A Tale Worth Telling

Review

Tales from the Borderlands, Telltale Games (PS4)

Abstract: Tales from the Borderlands is fresh and exciting. Telltale flourishes in their return to comedic storytelling. Original characters feel at home in the Borderlands universe and are some of the best Telltale has ever done. The writing is sharp, witty, and often laugh-out-loud funny. Decisions made in Tales from the Borderlands feel meaningful, both within the game’s self-contained plot and in the Borderlands universe at large. Tales from the Borderlands is a wild ride and a raucously good time. If you’re looking for something clever, funny, fun, or enthralling look no further than Tales from the Borderlands. It’s not only one of the year’s best, but one of Telltale’s best games to date.

Telltale has become somewhat of a staple in my household. Overwhelmingly positive word of mouth led to my acquisition and subsequent playthrough of the turns-out-everyone-was-right-and-this-game-is-incredible The Walking Dead. The way in which the team at Telltale explored human relationships and allowed the player to personalize their character and their world through choice made the first season of The Walking Dead an impressive & memorable experience. The game’s strong narrative propelled the now fiancée and I through, and created a hunger for a type of gaming experience that (to the best of our knowledge) only Telltale could provide. From that point forward we picked up every new Telltale release. The Wolf Among Us, The Walking Dead Season 2. I wrote a bit about why I love playing these kinds of games here.

We are also huge fans of the Borderlands universe. Borderlands 2 was a game the two of us played for easily 200+ hours together, spanning three playthroughs and 4 different characters. Much like Telltale games, we loved the universe & characters Borderlands built for itself. Being a Vault hunter and exploring, shooting, and looting everything in Pandora was a blast. The dialogue was charming. We even got into the lore of the Vaults and the corporate history centered on Vault hunting. Again, ever since Borderlands 2, Justine and I were hungry for more.

 

Telltale plus Borderlands? Be prepared for a wild ride.

What we never expected, however, was that Telltale’s chocolate would mix with Borderlands’s peanut butter. Announced during VGX, Tales from the Borderlands appeared to be the perfect fusion of our recent gaming interests. But it also filled me with a lot of doubt. Mechanically speaking, the two styles of games appeared immiscible. How would Telltale get across the feeling of being on Pandora, where shooting things is how you spend your day to day? What about the tone of the game? The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us were both dark, gritty stories about loss, evil, and what people do with their back against the wall. Borderlands isn’t all love and hugs, but everything there is steeped in dark humor. Tales from the Borderlands would have to be funny in that uniquely Borderlands kind of way. It was with trepidation that we dipped into the first episode of Tales from the Borderlands.  But in doing so I was met with my biggest surprise yet: not only does Tales from the Borderlands perfectly fuse Telltale narrative & gameplay with Borderlands’s humor & world, but it might be Telltale’s best game to date. It’s really, really good.

You play as two protagonists in Tales from the Borderlands. You have Fiona, the scrappy orphaned thief from Pandora, and Rhys, the quippy pencil pusher from Hyperion (the largest corporate arms dealer in the galaxy). Fiona and Rhys are highly ambitious. They both put plans into action to rise above their stature. Plans that, inevitably, force the two plucky characters to cross paths. And what is this bold, crazy plan? The surreptitious sale of a Vault key. That’s right, a key to what everyone on Pandora seeks—a way to locate, and open, a Vault. The same Vaults that adventurers from around the universe travel to Pandora for. The sale goes…poorly, leading Rhys & Fiona to join forces against psychos, monsters & corporations alike to unravel the mystery of the ‘Vault of the Traveler’ and (hopefully) stay alive while doing so. The story takes a bunch of twists and turns that kept me engaged throughout all five episodes. It’s a fun action-adventure heist told with a thick layer of comedy. Exactly what I’d want from a Telltale Borderlands game.

 

The relationship between Fiona & Rhys is spectacular. It was so fun
to see it evolve over time.

