I’ve been a fan of the Borderlands franchise since its initial release all those years ago. There was something really appealing about the art style, the crazy characters, and the guns. The bazillions of guns. When we were invited to attend the hands-off media event for New Tales From The Borderlands, developed by Gearbox Software, and published by 2K, I was eager to see what it was all about.

As an action interactive narrative, it has all the makings of a high-quality choose-your-own-adventure game, but in true Borderlands fashion, there are quite a few unexpected elements, with my absolute favourite already being mentioned in my write-up for the media event – The collectible Borderlanders mini-figs and their corresponding mini-tabletop battles. It’s an exciting minigame that pits two mini-figs against one another, attacking and dodging until only one is left standing. Truly glorious plastic combat and I’d still love to get my hands on them in real life. I still need to find out if I can get the .OBJ files from 2K for those…

Of course, it wouldn’t be a choose-your-own-adventure without having to make choices, and as with any other title that follows the same genre, there are plenty of choices to be made, some of which will cause a reset, but the majority of failures are more of a “soft” failure, allowing players to try and redeem themselves by setting up another choice, or a slightly more difficult quick time event, such as trying to sneak past a Tedion soldier, getting caught, and having to perform a quick time to dispatch them. Other events will have you taking part in combat, actively choosing your target in a minigame similar to some of the early “shooting gallery” style games, but as always, your choices and your failures will directly influence how the story progresses and the ending pans out.

New Tales From The Borderlands follows three characters who really couldn’t be any more different from each other. Fran Miscowicz runs her parent’s frogurt shops on Prometheus, a world recently devastated by a war between Atlas and Maliwan, with her less-than-successful business suffering further set-backs by a Maliwan laser destroying a solid section of the building.

All she wants is for her insurance to cover the cost so she can get back to her normal life. Dr. Anuradha “Anu” Dhar works for Atlas, one of the most successful weapons manufacturers in the system, and ironically, she’s working on a device that she believes will change the course of war – by not killing anyone.

A stark contrast to what the company stands for. She abandoned her adopted brother, Octavio “Ock” Wallace-Dhar, leaving him to live out his life on the war-ravaged planet. Coming from a rather rough background, Ock aspires for greater things, wanting to get his name out there and join a list of famously successful individuals while mooching off the few friends he has, even going as far as assisting the Assassin-robot LOU13, or Louie, in completing his contracts. Through a series of unfortunate events, the trio is brought together, finding themselves trying to survive against Tedior troops and eventually making their way to one of the famed Vaults.

New Tales From The Borderlands follows a very similar cell-shaded art style to previous Borderlands titles, though I do feel that the background environments are a little less detailed than the FPS games – a sticky note on a safe looked like it was part of the rendering for the safe as opposed to its own model, as an example. Perhaps I feel this way because I haven’t played a Borderlands game in a while, but it looked a little off.

The character models, on the other hand, all looked incredible, as we’ve come to expect from the franchise. Each character, with background characters included, looked like they’d be right at home in any of the other games – Fran in particular. Even the animations were a close match to those used in the rest of the franchise, being somewhat over the top but perfectly suiting the character’s personalities. There is even the option to use in-game currency, found in the same manner as the FPS games, to buy new clothes and accessories for the 3 characters, allowing you to change up their appearances throughout the story.

Voice acting remains as crazy as ever, and each choice you make will have its own wonderfully narrated lines, with equally witty comebacks from your conversation partners. I was a little sceptical when I attended the hands-off preview, as Anu’s voice didn’t quite seem to flow as freely as the other characters, but this has well and truly been rectified in the release version, and once again, the actors bring real life and personality to the situations you’ll find yourself in.

Music, on the other hand, didn’t quite sit right. At least, not for me. The selected soundtrack didn’t really fit with the Borderlands world and what I’m used to. That isn’t to say that the music was awful, in fact, far from it. The choices were great fits to how the story was being portrayed, but I don’t feel that they fit with the Borderlands universe. I think I’m stuck on Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked from the first game.

The controls are nice and simple, even playing mouse and keyboard, and this can be further simplified with difficulty settings. You can do things such as turn off quick time events completely, allowing you to experience the story by only having to worry about the choices you make, or make it much more difficult by reducing the amount of time you have to press the right key. To make things even more appealing, it’s unlikely that you’ll unlock everything on your first play-through, and at the end of each chapter, you’ll be shown exactly what you could have found and how your choices affected the relationships between the trio, and of course, there are multiple story paths you can follow.

New Tales From The Borderlands adds even more to the massively popular franchise, even without the bloodthirsty gameplay we may all be used to. The humourous antics and interactions between the characters are as charming as ever, and each has their own interesting story, coming together to create something truly amazing. Even if you’re not a fan of interactive narratives, New Tales from the Borderlands is well worth looking into, and it’s a great distraction for when you just want to sit down and chill out.

Written by: Mathew Lindner