Tales from the Borderlands: Zer0 Sum

Editor's Notes

Digital version reviewed on Xbox One.

Introduction

'Zer0 Sum' is the first episode in the 'Tales from the Borderlands' series from Telltale Games. 'Borderlands' is typically a first-person shooter franchise, but the 'Tales' spin-off is a story-based adventure game in the vein of Telltale’s other titles, like 'The Walking Dead' and 'The Wolf Among Us'. It was made in consultation with franchise developer Gearbox and their publisher 2K Games.

The 'Borderlands' games take place sometime in the future on the alien planet of Pandora. Pandora is a desolate wasteland filled with aggressive wildlife, mysterious alien sentinels, tribes of psychopathic marauders, and cutthroat corporations. The player character is usually a deadly mercenary in search of a mythical Vault, which is filled with valuable goodies. In 'Tales from the Borderlands', the player controls two grifters: Rhys, a cybernetic Hyperion employee, and Fiona, an unabashed con artist.

The Game Itself: Our Reviewer's Take

As an adventure game, much of the input from the player in 'Tales from the Borderlands' could be described as "point-and-click", or at least as much as pointing and clicking translates to an Xbox controller. Movement is limited around very small maps where the character investigates items and speaks to people. During conversation, the player selects dialogue from a multiple-choice list, and other characters respond accordingly. The series is episodic, so decisions that a player makes early on can come into play later.

'Zer0 Sum' is set after the events of 'Borderlands 2', mostly on the surface of Pandora itself. Rhys is disenchanted with his work at Hyperion and decides to shake things up a bit, and brings his hapless accountant friend Vaughn along for the ride. Before long they meet Fiona and her kid sister Sasha, both Pandoran natives and professional hustlers. The story is a departure from the serious, occasionally grim tone of previous Telltale works. It is loyal to the subversive, juvenile, giggle-inducing writing of 'Borderlands'. There are inside jokes, non-sequiters, innuendo, and lots of slapstick humor. The script doesn’t take itself too seriously and sometimes gently breaks the fourth wall, most notably in the text pop-ups that Rhys can read when he uses his synthetic eye to scan objects. The humor is done well and isn’t so inward that a newcomer to 'Borderlands' would feel alienated. The characters, some new and some returning, are entertaining and their personalities are revealed naturally as the story progresses. In one particularly good scene, Fiona encounters an unusually polite and well-spoken guard, completely out of place in a bloody "death race", who calls her on her rudeness and she has to backpedal to avoid violence. Quirky exchanges like this can be found throughout the episode.

This episode also features much more action than is typically found in adventure games, especially when controlling Rhys. Rhys is a soft bureaucrat and not a fighter by any means, but he bungles his way through misunderstandings with skags and bandits in a 'Three Stooges' kind of way. This means a lot of quick-time events, but it doesn’t go overboard with them, and the action scenes complement the dialogue.