Tales From The Borderlands

Tales from the Borderlands is arguably Telltale Games' finest hour and easily one of the very best choice-driven narrative adventures available on any system. This is ten glorious hours' worth of top-notch entertainment with a world-class cast, consistently excellent writing that manages to perfectly balance comedy and drama, non-stop twisted action and a cast of kooky characters that are a joy to spend time with.

Obviously, fans of Borderlands will get much more out of it, but even if you haven’t played the first person shooter RPGs, you’ll still have a great time seeing this world in the eyes of a couple of cons. It is well acted, has tons of style, and brings a great story to the table. I highly suggest this adventure game to both fans of Borderlands and fans of adventure games.

It does get bit sentimental and cheesy—always winking at us to make sure we know it’s aware of its own cheesiness, of course—but dammit, it’s cute. Rhys is cute, Fiona is cute, Vaughn and Sasha are cute, Loader Bot and Gordys are cute as hell. Even when I felt like I ought to roll my eyes at a weak joke, I liked the cast too much to want to. Tales from the Borderlands is a great game, even if you don’t care about Borderlands.

Tales from the Borderlands's visuals have aged poorly and the animation quality won't impress anyone, but the centre of the experience is the characters and story. Coming into this and expecting a traditional Borderlands experience will only lead to disappointment. This is enjoyable for people who have never played any Borderlands title, or for fans of the setting who want to see the universe get further fleshed out. The sense of humour is still intact, for better and for worse: it can be a bit exhausting for every character to be a snarky and sarcastic rogue, but at least they do have heart where it counts.

Experience Tales From The Borderlands all in one go and you’ll find one of the best written and best acted story-based games of the last several years. So while the recent announcement of Borderlands 3 is all very good, we’re just as excited about the prospect of a Tales From The Borderlands: Season Two.

The game even manages to have some rather emotional moments as well, which is surprising considering that Borderlands has never been that big on emotional story-telling. Some moments can be outright tragic, and others outright awesome, and some just laugh-worthy, but they all provide a great mix and are capable of creating strong feelings.