Tales from the Borderlands is another game developed by Telltale Games in their line of Episode Point-and-click adventure games, following in the steps of The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us. With the companies rise to popularity of late they have taken upon themselves to create several different games within the same time span, with a Minecraft Telltale game being announced just recently people have seen a link to this and the quality of rushed products. Is Tales from the Borderlands affected by the increase in workload?
Story
This is a review of Episode 4, for episode 3 go here
Following on from the gang’s abduction by Vallory and August, Rhys and Fiona are now working under her in return for their life. Still on the hunt for Gortys’ pieces to upgrade the robot the party are still on their way to Hyperion itself in space. It is revealed to both Vallory and the party that Gortys was meant to summon the vault and hold it in place, which she agrees to do if Vallory agrees not to hurt Rhys and co.
With August and other familiar faces in toe the party again split off into parties of Rhys plus bad guys and Fiona plus bad guys. Rhys is tasked with getting Vasquez’s body from the previous episode to scan in his skin and body to get a new “skin” for himself to disguise as. Fiona is tasked with getting a spaceship capable of getting to Hyperion and with that she heads for Scooter’s catch-a-ride shop.
Playing through the fourth episode took around 2hours, the next time it was around 1 on my alternate run of the game and its choices.
Gameplay
The gameplay in this episode felt as if it slowed down a lot more, with talking between characters and sequence changes taking a major part of the time up. Past choices come up more here, with a few slip ups and plot holes thrown in for good measure, so I hope you chose well. More costume changes are ahead for the female characters as well as some more backstory from Jack seeping out.
There was more of a focus on quick time events and button mashing in this episode, with running away, fighting and activating machines. Though a lot of it is in a light-heartened manner, with a funny sequence near the end just for Rhys to enjoy. Some trivia was thrown in for fans of the series but I felt a lot of it came down more to the character’s knowledge and not the players which was kind of disheartening as I could have aced some of the questions thrown at me.
Overall Thoughts and Feelings
Being the penultimate episode it was always going to leading up to the final episode, so there was quite a few questions being left open here and there with some loose ends getting cut off as not to slow down the last episode. I felt some parts of the episode were rushed along so that the party were on the Hyperion satellite in the time left in the episode, whereas time on the satellite itself was drawn out in comparison. Since arriving it gave so many questions and no one was inclined to fill us in as a player, only hinting at what happened in the background.
Overall, Tales From The Borderlands Episode 3 gets a 3.5/5, the game still stands up with the rest of the episodes but the overall feel of the episode takes a dip from previous releases. Character knowledge took precedence over your own, silly/comedic parts broke up action a bit too much while over comedic parts went over extremely well. Hopefully if all choices are made precedent in the final episode and answers are given then the series will have been worth it.
Disclaimer:All scores given within our reviews are based on the artist’s personal opinion; this should in no way impede your decision to purchase the game.