Where Telltale really succeeds is in creating extraordinary characters. Over the course of Fiona & Rhys’s journey they form an eclectic group of funny, strange, and thoroughly memorable characters. This was one of my biggest concerns coming into Tales from the Borderlands. Borderlands had already established such great characters. Creating new ones that felt like they belonged was a gargantuan undertaking. On the other hand, relying too strongly on series staple characters would feel unambitious. Tales from the Borderlands perfectly straddles that line: most of the cast is brand-new to the universe, with franchise veterans playing only small, supporting roles. I cannot emphasize enough how much I loved the characters here. Rhys is the perfect mix of inept, cocky, goofy & endearing. Fiona is at once scary, tender, sarcastic and badass. Vaughn, Loader Bot, Gortys, Sasha, Vasquez, August. Everyone. Everyone was fantastic. Saying too much more would go into spoiler territory, but I really want to emphasize how distinct and memorable the cast of characters is in Tales from the Borderlands. Many evolve over time, growing alongside the player as your actions becoming increasingly bombastic. I’d love to see Tales from the Borderlands’s cast come back again in the future and, if the ending is any indication, I think I just might.

 

Tales from the Borderlands has quite the cast. Loader Bot & Gortys are two
2015's best. 'Hi.'

Narratively, Telltale deserves special commendation as well. The studio nails its return to comedy in Tales from the Borderlands. Jokes felt effortlessly funny, supported by great dialogue and goofy physical comedy. Sure, a lot of what actually happens in Tales from the Borderlands is pretty dark, but Telltale approaches the subjects with the franchise-established lightness and wit. Tales from the Borderlands also allowed Telltale to play with their storytelling. For the first time in their modern suite of titles, Tales from the Borderlands is told from two different perspectives. Seeing, and playing, two sides to the same story felt fresh. Two protagonists also allowed for a more ‘epic’ journey. You could be doing two totally different (and insane) things at the same point in the game’s timeline because you controlled both Fiona and Rhys. It enhanced the feeling of the player’s importance to the game’s narrative, making my choices feel even more meaningful. On that note, too, Tales from the Borderlands is also the Telltale game in which your choices have the biggest impact on the actual plot of the game. Usually, your choices don’t really affect the overall outcome of the story but rather act as a way to define your protagonist. Your decisions influence the way they see & interact with their world (thereby affecting the story because of how they react to the set events). But in Tales from the Borderlands the decisions you make have profound implications. Not only do they define much of your experience in the game’s final chapter, but they also have tremendous consequences for the world of Borderlands. Your decisions dramatically alter the fate of Pandora. As a newcomer to the franchise, it might not mean much, but to a longtime fan it will be interesting how the events of Tales from the Borderlands will affect future Borderlands releases. They pretty much have to.

 

You make big decisions. Be prepared to live with the consequences.

If you’ve played a Telltale game before, you will know what to expect from gameplay. During conversations, you’re able to choose one of four dialogue options and characters react accordingly. Between conversations, Tales from the Borderlands lets the player walk around in small areas, talking to other characters or moving towards the next objective. Quick time events (QTEs: quickly pressing a button after a specific prompt appears on screen) are used for the game’s many action scenes. It’s what Telltale has done for a while, but it works. Layered on top of the old gameplay are some new systems, though. As Rhys you can use your robotic eye to scan your environment, which is used for both world building and comedy. Fiona can loot containers for money, which can then be used to customize her outfit or vehicle. Gameplay isn’t particularly groundbreaking, but it’s fun, functional, and supports the game’s strong story and characters.

QTEs galore, but they work well. Don't forget to dodge.

One of the most striking elements of Tales from the Borderlands is how Telltale plays with their own narrative and gameplay conventions. Perhaps the comedic nature of the source material prompted the studio to experiment, often offering tongue-in-cheek commentary on their standard practices. Narrative-wise, Tales from the Borderlands toys with the concept of the unreliable narrator. Neither Fiona nor Rhys are the best, most honest people you’d ever meet, and that comes across in their storytelling. Much of the game’s story is told via the two characters recalling their experiences. Heroic moments are embellished, nitty-gritty details are omitted. It’s sometimes hard to know what exactly happened. It’s a very cool feeling. Further, while Telltale gameplay systems are kept the same in Tales from the Borderlands, how they’re used is worth writing about. There are moments where the standard ‘choose one of four options’ only offers one choice to make. Another moment plays with how ridiculous video game shootouts can be, and how even more ridiculous it is to do with using only QTEs. A final moment plays with the idea of a QTE, asking the player to perform a Mortal Kombat like series of inputs. These tweaks, as small as they may be, made playing Tales from the Borderlands feel fresh and exciting.

