Borderlands series are primarily focused on their shlooter gameplay and art style, and infamous for eschewing proper writing in favor of cramming all dialogue interactions with trending memes and detached post-ironising so you'd expect a Borderlands game 100% focused on story to be a disaster. Buuuut... it's great??! Dare I say, it feels like more of an adventure than mainline series do, even!

Overall premise is that you get to control two characters- Rhys a corporate failure, and Fiona the Pandoran native conwoman, who gets intertwined in a plot involving a sale of fake Vault Key, the big plot device in almost all Borderlands games, that eventually leads to an actual vault key. So, the writing I mentioned? It is distinctly different from Borderlands original, with more proper character growth, while still unafraid to be zany and ironising, but in way more focused bursts. There's a lot of that signature Borderlands stuff like wacky bandits and comically cruel megacorporations, but ultimately it's about a journey of random shmucks into heroes, and it delivers.

Also the peak Borderlands art style they're unfortunately walking away from is here, very comicbook-y with thick black lines on characters and all, faithfully recreated. Must say, there is some sloppyness of the game's art bits sometimes, odd very blatant clipping or sfx stuff but I imagine they really had to rush the episodes and not sure if Telltale can afford to go back and revise stuff hard. Seems their engine of choice is pretty dated, too, but they still delivered nice setpieces and animations with what they got.

Honestly if you ever played a Borderlands game, in particular 2 and 3, and felt like all the memery and poor comedy undersells a really cool setting, you should absolutely play this. The gameplay is standard Telltale dialogue choices and QTE fare but they deliver an overall great ride of a story, here.

Borderlands series are primarily focused on their shlooter gameplay and art style, and infamous for eschewing proper writing in favor of cramming all dialogue interactions with trending memes and detached post-ironising so you'd expect a Borderlands game 100% focused on story to be a disaster. Buuuut... it's great??! Dare I say, it feels like more of an adventure than mainline series do, even! Overall premise is that you get to control two characters- Rhys a corporate failure, and Fiona the Pandoran native conwoman, who gets intertwined in a plot involving a sale of fake Vault Key, the big plot device in almost all Borderlands games, that eventually leads to an actual vault key. So, the writing I mentioned? It is distinctly different from Borderlands original, with more proper character growth, while still unafraid to be zany and ironising, but in way more focused bursts. There's a lot of that signature Borderlands stuff like wacky bandits and comically cruel megacorporations, but ultimately it's about a journey of random shmucks into heroes, and it delivers. Also the peak Borderlands art style they're unfortunately walking away from is here, very comicbook-y with thick black lines on characters and all, faithfully recreated. Must say, there is some sloppyness of the game's art bits sometimes, odd very blatant clipping or sfx stuff but I imagine they really had to rush the episodes and not sure if Telltale can afford to go back and revise stuff hard. Seems their engine of choice is pretty dated, too, but they still delivered nice setpieces and animations with what they got. Honestly if you ever played a Borderlands game, in particular 2 and 3, and felt like all the memery and poor comedy undersells a really cool setting, you should absolutely play this. The gameplay is standard Telltale dialogue choices and QTE fare but they deliver an overall great ride of a story, here.