I’ve never been the biggest fan of Borderlands. I’ve played and read enough to have a generally solid sense of the world being worked with here, but I approach Telltale’s latest outing as a fan more of their work than of Gearbox’s shooter series. In the past I’ve appreciated the series’ humour and style without ever quite being able to get into the shooting…which, as it turns out, makes Tales from the Borderlands a perfect point of re-entry for the series.

Tales follows Rhys and Fiona, who are, from how I’ve been playing them at least, a pair of roughly likeable rouges from very different backgrounds who end up working together to reclaim an object I can’t specify, because spoilers. Rhys and his friends are out for revenge against his new boss at Hyperion, while Fiona is a long-time grifter looking to score big.



The plot throws various Borderlands concepts at the player – vaults, loot, the competing corporate interests involved, the state of Pandora itself, and the planet’s bandit culture – in ways that both nod towards existing fans and ease in newcomers. They’ve even managed to sneak in some ridiculous weapons and wub-wubbing, and although Claptrap is sadly (or thankfully depending on how you feel) absent, the eponymous Zer0 from Borderlands 2 features heavily and kicks arse.

Over the course of two-and-a-bit hours (bringing this episode’s length more in line with Telltale’s earlier, slightly longer games) Zer0 Sum establishes a genuinely interesting set of characters, situates them within a hugely hostile world, and gets you invested in their exploits. It’s a fairly standard blockbuster plot of disparate folks pulling together for the greater good of mutual greed, but as with all of Telltale’s writing it’s elevated by the amount of choice the player is afforded.

As with The Wolf Among Us, it’s largely about crafting your character’s personality, but it’s a bit more nuanced and well-written than that game was. No matter what decisions you make both characters are still going to portray levels of both loyalty and inherent dickishness, which makes your in-the-moment dialogue choices carry more weight. In my playthrough I made Rhys super loyal to his friend Vaughn, who is along for the ride – the option was there to both belittle and betray him, and somehow choosing to make theirs a solid, genuine friendship felt significant.



The cast is largely excellent, made up of safe, established videogame voice actors like Troy Baker, Laura Bailey and Nolan North. Patrick Warburton overdoes his whole schtick a bit as Rhys’ villainous Hyperion overlord, but it’s a small part compared to all the other talent being thrown around. There are hints, too, that future episodes might be a little more puzzle focused than Telltale games have become lately.

That’s not a definite thing, but Rhys’ eye implant lets him scan environments, and Fiona is able to collect and spend cash. Neither ability is used in a super-interesting way, and the game dips into quick-time events a little too often to string scenes out, but the light elements of exploration and observation in here add a bit of extra flavour.



Zer0 Sum is probably the best first episode Telltale have ever done. It’s a little formulaic when you stop and actually examine its individual elements, but games so rarely actually manage to pull off good blockbuster storylines that it really stands out as a success. The first episode is funny and gripping, and more ambitious in scope and scale than anything Telltale have done recently. It caters to fans of Borderlands and to fans of adventure games equally. Telltale didn’t hit the same heights with this year’s releases that it did with the first season of The Walking Dead, but Tales from the Borderlands, despite being tonally very different, is off to an incredibly strong start.

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James “Jickle” O’Connor is a freelance games critic, journalist and occasional editor, based in South Australia. His favourite game of all time is The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, and he is absurdly, comically rubbish at most fighting games (except for Killer Instinct on the SNES, which was, incidentally, the first game he ever owned). He has huge soft spots for point and click adventure games, third-person shooters, and Deus Ex.

Recent articles by James:

• Valiant Hearts: The Great War Review
  
• Legend of Korra Review
  
• Sunset Overdrive Review

Find and follow him on Twitter - @jickle.