As the series comes to an end, can we consider it a tale worth telling?
Over the last 11 years, Telltale Games has made a name for itself by producing pointand-click adventure games that adhere to many of the traditions of this genre. The episodic nature of these games differs from self-contained adventures of old, but the puzzle solving element is the same, especially in the titles that resurrect names like Sam & Max and Tales of Monkey Island. You find objects, talk to people and try to work out what’s required from you to progress. Sometimes, a walkthrough is your only hope.
But there’s also another side to this company’s output: a type of point-and-click game that’s oddly free of puzzles. Rather than perplexing players with brainteasers, games like The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us focus purely on the theme of choice. You choose what your characters say to each other and what actions they take, but there are no wrong choices. In fact, the only thing you can do incorrectly is to fail the frequent quick-time events, which normally results in your death, and the a reload from the last checkpoint.
Tales from the Borderlands is one of these types of game. Based on the universe from the popular Gearbox-developed Borderlands FPS series, it introduces a whole cast of new characters – although a few familiar faces do show up, with villain Handsome Jack being a particularly prominent player.
As you’d expect from this type of Telltale Games title, there’s not really any gameplay to speak of. Yes, you do get to click on items and pick things up, and the aforementioned quick-time events give you something resembling action, but there’s never much of a challenge. No, the things that keeps you playing are the story and the characters.
In this case, you take control of Fiona, a con artist from the lawless planet Pandora, and Rhys, a corporate pen-pusher working on a space station owned by the ruthless Hyperion company. These two complete strangers find themselves thrown together (along with a selection of their friends and family) in a race against time, as they go in search of a Vault Key. As fans of the Borderlands games will know, these are highly prized artifacts, which open alien ‘Vaults’ on Pandora, full of mystery and unimaginable riches.
The way plot the unfolds is nicely paced, and it ramps up the intrigue towards the end of each part of the series (thankfully, though, now it’s over, you don’t need to wait months to find out what happens next). However, what really makes Tales from the Borderlands shine is the excellent performances of the cast. Among them are Troy Baker (Rhys), a man who never seems to stop working, and whose videogame CV includes voice work in the Call of Duty games, Far Cry 4, Mass Effect 3 and many, many other award winning titles. He and the rest of the cast do a fantastic job, but for us the real highlight is Patrick Warburton, as Rhys’s pompous and cruel boss. As well as a voice artist, he’s also a movie and TV actor, and if you don’t recognise his name, we’re willing to bet you’ll know his voice.
The inclusion of Patrick Warburton also points to the kind of game that Tales from the Borderland is: yes, you care about the characters, but it’s primarily a comedy. Indeed, it couldn’t really have been anything else, considering its source material. And yet there is some emotional depth here too, and by the time you come to the end of the fifth and final episode (The Vault of the Traveler), you’ll be genuinely sad it’s over. Anthony Enticknap
Interactive storytelling at its best.