Home Game Reviews New Tales from the Borderlands: A Decent Game, but not Bringing Anything...

New Tales from the Borderlands: A Decent Game, but not Bringing Anything New or Refreshing

New Tales from the Borderlands Review

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New Tales from the Borderlands Feature Picture
New Tales from the Borderlands Feature Picture

Estimated reading time: 10 minutes

Story-driven Adventure, Familiar but Stale

Playing Telltale Games’ story-driven adventure games is akin to reading a book, as you as the player, are the driver of the action in a very small area and instead are led by the hand with the artificial vision that your decisions can have a greater impact on the unfolding story. In 2014, the studio released the episodic narrative Tales from the Borderlands in partnership with Gearbox, which has become one of its most successful brands. Gearbox has then looked to continue in its footsteps under its own banner. And if we’ve likened playing Telltale games to reading books, flicking through New Tales from the Borderlands will make you feel like a drowsy father trying to read a story to his kids after a twelve-hour shift while holding his eyelids with all his might.

Humor: Love it or Hate it

Humor is like fast food. You don’t immediately grab your stomach after everyone, but when you do, it’s not without a violent anal discharge. Gearbox has made no secret from the start that their story doesn’t expand on the original series. Instead, it takes it as a springboard for its own narrative, which borrows themes from the main backbone of the Borderlands brand, super absurd and violent loot-looting action. It is, therefore, surprising that it puts the importance of story and narrative on the back burner, instead disingenuously relying on wit and situational humor built around the interactions between the trio of main characters and adjacent supporting characters. That decision takes balls, especially when the humor is a fiercely subjective affair.

You can like fart jokes, black humor, confrontational innuendo, situational humor, or just good old-fashioned dad jokes. In any case, you will get attempts at hilarity in spades, unfortunately often delivered in a maximum force style. Ironically, however, the funniest motif lies beneath the story’s surface and its ironic presentation through the main characters. The play begins on Atlas’ space station, where the plot opens through the eyes of Anu, a scientist who is a bit stuck in her career path. And where is the joke? Anu is anti-violence, and her main scientific focus is instead the preservation of life, which, if you’ve played at least one episode of Borderlands, is very funny because we all know that life is worth a jar of pickles in this game world, and where violence is also used for courtship.

Characters That Outshine the Story

After a small story section, Anu arrives on the planet Promethea, which is simultaneously occupied by the weapons giant Tediore and resembles an average slum in South America. Here, Anu is reunited with her brother Octavio and the ice cream maker Fran. The archetypal characters then serve as a typical binder for the narrative, with Anu representing the rational and worthy character, while Octavio represents the pompous and verbose smart-ass. And Fran? The one who comes between the siblings is the tough guy who balances both of the extremes mentioned above. Much more enjoyable than are the supporting characters, and the absolute icon overshadowing the protagonists is, for example, the hired robot, aka killbot, LOU13, who uses his cool logic to comment on situations, or the constantly teleporting TIMM-E, who serves as a sort of more balanced version of the iconic Claptrap.

The Plot Falls Flat

However, humor is also abused as filler, creating situations that would put even the kitschiest sitcoms today to shame. Watching 5 minutes of a scene in which Anu and Octavio argue about absolutely minor things unrelated to the narrative while marching around the set screaming while you squeeze in one quick time event after another is, unfortunately, the writers’ standard vision of humor. Ironically, then, the funniest situations come entirely from the side and from secondary characters. The joke here is intentionally meant to be the vehicle for the plot, but it’s the story and its delivery that drag New Tales from the Borderlands down the most. For one thing, though there was never much talking in Borderlands, the grandiose goals of vault exploration were always served up on a silver platter by the game, and you knew that even as a gun-toting sadist you were hurtling towards an epic conclusion.

Weak Decision Making and Lack of Narrative Depth

In the case of the new game, you can’t talk about epic at all, as any hints of a deeper story are blocked by the characters’ momentary needs, such as trying to build their own company, making big bucks, finding corpses for scientific purposes, and… you can probably understand that the ratio of story-relevant events to supporting ones is desperately uneven, as is the quality of the conclusion itself. And what’s the most tragic part of all this? The main thing a game of this genre should be able to do is just tell a story and sell it to the player. The age-old question of the impact of player decisions on future events in the game is then also not addressed with any significant grace by the developers, as they apply the most widely used model to the game, giving you the illusion of decisions. In reality, your choices have little meaning, though they often result in humorous situations. A wrong decision, for example, can cause you to lose a character, which, of course, ends the game instantly, and you return to your saved position.

Gameplay Mechanics: Some New Ideas, but Little Impact

Both Anu and Octavio use unique gadgets when dealing with situations that, while they don’t bring a dizzying amount of variability, help separate the characters beyond their personalities. Anu relies on her smart glasses to identify important objects that have been carried into the environment, and Octavio, on the other hand, can contact characters and use smart apps with his wristband. Fran then doesn’t control you directly most of the time, but her space chair contains some very cool features, which you’ll pick up right from the start of the game anyway.

