When Rhys and Vaughn are ambushed by Bandits, they are only saved when they summon a Hyperion Loader Bot to fight them off.Telltale’s episodic structure also gives the designers the exact slack needed to beef up the game’s sorely-lacking Gearbox flavor at this point, and we’ll keep our fingers crossed that the hilarious, blood-soaked magic is yet to come.This is a Moments page per policy, Spoilers Off, including all possible story outcomes. This sudden end to the demo teased Tales from the Borderlands’ possible secret sauce: namely, how two scalawag lead characters’ versions of events will slam into each other for dramatic, and even hilarious, results. Four very different choices appeared, and our choice was followed with a quick-but-elaborate cut scene, then a fade to black. Quite frankly, the only hope we had at the end of the demo was when Rhys’ version of events, complete with a doting woman on his arm and dollars being flicked at him strip-club style, was interrupted by second protagonist Fiona, who received a dialogue prompt to answer with her version of what really happened after the negotiation went wrong. That means Borderlands writer Anthony Burch was sorely missed in the opening 30 minutes. Telltale admitted that it wrote the entire game internally, after merely consulting with Gearbox. Our biggest beef with the content we saw was how it neither skewed tense-and-critical nor dialed Gearbox’s trademark crassness up to 11. Sure enough, prompts reading “August will remember that” followed your most gruff methods, but the choices came off as quite superficial. Only this scene played out with much in the way of plot-altering choices by way of negotiation tactics. Assistant character Vaughn, in particular, voiced by The Nerdist’s Chris Hardwick, sucked the fun and momentum from his every scene.įrom there, Rhys made his way through a strange museum of dead Pandoran characters, complete with a few series in-jokes-and more opportunities to swipe loot from dead people’s pockets-before reaching his chance to buy his own Vault Key. This combination of opening sequences dragged for 15 minutes, and it made no use of Telltale’s trademark tough-decision choices-nor Gearbox’s masterful mix of wit and dumbassery. Rhys convinced his fellow employees (who mostly come off as unfunny doormats) to join him on a trip to Pandora to snatch the key first. Both men gunned for Handsome Jack’s job, and Rhys’ rival got it, so the plot unfolded once we learned that Vasquez was trying to acquire a legendary Vault Key. Rhys was warped back to his office days at Hyperion, squaring off against a smug boss named Vasquez (voiced by Patrick Warburton) whose ego was almost as big as his misogyny. However, the opening was less post-apocalyptic action and more one-dimensional office jokes a la Office Space. The proceedings are immediately punctuated with Borderlands' trademarks like spaghetti-western acoustic guitars, overblown character introductions, and a heaping helping of cuss words. When this pair of not-quite-good-guys crosses paths, it’s not in good circumstances-namely, someone’s aiming a gun at both of them-and they use the opportunity to recount how exactly they got into this mess. His story unfolds as he unexpectedly, and unhappily, runs into the game’s other main character: Fiona, a treasure hunter “hoping to scope out one big, final con before she gets the hell out of Pandora.” Advertisement Players begin by following the scummy footsteps of Rhys, a ladder-climber at weapons company Hyperion with hopes of becoming the next Handsome Jack. Marketing Director Richard Iggo opened the demonstration by announcing a first for an episodic Telltale game: a chance to play through the same storyline from two different perspectives. "I'm going to name my first-born Loaderbot" The Gearbox Software game’s wild guns, ceaseless vulgarity, and hard-boiled heroes are getting the point-and-click treatment later this year in an episodic series, and Telltale used this year’s E3 to unveil its first 30 minutes of play behind closed doors-not necessarily to assuage fears about Telltale getting the source material right. If anything, Telltale’s next major project skews closer to the stereotypical world of comic books, as it’s inspired by bloody shooting series Borderlands. Recent titles The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us (the latter based on DC Vertigo’s Fables comic) have used dramatic choices and clever writing to bring a frozen, hand-drawn art form to life, but they’ve also enjoyed source material that bucks a lot of comic book clichés and tropes. Telltale Games’ quest to resurrect the point-and-click genre has been at its most successful when riding the backs of acclaimed comic book series.
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