New Tales From The Borderlands Review: Lightning doesn\u2019t strike twice 2K Games2K and Gearbox are back with New Tales From The Borderlands, the next narrative-driven adventure in the series, but storytelling mishaps and forced humor ensure that New Tales From The Borderlands doesn\u2019t quite deliver. New Tales From The Borderlands (or \u2018New Tales\u2019 as we\u2019re going to refer to it) was a sequel that few saw coming, given that it\u2019s been eight years since the last one, and we\u2019ve already had Tiny Tina\u2019s Wonderlands this year too. The onus was placed upon the shoulders of Gearbox, instead of Telltale Games, to craft a brand new adventure from start to finish that focused less on the franchise\u2019s iconic gunplay and more on its ability to assemble a coherent and entertaining story. This is achieved in parts. On one hand, New Tales has some memorable characters and fascinating scenarios, but these bright moments are held back by inconsistencies in the writing and an attempt to be the funniest entity in the Borderlands. New Tales From The Borderlands: Key details Developer: Gearbox Software – Price: $39.99 USD \/ \u00a334.99 GBP – Release Date: October 21, 2022 – Platforms: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and PC – New Tales From The Borderlands trailer New Tales From The Borderlands can\u2019t recapture the magic It may feel blasphemous to say, considering it wasn\u2019t Gearbox that made it, but Telltale\u2019s original story was probably the most well-rounded and consistent plot in any Borderlands game. Rhys and Fiona forged an unlikely on-screen partnership that fans loved and the game\u2019s essence was overflowing with emotion and belly-roaring humor. Whereas New Tales starts all over again \u2014 as its title clearly states. This time around, we focus on three main characters: Anu, Octavio, Fran, and their assassination bot companion LOU13. Anu is a brilliant but emotionally broken scientist, Octavio is her adopted brother that skipped the line the day they were handing out brains, and Fran is an unpredictable, horny, frogurt aficionado in a mechanized hoverchair that Octavio works for. Gearbox do a good job of making each character feel unique, although not always for the better. Anu is the star of the show by a country mile and her twitchy, jittery demeanor complements her genius well. Fran and Octavio are decidedly more divisive as the former goes from being open about her degree one second to having a constant infatuation with giving everyone \u201cmouth-to-mouth\u201d regardless of the circumstances. Octavio can be equal parts endearing and annoying as his character bounces from one extreme to another. The chemistry between everyone is there, it just feels like Gearbox tries too hard to force it whereas the first game allowed these characters to be realized naturally. A fun but frustrating foray New Tales\u2019 story starts out really strong and establishes its premise very well. A Tediore invasion kickstarts the action and brings our plucky heroes together. After some backstory with each character, we\u2019re onto the game\u2019s central plot \u2013 a magic healing gun. Anu, Octavio, and Fran discover a new element that can basically heal any injury no matter how severe and the imminent conflict caused by it is both juicy and intriguing. It\u2019s all set up quite neatly and fluidly, to be honest, and the story as a whole is quite good, it\u2019s just that the long (and I do mean long) road to get its conclusion isn\u2019t always pleasurable. As with a few Borderlands entries, the desire to cram as many zany and out-there jokes in to keep it feeling edgy and likable comes at a price. Don\u2019t get it twisted, there are plenty of japes spliced throughout the script, it\u2019s just that there are far too many of them \u2014 many of which don\u2019t land. Lines of dialogue will fall completely flat with an uncomfortable silence being left to allow that line to settle. The tone of the game feels very self-indulgent at times as scenes go on for what feels like an eternity without anything actually happening. The action can drag on for minutes at a time and we\u2019ve barely advanced the plot even a single iota. The game\u2019s five chapters do mostly feel like a tale of two halves with the first section running along quite smoothly. But then it loses its way, and Chapter 4 is one of the most baffling two hours of gameplay I\u2019ve played in recent memory, especially so late in the story, and left me feeling, dare I say, a bit bored? It doesn\u2019t help that the game is rife with tacked-on QTEs that you\u2019d do well to fail if you tried, weird repetitive hacking mini-games, and Vaultlanders \u2014 a button-mashing beat \u2019em up mini-game that starts out fun but I felt lukewarm towards by the end as it didn\u2019t evolve. I feel like these components were inserted to pad out the journey, but they ultimately end up hurting the game more than helping it. A touch of class One of the game\u2019s absolute strongest points has to be its cast and performances as they do their best to bring the material to life \u2014 with Anu, again, stepping forward to absorb the adulation of the crowd. It\u2019s hard to fault anyone in New Tales, even the Tediore guards who are given some throwaway characterization that I appreciated. That\u2019s sometimes where Gearbox\u2019s adventure excels as, like the games, its side content and characters can sometimes be more enticing than the main game \u2014 if not more! Stapleface, a Psycho that Anu inadvertently saves, gets very little screen time but shows a new side to the crazed killers that we haven\u2019t seen before, and Brock, a talking Tediore gun, pops up everywhere and has some rather heavy emotional baggage that you find yourself carrying at times. It\u2019s just a shame then that when any character has a serious moment in the game, it\u2019s usually undermined by a less-than-serious gag literally just before it \u2013 including character deaths. Verdict \u2013 6\/10 As a huge fan of the original, I went into New Tales From The Borderlands wanting to have my mind blown and regaled with a story for the ages. Gearbox delivered this in some parts as they harnessed the crazy energy of the Borderlands universe to offer up exciting new characters and a coherent story. But the overeagerness to deliver a laugh a minute and the ludonarrative dissonance of its mini-games and QTEs take away from the game in droves. If we do get a third game, then I\u2019d love to see Gearbox move away from all this and focus on delivering a heavy, gut-punching narrative sprinkled with that insane Borderlands energy we love so much. Reviewed on PlayStation 5<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
New Tales From The Borderlands Review: Lightning doesn\u2019t strike twice 2K Games2K and Gearbox are back with New Tales From The Borderlands, the next narrative-driven adventure in the series, but storytelling mishaps and forced humor ensure that New Tales From The Borderlands doesn\u2019t quite deliver. New Tales From The Borderlands (or \u2018New Tales\u2019 as we\u2019re […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83660\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}