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The Legendary Game Developer
The previous game of the New Tales From The Borderlands was made the legendary developer TellTale Games. Tales From The Borderlands was released in 2014 and I did play it (as I did play all of TellTale’s games). TellTale Games didn’t make New Tales From The Borderlands, it was made by Gearbox Software -studio.
I can consider myself as a fan of the developer and all the episodic narrative adventure games they’ve made. My favourite of them all are The Walking Dead series and The Wolf Among Us. Sadly, the TellTale Games was shut down in 2018. Ultimately, they are owned now by LCG Entertainment and they are making The Wolf Among Us 2.
Story, Gameplay and Controls
New Tales From The Borderlands is not sequel to the first game, it only does belong to the same universe. There are completely new characters; Octavio, Fran and Anu, which are the only three playable characters. In the game, player does control them one at time, making choices based by their point of view. As the previous game, New Tales From The Borderlands is very much alike. It is choice-based and the gameplay has quick-time-events. All the choices player makes in the game will affect all the outcomes and the ending specifically.
The game starts with Anu, who is Octavios big sister, and she got fired from her job of being inventive scientist. She had just invented a device (a “gun”) that doesn’t kill, but does heal people. Together with her brother Octavio and his boss Fran (who owns a frogurt shop) they try to make the healing device to the markets, but the corporate overlords comes to their way and try to steal the invention from them. So, their narrative-driven adventure begins.
The story was OK and the pacing was fast enough to keep me entertained throughout the whole game. What I didn’t like, was the horrible overacting and over-reacting to, literally, everything that happened. I don’t know was it the base game (Borderlands), which New Tales From The Borderlands belongs to, the reason to this, because I’ve never played those games (except Borderlands 2 VR -game which I have played). I think Borderlands -series is rather over-the-top, but still the acting in New Tales From The Borderlands was more of annoying than funny. Even the jokes didn’t hit me at all.
What comes to the gameplay; it was a big improvement from the previous game. New Tales From The Borderlands did run much better than the previous game (and all the other TellTale -games). The previous game was more slower and little bit sluggish, even the QTEs were dull. Moving the characters around was also a much imporved. Basically, everything in New Tales From The Borderlands were much faster and fluent.
The game also had mini games, which to my dissapointent, were a fail-proof. Only thing I had to do was to hit X-button. Then there was a Vaultlander fighthing mini game. It also was just hitting the X-button to do damage and QTEs to dodge. There was no difficulty in the game nor in the mini games, which was rather boring to play.
New Tales From The Borderlands also had lots of costumes, whici could be bought in-game currency. I did enjoy changing the clothes of my characters every time I came up with the changing booth.
Final Verdict
Even though the game was badly overacted and all the minigames and QTEs were overly easy, making the game have no difficulty whatsoever, I did enjoy little bit the New Tales From The Borderlands. The game was about 10 hours long, so it does have some playing value. Is it must play? No it isn’t, but for the series’ fans this will be a fun little addition.
New Tales From The Borderlands is available on PS5 (reviewed), PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbos One, Nintendo Switch and PC.
(Review copy kindly provided by the publisher)
SCORE:
3/5
“The story was OK and the pacing was fast enough to keep me entertained throughout the whole game.”
One More Level 