Gadgetory

hey everyone this is nick from gamers nexus net and i'm here to talk about episode 1 of tales from the borderlands called zero some tales from the borderlands is you guessed it based on the borderlands franchise it's made by Telltale Games a company in San Francisco that specializes in adventure games sort of pork point-and-click adventures that play out as episodic content releases so this is episode 1 this is the beginning you actually play as two characters one is named Rhys he's a company man from Hyperion which is a weapons manufacturer as you know from Borderlands so Reese is coming to Pandora because he's trying to basically overthrow his boss the new boss who's coming to Hyperion who replaced handsome Jack from Borderlands 2 so that guy's name is Vasquez and it's actually voiced by Patrick Warburton the other character that you play Oz is Fiona and she is a Pandora native she's joined by her sister Sasha and a mentor in this episode named Felix so Reese and Fiona have crossed paths the game actually takes place in a series of stories that happened over the course of will be several episodes here both Rhys and Fiona are sort of telling their sides of the story they actually start the game they're captured by somebody we don't know who it is at this point and so they're saying this is what happened to me and then the other persist well it wasn't exactly like that and then it shows how the other character was involved as well so it's interesting to kind of hear their sides of the story and you can even kind of influence how that story leads off if you've played the walking dead or the wolf among us then the formula for this will be pretty similar tales from the borderlands has a cinematic approach to the action scenes and in those scenes there are a lot of QuickTime events that's kind of your interaction with the game at that point on the technical side I noticed that there were a few stutters when the game was automatically saving or when I had unlocked in achievement so a little bit of stutter right there it doesn't really affect things too much but once in a while it's kind of funny to hear the character like actually repeating their dialogue just because of that you know that moment of the game works saving in general I think that this definitely comes across as a telltale Game that happens to be written inside of a borderlands universe as I mentioned before we have two protagonists who are non violent in nature really this is exploring the relationships among characters rather than killing a bunch of faceless bandits and reap and reaping the benefits of the loop that they have around them so telltale has done a good job of borrowing some of the humor some of that b-movie aesthetic b-movie presentation with over-the-top stylized action and that all looks good and everything but when it comes down to it I'm thinking of this as a telltale Game I'm not really thinking about it so much as Borderlands there are a couple of ways where telltale has kind of expanded Borderlands these referees elements here could actually make their way into a borderlands game so for example Reese has this ability called echo I and echo I is a scanner that basically works like infrared you know it's it's or a night vision where he can detect items and it enables him to scan them for information and a lot of the information is displayed in a way that's pretty humorous with the borderlands way of humours also as you would expect from a telltale Game the voice acting is very strong yeah you're actually going to find some characters who are from Borderlands 2 like those voice actors return same guy who does the voice of zero who is michael turner he's back for the new characters we have Troy Baker who voiced Booker in BioShock Infinite Joel and the last of us many many other big games he's been a part of so he's Reese Laura Bailey who was who was reign in blood rain and who is voiced chun-li some of the recent street fighter games voices Fiona our villain for the series the guy who is Vasquez with his deep authoritative intimidating sort of voice is Patrick Warburton and if you don't know who that is he's Joe from Family Guy go to talks like this so it's kind of fun seeing him making an appearance in this game as well alright so just some closing thoughts with zero sum there might be some ways a telltale kind of elaborate on things a little bit more to kind of round things out by that I mean perhaps when Reese uses his echo I that actually gives them information that he can use when he has to make critical decisions or like I said earlier maybe he maybe he or Fiona could choose between different items to use in an action scene so there's a little bit more variety there again i think that the references the tie-ins with borderlands is good it doesn't dominate the plot so much and that's kind of good because then we're given a sort of fresh plot line that we can be excited about and we can make our own authentic decisions we're not trying to just make them because it's supposed to be this way in the borderlands universe this is the first of probably five episodes at least for the first season and I would hope to see this continue the way it is we'll be covering the rest of tales from the borderlands here on gamers Nexus be sure to check out our videos to be released upon each episode and be sure to check out our written review for zero sum alright guys thanks a lot