Telltale Hits Again With ‘Tales From the Borderlands’

This year, Thanksgiving week brought us more than the usual holiday feasting, stampedes of shopaholics and pre-winter snowstorms in the Northeast — the first episode of Telltale Games‘ newest project Tales from the Borderlands went live!

With praise and awards from all over for The Wolf Among Us and The Walking Dead, I had high expectations going into my first Telltale experience, and it did NOT disappoint! So here are five reasons you should check out Tales From the Borderlands:

1) It’s an interactive movie!

For those of you not familiar with the company, Telltale Games specializes in creating games that act more like movies. Most of what happens will already be scripted, but as the player you get to interact with the story as it unfolds. Sometimes it prompts you with several responses you can give during a conversation. In combat scenes, it may be your responsibility to dodge an attack, jump a ledge or hit that button before something bad happens! The wrong choice or not reacting in time can still result in “Game Over.”

2) The game caters to your decisions

The most exciting part about these interactive movies is that the story evolves based on what you do. Do I protect my best friend at all costs or sell him out for my own profit? Choose wisely, because he’ll remember what you did. The overall story adapts to your decisions as you go, so you can come back for a second run and end up with a completely different ending.

3) It’s a story of two “nobodies”

Unlike traditional Borderlands games involving legendary Vault Hunters, Tales takes you through the story of two much smaller fish in the pond.

Rhys is a regular employee of the Hyperion company, fighting his way up the corporate ladder. His long-awaited promotion is snatched from under his nose. A little bit of hacking and eavesdropping persuades Rhys to sneak his way off of Helios (Hyperion’s orbiting spaceship) and onto the planet of Pandora in hopes of getting the recognition he (allegedly) deserves.

Fiona is a simple (yet stylish) con artist just trying to get by on Pandora. Along with her mentor Felix and little sister Sasha, Fiona ends up crossing paths with Rhys and ultimately gets both of them into a lot of trouble.

4) Tales ties right into trilogy lore…

Tales builds itself seamlessly onto the lore of the Borderlands series. Having played through the other titles, I felt right at home with the environment, characters and plot. This story begins a short time after the events of Borderlands 2, and both Rhys and Fiona are trying their best to take advantage of the opportunities presented from those events.

Better yet, there are plenty of references and inclusions of characters known from the trilogy. To fend off death by bandits, Rhys and Vaughn summon their own Loader bot from Helios to protect them. During a museum scene, several characters from previous games are shown as taxidermy victims, and even Shade (pictured left) makes a fun little cameo.

5) …but you don’t need to know the lore!

Although Tales is founded on three games’ worth of narrative, the story can be experienced and enjoyed independent from how much of the lore you know. Most of the characters are unique to this game, and even those who come from previous titles are used in a fresh, present-day perspective. Zer0, a Vault Hunter and playable character from Borderlands 2, finds his place in the story without expecting you to know anything about his past or intruding on Rhys and Fiona’s development. He’s just an assassin doing assassin things!

Telltale Games does an amazing job of putting you in the driver’s seat of a TV series. Tales from the Borderlands will appeal to anyone who enjoys action and comedy, and if you have any experience in the Borderlands universe, you get to see how Pandora keeps on spinning.

Tales is available on Steam, both past and current generations of Xbox and PlayStation, and PS Vita.