We can really  say that Telltale Games have more than one strings to his bow. There was first their current „flagship” project with The Walking Dead, which was accompanied by The Wolf Among Us, here’s also Tales from the Borderlands as well, and we didn’t even mention about the upcoming Game of Thrones’ first episode, releasing next week! However, it seems that so much work done at the same time doesn’t cause any problems.

This time around, Pandora doesn’t welcomes us in a serious first-person shooter, what we rather have – thanks to Telltale – is an episodic adventure game, which is implemented into the world of Borderlands.

I have left my hopeless job

We’re right after the happenings of Borderlands 2. Handsome Jack is dead, so Hyperion got a new boss. Rhys, one of the protagonists (yes, there’s going to be more than one!) is waiting for that long awaited promotion. However, his old-time rival, Vasquez ended up taking the role of his boss, so our likable – not-so-serious – guy ends up Senior Vice Janitor, after getting to know the information what Vasquez was into during the call, while Rhys was in his office, thanks to his eye implant named Echo. So, his plan for revenge starts right there.

After getting 10 million dollars in one second. Of course, all this backfires hilariously after Rhys gets stuck on Pandora with his nerdy-accountant friend Vaughn despite getting a Loader Bot to help them out, thanks to their friend, Yvette.

The thing Vasquez wanted to get? It’s none other than a Vault Key, which is worth tons of money in the world of Borderlands– although it turns out to be a fake!

The queen of con artists

…and this is where the second half enters. This is where Telltale has made a significant jump: we will have two main characters to play with. Fiona’s mentor, Felix has built a fake Vault Key, which they plan to sell off to someone. This is where Fiona’s sister, Sasha and her boyfriend, August steps in. The latter one gets a grip on it and finds someone to dump it off to… You can take a wild guess how the two storylines quickly tie together!

A battle, a race… To be continued!

The presentation is remarkable: most of the story is told in a retrospective way by Fiona and Rhys, whose lives suddenly depended on each other. When our Hyperionian worker finds out he’s about to be given a fake key, the deal gets interrupted by the battle of the dubstep-psychoking Bossanova and Zer0… I still am somewhere in the middle of describing the story of this episode! It’s a bit hard to follow, but I have to admit that TT has implemented the jokes and the landscape perfectly in their game, combining the TT-style gameplay with the Gearbox-humor. Silently, I believe that this game ended up as the silent surprise of 2014’s Telltale line-up.

…But back to the story: we lose the 10 million dollars and obviously, our focus will be on getting that (booby-trapped!) suitcase back. We end up at an old base, participate in a race, and when the hopelessness strikes hard, suddenly success starts to rear its head, while Rhys starts to battle that ID within himself… Will Nakayama get back to life? To be continued!

Longer than expected

I seriously thought that it will be done in about 95-100 minutes. I was wrong, it took me a little bit more than two hours to get through Episode One. Not bad. Although there weren’t many important dialogues, there were certainly no lack of action scenes. Especially because with the help of Rhys, we will end up in an FPS-scene a few times. (I’m not going to spoil how it actually happens, go and get that game!)

The game’s audio is fantastic, but don’t try to stop the game mid-sentence, you might end up with it being repeated twice. Other than that, the music was fitting, the voice acting was perfect, especially Vasquez’s final few sentences while we were up in his office. Graphics? Still cel-shaded, but following Borderlands’ footsteps. No problems here.

This will be really good

Episode 1 is excellent in my opinion. Final advice: look around for some money, because that Steve mask might look ugly compared to an ordinary Psycho mask, which looks kick ass.

Final words: skip the credits! Unexpected… priceless!
(The game is available for PS3, PS4 and the PS Vita as well, so you won’t be left behind this time around!)

-V-

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Editor: Telltale Games

Developer: Telltale Games

Genres: adventure, action

Publication: 2014 November