 

Small touches keep the gameplay fresh. I went with the Riot Shield.

I still think back to my time with Tales from the Borderlands. It was one of my favorites this year. Telltale fan or not, Borderlands fan or not, please play this game. Comedy, characters and silly fun don’t get much better. Tales from the Borderlands is a delight.

Tales from the Borderlands

5/5

Love Is A Journey

Review

Cibele, Star Maid Games (Mac)

Abstract: Cibele is honest story about first love and the internet. The game’s three acts are divided into three distinct gameplay sections. Cibele is emotionally evocative, one of the few games that’s made me feel a simultaneous mixture of hope, sadness, voyeurism and intrigue. Frustrating MMO segments and some pacing issues harm the storytelling, but Cibele remains a unique & fascinating title whose themes have been missing in the gaming industry. It’s one well worth checking out.

Love is many things. Easy is generally not one of them. It’s complex, multifaceted. It’s also exceedingly rare to see realistically portrayed in a video game. Games do violence well, nuanced human emotion not so much. At least, not until very recently. As the medium matures, we’re starting to see more and more titles that touch on the subtlety of the human experience, and Cibele is one of them. Cibele is about something we’ve never really seen in games: a personal story about love, sex and romance in the internet era.

Cibele is the (semi?-)autobiographical story of the game’s creator, Nina Freeman. You play as the college freshman Freeman as she navigates the cloudy waters of trying to build a real, substantive relationship with someone. It tells the story of her first love, her first internet-era relationship, and first serious sexual encounter. The story is divided into a three act structure: the flirtation, the profession of feelings, and the commitment to meet up in person. Why is meeting up in person so important? Because Freeman’s relationship is not some school friend or someone she met at a bar—it’s someone Freeman met in an MMORPG. It is a romance that’s built via voice chat, in-game messages, killing monsters together, and the e-mail exchange of risqué pictures. The two play the fictitious game Valtameri, modeled after the niche real-world MMO Final Fantasy Online. Freeman’s avatar, Cibele, builds her relationship with ichi (real world name Blake). It’s a slow burn, but one that felt genuine. Over the course of the game, you learn more about Freeman, Blake, and the evolution of their flirtation. The characters drip with an age-appropriate emotional immaturity, which is only further enhanced by the (at the time) unusual nature of their courtship.

Love is not like the fantasy of an MMORPG. Far from it.

I’ll spare you the specifics, but I quite enjoyed the concise story experience contained within Cibele. The game’s story is strong, bolstered not by dramatic flair or unpredictable twists and turns, but by its groundedness. It’s honest. The story of Freeman’s romance isn’t perfect, but no love is. The pace undulates, sometimes taking too long to get where it is going. But its destination is worth the journey. Your closeness to the subject is strongly determinate of what you get from the game, however. If you never had an internet, long-distance, anonymous-at-first and/or troubled relationship, Cibele’s grip on you may be weak. Though I did not personally have an MMO lover, I saw this kind of love story happening with many of my friends. I knew several people who made close friends in World of Warcraft and several others who had that one anonymous-turned-real chat room boyfriend / girlfriend. My generation, or perhaps the social niche that I existed within, all had that person they knew who was trying to make a romance work with someone they met anonymously online.  If you didn’t, you probably were that person. It was a new frontier of love, of building human connections. Freeman’s story in Cibele was transportative—it brought me back to high school. It hit on a simple, quiet truth I hadn’t experienced in games.

Each of the three acts is divided into three subsections, from a gameplay perspective. They are investigating the computer, playing the MMO, and video cutscenes. Let’s talk about the first, and strongest, gameplay element: interacting with Freeman’s desktop. When each act starts you’re placed directly on a facsimile of a computer desktop. Here, you are Freeman. At the same time, however, you feel like a detective. Every file is there for your investigation and each provides a new piece of evidence that elucidates Freeman’s character. From old pictures to poems to chat logs to html dumps from her personal website, every single piece of content on her computer is yours to consume. And all of it is worthwhile. Whether they shed light on relationship with her close girl friends or current emotional distress, I found myself completely captivated in my investigation. At the same time, exploring Freeman’s character in this way felt uncomfortable. Voyeuristic. As Freeman’s relationship with Blake escalates, you can find scantily clad photos on the desktop. Seeing these made me anxious. Not only were these sent in private and now I’m viewing them, but they were pictures of the game’s creator herself.  Freeman is sharing something deeply personal with her audience. I’m not only impressed with her bravery in doing so, but I also respect the emotional impact they left on me. I don’t know if I’ve ever felt so voyeuristic before while playing a game. Interacting with the desktop was compelling from start to finish, and something I wouldn’t mind seeing explored by Freeman more in future releases.

