"Episode 1: Zer0 Sum" In-Depth Review.
Hey ho, ladies and gentlemen! Welcome to my super detailed review of "Tales From The Borderlands: Episode 1: Zer0 Sum". I'm also going to do a review for "Game Of Thrones: Episode 1: Iron From Ice" sometime soon, and then, eventually, a battle of sorts comparing the two and naming who is better! Keep in mind that this is all my personal opinion, but I would love to hear what you guys think in the comments below. To quote a familiar face, "You can hold a grudge if you want, no harm no foul, your thoughts are your own."
The review will be split into two parts. The first part will be the more technical critique, with every aspect reviewed, but no spoilers shared (though some minor plot details from early on will be shared). The second half, however, will touch on more specific things that may contain spoilers. I will let you know what is when, so don't get your panties in a twist.
NON-SPOILER REVIEW:
Story: Oh my god, do I love it already. The story focuses on two unreliable narrators: Fiona and Rhys. Fiona is a con woman born and raised on Pandora into a life of crime, but also knowing how to deal with tough situations without needing to get physical. Rhys, on the other hand, is a Hyperion worker trying to make it big. He isn't strong physically, neither mentally... AND THAT JUST MAKES ME LOVE HIM EVEN MORE! So there is a mysterious figure who takes the two hostage, interrogating them and trying to find details something called the "Gortys Project". So Rhys and Fiona both tell him this story and how they think it all went down (with both having different views, it makes it hard for the player to know who's lying and who's telling the truth). And that's all I'll give away, because this story is meant to be discovered on its' own.
Not to get more critique-y with the plot, I must say that I love the whole unreliable narrator aspect, as some odd things get explained the further the story progresses and the perspectives change. And also, some choices that one character made might turn out to be false, in ridiculous and hilarious fashion. It stays fast paced throughout, and is a joy to experience. I also must credit Telltale for not only making this episode a great pilot, but also a great episode in itself. Not only does it leave you wanting more with questions to be answered, and goals to achieved, but it also feels complete. The episode finished its' own story arc, and if every episode continues the overarching plot along with each episode having it's own focused story, then this may well be one of the best games that Telltale has ever made.
The episode also ran for 2 hours and 20 minutes, a great length that hasn't appeared for Telltale in a long time.
I never felt dis-interested, and the story took enough twists and turns to surprise me, and make me enjoy every bit of it.
Story= 10/10
Characters: Now as I've said earlier, both Fiona and Rhys are some of the best protagonists that the Telltale team has ever made. And no, I'm not over-exaggerating.
Fiona might seem the more sensible of the two, but not to the point that the whole unreliable narrator thing is ruined (to elaborate, I didn't feel like Fiona was always the one telling the truth, and Rhys was always lying). Though the player can choose to make her into whatever kind of person that they want her to be, she is set up as a tough female protagonist. She doesn't need to have a gun on her at all times (a rare trait on Pandora), she knows how to outsmart and persuade others to reach her needs. She loves her family, I mean, the ones she loves and was raised with/by. Overall, interesting and unique. Laura Bailey does a good job, and she fits the persuading personality.
Now I'll be honest, Rhys is definitely my favorite of the two. Though not a very original character, he has an undeniable charm to him, and he had me laughing at all occasions. He's the one that has the funnier dialogue options of the two, and I found myself choosing them more as him then I did as Fiona. And when conflict arises, he gets through thanks to sure luck, and his wussy animations make him even funnier. Troy Baker is fantastic in the role, and he is what probably makes the character work.
The side cast is also fantastic, with fantastic work by the likes of Nolan North and Patrick Warburton both playing antagonists, and doing excellent jobs at that, though Jason Toplaski gets the most focus as this episodes' protagonist: the extreme but hilarious Boassanova. Chris Hardwick and Erin Yvette also do excellent jobs as the protagonists allies, and I loved both of their characters.
Characters= 9/10
Gameplay: This game follows the standard modern Telltale formula, which follows the pattern of choose some dialogue, walk around and explore for a bit, talk a bit more, than get in a combat situation, rinse and repeat. Though there is nothing wrong with this approach (I still enjoyed it), it might seems a bit dated and non-enjoyable to some.