As a result, you’ll recognize most of the choices you make by the tone with which the other characters talk to you and how they react to your decisions rather than the functional branches of the narrative. It’s essentially the same principle that Telltale’s games have used. Don’t imagine titles like Until Dawn The Dark Pictures Anthology being built on radical twists. However, dialogue will often result in a comical scene, and it would be foolish to say that all decisions are meaningless. Especially when LOU13 gives your party a skateboard rating. Yes, skateboards. Don’t ask why. However, putting aside the story and narrative, the other often tricky point of debate is then the gameplay itself and the overall interactivity of the player with the world around them. It’s logical that the genre tends to rely more on cutscenes and dialogue, but New Tales from the Borderlands keeps players at bay even more than we’re used to.

Pacing Problems and the Struggle to Stay Engaged

A rigid division is that 80% of the game is dialogue and debates between characters, 10% is appropriated by the exploration parts where you directly control the characters and the rest is taken care of by quick time events and various minigames. Furthermore, the scenarios where you have to explore the environment are also minimal and usually boil down to a tiny room where you need to identify and find suitable objects, which can be done through trial and error. However, thanks to a few secondary mechanisms, the developers could afford to include a few optional activities and hidden rewards in the levels, making it intrinsically enjoyable to pay attention to even the tiny details.

The developers are trying to innovate the stale adventure game genre, which should be appreciated, although the importance of the new mechanisms is questionable. First of all, there is an economy at play! By exploring the environment and making certain decisions, you will earn money, which can then be invested in buying new skins for your characters and gadgets. This is a perfectly removable element that, if it wasn’t in the game, you’d practically not know the difference, as new costumes have no functional effect on the game. Secondly, in the game, you will find figurines of iconic characters from the series, which can then be used in special combat minigames based on quick time events, which the game is full of, and you use them to even complete absolutely banal actions.

Minigames and Side Mechanisms: Unnecessary but Enjoyable

Last but not least, you’ll come across a number of minigames involving, for example, hacking with the Octavia smartwatch. It’s one of those situations that dilutes the otherwise stale and often non-existent gameplay at least a little. None of these rather unusual mechanisms for the genre are outright bad, but they are entirely expendable. It almost seems as if one of the developers had a folder of broken prototypes lying on a disc that the team decided to use in the final product. The enthusiasm graph takes the form of a roller coaster ride when playing, where at times you’re very excited and screaming with joy, but then at other times, you’re just casting your eyes down to not see what’s coming next.

Conclusion

The graphics, sound design, and overall technical presentation are superb then, and New Tales from the Borderlands beautifully demonstrates how nicely an otherwise traditional genre can be portrayed audiovisually. The combination of a specific visual style, great dubbing, and soundtrack will bring tears to players’ eyes, especially when thinking about what Telltale Games’ otherwise brilliantly narrated games might look like today. However, the overall rigidity of the controls, gameplay mechanics, and story put the sequel on the back burner, and in many ways, unfortunately, they can’t match the other Borderlands, even those over a decade old. Still, this is a game worth playing, at least for Borderlands fans, if nothing else.

About the Game

Title: New Tales from the Borderlands
Type of Game: Adventure, Interactive Story
Developer: Gearbox Software
Publisher: 2K Games
Released: October 21, 2022
Platforms Available: PC, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch
Platform Reviewed: PlayStation 5
Level of Maturity: Mature 17+

Where to Buy New Tales from the Borderlands

Steam (PC): Available for $39.99. You can purchase it directly from Steam.
Epic Games Store (PC): Available for $39.99. Purchase it from the Epic Games Store.
Xbox Store (Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One): Available for $39.99. Check it out on the Xbox Store.
PlayStation Store (PS5, PS4): Available for $39.99. You can find it on the PlayStation Store.
Nintendo Shop (Switch): Available for $39.99(Currently on sale for $19.99). Purchase it from the Nintendo Shop.
Official Page: Visit the official New Tales from the Borderlands page for more information.
Subreddit: Join the discussion on the Borderlands Subreddit.

REVIEW OVERVIEW
New Tales from the Borderlands verdict:
75 %
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new-tales-from-the-borderlands-a-decent-game-but-not-bringing-anything-new-or-refreshingNew Tales from the Borderlands brings back the beloved style of its predecessor, with humor and choice-based gameplay at its core. It’s a solid entry for fans of the Borderlands universe but may fall short of the high expectations set by the original Tales from the Borderlands. Some character developments feel underwhelming, and the pacing can drag at times. Still, for those who enjoy the signature chaotic charm of the series, it's worth experiencing.

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