
By the final chapter, we didn’t care anymore. None of the growth felt earned or deserved. And as a final insult, when we got to the ending, we were told that one of the main characters had died off-screen, with no explanation as to how or why. It was like flying to a planet and crashing to death. simpsonsTotal nonsense.
Everything about New Tales feels like a poor version of the original, even the music. The first game featured a licensed soundtrack that was used professionally at times. There’s a cheesy montage scene where the gang get to know each other, backed by an understated, almost Dream of His pop track, then a quieter, more introspective scene backed by a lighthearted, upbeat tune.
In terms of gameplay, it’s mostly walking around, solving very simple puzzles, talking to people, and making choices. There are also minigames like hacking and fixing, but these are borderline impossible to fail, so I don’t know why they exist. is similarly forgiving, and can even press the wrong button and then try again until it’s correct.
One such simple event (so ridiculous it needs to be mentioned) involves a character fighting a shark. But instead of watching them fight the sharks, we see Octavio commenting on how the fight was going while button prompts pop up on the screen. , I don’t even know if you meant it as a joke.
I’m not sure if the devs just didn’t bother animating the fight with the shark, or if this whole thing is some kind of subversive commentary on the futility of quicktime events that don’t land, Whatever the reason, let your old companion push square Get free advice worth $5. If you’re doing shark fighting, show me shark fighting. Everyone wants to see shark fights. it’s a f******** shark fight!
Conclusion
I can hardly recall an occasion where I’ve been more disappointed by a sequel than New Tales from the Borderlands. We wanted to love this. We would have accepted to like it. but we Hate this game. It’s a 10-hour narrative adventure that makes him feel four times longer than it needs to, with terrifying characters and gruesome, relentlessly funny jokes. It’s only success to say that this was a spectacular misfire and a rare example of a sequel bad enough to ruin the original.