Fran and Octavio are similarly troubled. Fran\u2019s entire personality is based around her talking about frozen yogurt, creepily offering to give people mouth-to-mouth when they obviously don\u2019t need it, and punching people real hard. That\u2019s it. Octavio just does the stupidest thing imaginable in every situation to drag the story out a little longer. At one point he forgets what the place he works at \u2014 where he’s spent half the game, by the way \u2014 looks like. They get about ten minutes out of that zinger.<\/p>\n

The side characters are a mixed bag. There\u2019s a robot assassin going through a moral quandary about how they make their living and they\u2019re probably the most well-rounded and interesting character in the game. There\u2019s a woman who shouts a lot. There\u2019s a talking gun that says \u201cBang!\u201d every time it shoots. Most of the side characters either disappear for half the game and then turn up for the last chapter or simply go nowhere.<\/p>\n

Rhys from the original Tales from the Borderlands has a small role in the first chapter and if you think what they did with him in Borderlands 3 was a slap in the face to fans of the Telltale game then this isn\u2019t going to make you feel any better. Not content with ruining their own characters, New Tales from the Borderlands retroactively ruins the original Tales from the Borderlands by turning its protagonist into just another Borderlands gag\u2122. So thanks for that.<\/p>\n

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Every now and again between inane comedy routines there\u2019s a story to be told. It involves a magic rock that has the power to help humanity but there\u2019s baddies who want to use it for their own nefarious ends. It\u2019s a slight, low stakes narrative and even at only ten hours it feels drawn out, with long, boring sections where nothing remotely interesting happens to push the tale forward.<\/p>\n

By the final chapter we just didn\u2019t care any more. None of the growth feels earned or deserved. And then as a final insult, when we got to the ending we were told that one of the main characters had died, off screen, with no explanation whatsoever for how or why. It was like Poochie flying off to his home planet and dying in a crash in that episode of The Simpsons<\/em>. Utter nonsense.<\/p>\n

Everything about New Tales feels like a poor version of the original, even down to the music. The first game featured a licensed soundtrack that was at times expertly employed. Here, there\u2019s licensed music but it\u2019s thrown together seemingly at random. There\u2019s a cheesy montage scene of the gang getting to know each other backed by a low key, almost dream-pop track, and later a quiet, more reflective scene backed by a jaunty, more upbeat piece.<\/p>\n

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Gameplay-wise, you\u2019ll mainly be walking about and solving very simple puzzles, talking to people, and making choices. There\u2019s minigames, too, for things like hacking and fixing things, but these are borderline impossible to fail so we\u2019re not sure why they exist. There\u2019s quick-time events to take care of the action scenes but these are similarly forgiving, and even allow you to hit the wrong button and then just try again until you get it right.<\/p>\n

One such quick time event \u2014 which we have to mention because it\u2019s so absurd \u2014 involves a character fighting sharks. But instead of seeing them fight the sharks, we see Octavio commentating on how the fight is going while button prompts pop up on screen. It goes on for way too long and it\u2019s so wildly unfunny that we don’t know if it\u2019s even intended to be a joke.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re not sure if the developer just couldn\u2019t be bothered to animate the fight with the sharks or if this whole bit is some sort of subversive commentary on the futility of quick time events that just doesn\u2019t land, but whatever the reason for it, let your ol’ pals at Push Square<\/strong> give you a fiver’s worth of free advice: if you have a shark fight, you show the shark fight. Everyone wants to see the shark fight. It’s a f****** shark fight<\/em>!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Conclusion<\/h2>\n

We can scarcely recall an occasion where we were more disappointed by a sequel than New Tales from the Borderlands. We wanted to love this. We’d have accepted liking it. But we hate<\/em> this game. This is a ten-hour narrative adventure that feels four times as long as it needs to be, with dreadful characters, and appalling, relentlessly unfunny jokes. It’s a spectacular misfire, its only success to speak of being the rare example of a sequel so bad that it ruins the original, too.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n