I opened and read every single file. I couldn't be stopped.

After you’re done exploring the desktop, it’s time to jump into the Valtameri client. You log into the Cibele avatar, meet up with ichi, and go off to kill some monsters. The gameplay here is pretty simple. You control the avatar by clicking the mouse, allowing you to both move around and kill enemies. The objective here is to join together with ichi to kill monsters until a boss shows up…and then kill that. Really, though, the time you spend in the MMO is more about fleshing out Freeman’s interactions with Blake. While you’re killing mobs, Freeman and Blake voice chat with each other, voice acted by Freeman herself. They talk about life, people and, as the story progress, about their feelings for each other. Unfortunately, experiencing these conversations is painful due to the poor MMO gameplay. Simply put: it’s not fun. Clicking around is awkward. Your character never really moves in the way you want her to. Invisible walls cause weird stuttering and frustrate as you try to follow ichi around (who is unaffected by these barriers). Killing enemies is mindless and tedious. Everything takes too long to accomplish. Perhaps the length of these sections is in place to facilitate the lengthy and gripping conversations between Freeman and Blake, but often my irritation with playing the MMO dampened my enthusiasm to hear the next piece of the story. The MMO section isn’t a complete miss, however. The best part is the multitasking. While playing you can respond to in-game messages from other players, check your (newly received) e-mails, your instagram analog, etc. Juggling all these digital responsibilities built immersion, supported the reality Freeman built, and was a great replication of how we all spend our time on the computer. I just wish playing the MMO was a little more enjoyable.

Gameplay here was a let down. I just wanted to get more of that narrative goodness.

The final part of each act is a video cutscene. These short segments are acted out by Freeman herself. And like everything else in the game, they provide a small view into Freeman’s life at the time. Unlike the desktop and MMO client, however, these come at the cost of immersion. For the other 2/3rds of the game, you are Freeman. Here, though, you’re watching her. I’m sure this was done intentionally: because though they were immersion breaking, the video segments added tangibility to the story that could not have been accomplished in any other way. Cibele isn’t an invented story with fictional characters: it happened to real people in the real world.

Welcome to Freeman's world.

This brings me to Cibele’s most impactful element: its honesty. Cibele is immensely personal and honest. The game tells you without embellishment who Nina Freeman is, who she was, how people found love online, and the power (and destructiveness) of relationships between two emotionally insecure individuals. Cibele is unambitious in the best way. So much of the video game industry is about being big, bold, bombastic, and never-before-seen. Cibele is happy to keep things simple. Keep them true to life. It’s a weighty experience that is unburdened by the story expectations of the medium it exists within. Nothing about the game is groundbreaking, except for the fact that games haven’t really ever told a story like this before. Freeman, and Cibele, seemingly want games to be more. Be different. And I love that.

Stories like Cibele’s are more frequently seen in writing, television and film. For my money, though, none of those have left that same impact as Cibele. The hour and a half I spent playing Cibele hit me harder than the same 1.5 hours I would spend watching a romantic drama. It took me a while to figure out exactly why, but then I realized the answer was quite simple: interactiveness. Games have long had the power to tell new stories because of their interactive nature, or tell old stories in new ways. Learning about Freeman via reading her chat logs, clicking on her photos, listening to her talk to Blake in Valtameri, was powerful because I had full agency in how much, or little, I wanted to know. I wasn’t being told. I was discovering for myself. Cibele shows the power of games to do narrative differently.

I learned what I wanted to, how I wanted to, about Freeman and Blake.
It was a power narrative experience only possible in games.

Cibele isn’t a perfect game, but it is an honest one. While playing I was uncomfortable, intrigued, and transported to a place in time that’s all but vanished. I came away impressed by Freeman’s archival nature and willingness to share her life with her audience. Cibele is a game I never knew I wanted. It’s a game the industry needs more of. Give Cibele a chance and discover what it means to you. I think you’ll like it.

Cibele
4/5