![]() ![]() It’s also a brand of humor far more self-deprecating than Borderlands’s trademark sneering sarcasm, which makes the game’s introduction to Pandoran life joyously irreverent, even when the game refuses to flinch on the gore factor. ![]() The first two episodes are fairly standard Telltale Games fare of micromanaging relationships, and deliberate scheming, and even this stretch benefits from a wild humor streak that the developer hasn’t been able to let loose with since the Sam & Max days. The two meet as a result of a deal gone bad where Rhys tries to buy a Vault key with stolen corporate money, and through a series of unfortunate events, the money goes missing, and the map to the Vault is up for grabs. Tales follows two specific protagonists who wind up in search of the Vault: Rhys (Troy Baker), an ambitious corporate stooge from megacorporation Hyperion who needs the Vault to screw over his nickel-slick scumbag boss (played with maximum sliminess by Patrick Warburton), and Fiona (Laura Bailey), just another con artist born and raised on Pandora, barely scraping by with the help of her foster sister and criminal foster father. Like all stories in this universe, it’s essentially a treasure hunt for a Vault, Borderlands’s persistent MacGuffin device for unlimited riches and power, always protected by a big evil on the post-apocalyptic desert planet Pandora. Optimism, in the context of this particular game, means taking a world that, despite the color, is aggressively nihilistic and cynical, and telling a story equally aggressive about finding reasons to defy that nihilism instead of feeding into it. Hundreds of games can do bright, colorful, cheerful. All one has to do is turn on a Nintendo console for 10 minutes, and you get happiness. That shouldn’t be mistaken with happiness. It boils down to one single element, missing from all the Borderlands games, and so much of gaming in general: optimism. The story crafted here isn’t just a fine Borderlands sequel, but one of the most enjoyable sci-fi adventure stories in recent memory. It’s awe-inspiring, then, to watch Tales soar so very high above the call of duty in that regard. ![]() All Tales from the Borderlands had to do was force Borderlands’s gameplay to get out of the narrative’s way, and you’d still have an exponentially better game almost by default. It incorporates everything terrible about MMORPGs with everything terrible about modern-day shooters. The one thing that’s always been a problem for the Borderlands series is the fact that you have to play it. ![]()
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