New Tales from the Borderlands – Review

Telltale Games, a company whose games were pioneers of the interactive fiction genre, suddenly ceased operations four years ago. Multiple studios (including one also called Telltale Games) are now attempting to continue the success of Telltale’s games by creating sequels to some of the games that made the studio famous. New Tales from the Borderlands, the sequel to the story-driven Borderlands spinoff that came out between November 2014 and October 2015, is the first of these games to be released. The original Tales from the Borderlands was not Telltale’s most popular game, but it was one of the company’s best thanks to its clever comedic writing and memorable cast of characters. As a result, Gearbox Montreal is making its own attempt to keep the series going.

While most of the characters in New Tales from the Borderlands are new, some of the same Telltale developers who worked on the first game returned to help create the sequel. The final product is a safe but deserving follow-up to one of Telltale’s finest games.

New Tales from the Borderlands focuses on three new characters, though some familiar faces like Rhys make cameo appearances. Anu, a scientist working for the Atlas, is attempting to create a device that can harness a Siren’s abilities. Octavio, her brother, is constantly frustrated by his inability to make a fortune on Promethea’s surface. And Fran, the owner of the frozen yoghurt shop, is an angry woman who is just trying to make ends meet. All of the voice actors who bring these characters to life do a fantastic job, and their designs and eccentric personalities mesh perfectly with Borderlands’ main cast.

The story begins with Anu, like in the first Tales from the Borderlands, on the run from the large corporation where she works. Unlike The Force Awakens, in which almost the entire plot was a rip-off of the original, there is no such thing here. For instance, when the Atlas space station is attacked by the invading forces of the rival company Tediore, Anu is fired rather than demoted and must flee the planet. Anu then teams up with Octavio and Fran, discovers a healing crystal in a Vault, and sets out to use it to save the world and bring down Tediore.

It’s a good story that explores themes like sibling rivalry, the destructive nature of corporations, and the motivations of those who choose to do the right thing. The third of the game’s five chapters, as is typical of Telltale games, is a slog through the game’s typical middle section, where the characters and story essentially just stand still. However, the final few chapters feature a plethora of excellent character and story beats that more than make up for it, and this time we get the entire game at once as opposed to being doled out in instalments. Characters like Anu, Octavio, and Fran kept me interested despite the occasional clunker of a joke they’d drop.

Even though shooting has been replaced by narrative choice, this is still a Borderlands game at heart, so expect plenty of blood and profanity. I found that the subtler jokes were the ones that made me laugh the most, but I was never put off playing due to poor writing. New Tales from the Borderlands is guaranteed to make you laugh unless you despise the humour of the Borderlands, which is possible.

By shifting its focus to an entirely new cast of characters and failing to provide any real sequel to the first book in the series, New Tales from the Borderlands ran the risk of killing off the entire series. In either a first-person shooter or a narrative adventure game, Gearbox Montreal thankfully demonstrates that there is still a wealth of interesting and original stories to be told in the Borderlands universe.

The games from Telltale had become stagnant in their formula by the time the company shut down in 2018. Its games switch between cinematic confrontations and conversations with multiple choice questions, quick-time events, and explorable mini-worlds reminiscent of adventure games. There isn’t a lot of innovation in New Tales From the Borderlands. It actually downplays a lot of the gameplay. Some of the walking-around sections are even more simplistic than those in Telltale’s earlier games, with only a few obvious object interactions and button presses required to progress.

Minigames involving hacking and gunplay can even be completely ignored. Figurine duels in the Vaultlanders duelling minigame are an attempt to add variety to the gameplay, but they really just boil down to pressing a button and dodging when a quick-time event appears. The developers of New Tales from the Borderlands took no gameplay chances in order to maximise the “narrative” component of Telltale’s narrative adventure formula. If you’ve played a lot of games like this, you may find it to be underwhelming and repetitive because it doesn’t do anything new or exciting with the narrative adventure genre. If these Telltale successors hope to maintain their popularity and draw in new players, they will need to enhance this particular aspect.

Thankfully, it performs its intended function well. Cinematically, Tales of the Borderlands is on par with the standards of a high-quality television show or film, with inventive shots chosen to highlight key moments in the story. Using Unreal Engine 4 instead of the previous engine, Telltale’s infamous technical problems should no longer be an issue. The games made with Telltale Games’ proprietary Telltale Tool game engine were janky, despite the company’s fantastic storytelling. Its games have always had a clunkier feel, with rough animation and jitteriness when transitioning between shots. That’s been smoothed out thanks to Gearbox Montreal’s use of a game engine popular among moviemakers.

The visuals of New Tales from the Borderlands are identical to those of Borderlands 3, but the gameplay is completely different. That’s fine with me because glitches are one aspect of Telltale’s legacy I’m happy to forget.

Outside of quick-time events, the actual gameplay in this game is rather unremarkable and doesn’t do much to advance the genre. Still, I’d recommend New Tales from the Borderlands to fans of the original and those yearning for a very traditional Telltale-like experience because of its entertaining writing, strong characters and performances, and a different game engine that enables more seamless cinematography. New Tales from the Borderlands has set a high bar, and I hope that its successors, such as Star Trek: Resurgence, The Wolf Among Us 2, and The Expanse: A Telltale Series, can meet or exceed it.