Tales From the Borderlands

Genre: Graphic Adventure / Visual Novel

Players: 1

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Review:

(Note: This game is included in New Tales From the Borderlands: Deluxe Edition, along with New Tales From the Borderlands. It is also included in Borderlands Collection: Pandora’s Box, along with Borderlands: Game of the Year Edition, Borderlands 2, Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, Borderlands 3 Ultimate Edition, and New Tales From the Borderlands.)

Tales From the Borderlands is a game that combines Graphic Adventure and Visual Novel elements, blending them together with real-time “quick time” elements much in the same way as other games we’ve seen from Telltale Games, such as The Walking Dead and Batman: The Telltale Series. This game was originally released in episodic format starting in 2014 until almost a full year later in 2015, with its original platforms including PC, mobile devices, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One. These episodes were collected together and brought to Nintendo Switch in 2021.

The story of Tales From the Borderlands takes place shortly after the end of Borderlands 2, and while it primarily follows the story of two new characters, Rhys and Fiona, it may help to understand the world of the game, its current events, and major players if you have first played through the three games in Borderlands Legendary Collection.

Without spoiling those games, I will say that after the events at the end of Borderlands 2, one of the major corporate entities with machinations for the planet of the series’ setting, Pandora, suddenly finds itself with something of a power vacuum, a vacuum Rhys hopes to take advantage of, while Fiona is a local con artist also looking to profit off of the situation. However, as tends to happen in these sorts of situations, plans end up not working out cleanly for either of the pair, and both are forced to grudgingly work together.

The characters and story are absolutely superb here, doing a great job of maintaining the Borderland series’ excellent tone and atmosphere, in a setting where life is cheap and seemingly everyone is only looking out for themselves, further heightened by the game’s protagonists telling the story despite very clearly being unreliable narrators. It helps that this game features absolutely stellar voice acting, with the series’ returning characters reprising their roles, and with new characters voiced by top-tier talent like Troy Baker, Laura Bailey, Nolan North, Patrick Warburton, Ashley Johnson, and Phil LaMarr.

The rest of the presentation here is similarly excellent, with this game maintaining the same sort of gritty cel-shaded look the Borderlands series has come to be known for. Good stuff, all-around!

As for the gameplay, this is pretty standard stuff for a Telltale game, and that’s both a good thing and a bad thing. Once again, you have conversation trees where your choices often have an impact on the plot, and where players will be forced to weigh the practical and ethical against one another. And once again, you have “quick time” events that are… honestly at this point more of a frustration than anything, forcing players to react to actions in real-time by moving a direction on the analog stick or pressing a button, or lining up a target. If I could only make one change to this game, it would be to just remove these moments completely, as they’re often annoying “miss it and you have to start over” moments that can be far too frustrating.

Tales From the Borderlands exemplifies the issue that Telltale Games don’t seem to have learned what doesn’t work from their earlier games, but despite this it still makes for an incredibly well-told story that’s an absolute must for any fans of the Borderlands franchise, and still well worth checking out even if you’re just looking for a fun well-told sci-fi adventure story.

tl;dr – Tales From the Borderlands is a game that combines Graphic Adventure and Visual Novel elements that tells a tale set after the events of Borderlands 2. The characters, story, voice acting, and presentation here are all outstanding, and the only real issue is the use of tired “quick time events” that frustrate more than they add to the game. However, even with this annoyance, Tales From the Borderland is still an outstanding well-told interactive story that’s highly recommended for fans of sci-fi, and an absolute must for fans of the Borderlands franchise.

Grade: B+

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