You make choices that will effect the story to some variable degree, and most are usually presented to be bigger than they probably are. I personally didn't mind that as much here, as they lead to different comedic moments, that I all found to be hilarious.
Exploring is light, time to time you might find an object that might have some little effect later. You can also approach others, and ask them their thoughts on the situation, then continue on.
Combat is the same as usual. Similar to games such as "Heavy Rain", you will fight by pressing down certain buttons at the right time. Once again, this might turn off some players, but I still enjoyed it. In fact, I thought the combat was handled better than before, will prolonged action scenes swapping from different perspectives. They are mostly hilarious as well as deliciously violent.
Gameplay= 8/10
Visuals: The game uses the same engine that Telltale has used with "The Walking Dead", "The Walking Dead: Season Two" and "The Wolf Among Us". Don't take that as a negative, the game still looks as good as Telltale's best. The character models look especially nice on my PS4, but some untextured background elements were distracting, and seemed like a random blob of black paint on a priceless painting. The game also ran in 60FPS, which was a great joy that I hadn't yet experienced. I also found the loading screens to be much shorter, only rounding at about 5 seconds each. The game didn't lag nearly as much, and the game picked up on all of my movements during combat (a problem in the past).
Visuals= 9/10
Writing: Telltale's staff is very talented, presenting tons of comedic content, along with some dramatic undertones that foreshadow events to come. It was very similar to the likes of "Guardians Of The Galaxy" and "The LEGO Movie", in the sense that there was tons of both spoken and visual humor, and I couldn't remember a gap of a few minutes that I wasn't laughing. No jokes fell flat for me, and the references (though there weren't too many), all worked and had me laughing hard.
Writing= 10/10
Overall: Telltale has done it again. They have made a fantastic pilot that introduced a great story, awesome characters and interesting choices. I thought it looked great, and ran smoothly on my PS4. The writing was superb, and I was laughing frequently. The gameplay might be annoying to some, but worked fine with me. The action was long, and handled better than any Telltale game before it. If Telltale keeps this up, then this might be one of Telltale's best games to date.
Final rating: 10/10
P.S. I gave it a 10/10 despite the gameplay and graphic faults, since I mostly said that they might disturb others. However, I wasn't bothered, and the untextured graphics don't bring the overall episode down for me.
SPOILER REVIEW:
Actually... there really isn't that much for me to touch on here, I explained a lot of it pretty well in the non-spoiler bit. Whatever, I guess. I'll just touch on a few things.
First off, the realization of how Rhys tried to stop August from leaving was absolutely hilarious, and a great of portraying the illusion of choice without pissing me off.
I asked Shade not to come, because I didn't want him to make noise and give us away. Since he didn't come, he ended up getting shot by August, and well... yeah. Not sure if that actually killed him or anything, but that caught me off guard and I regretted my decision immediately (though his line like: "Now I wish you let me come with you." felt like they were trying to force me to feel bad. It worked fine without that).
Though I wish that we could have gotten to fight Bossanova ourselves, it makes sense that we didn't, so I won't argue with that.
Loader Bot was fan-diddly-tastic, and made the best references and some of the best jokes of the whole episode ("Righteous father, I have finally found you!")
Vasquez was pretty funny as well, and I loved him pointing out that the dead body floating by helped prove his point. Fourth wall breaking like that is the best kind, and I hope we get more jokes like that in the future.
The World Of Curiosities was definitely creepy, and a nice change of atmosphere from the desert. And when Shade was missing from his pedestal, I was like "oh shiiiittt."
I also liked that the guards had their own funny personalities. The time when Rhys is trying to choke one out and the guard thinks that it was a joke, that was pure genius right there, and had me laughing hard. Same goes for the psychos, the one that Fiona and Vaughn rode with was also a good addition.
So... yeah. I could go on for a lot longer with this, but I think you guys get the idea. I didn't find much wrong with it, and I stand by my score of 10/10. So there you go! I'll get onto writing my review for Game Of Thrones Episode 1 sometime soon, so be on the lookout for that (I'll probably link it here when I'm done). So anyways, have a great day!
Comments
Yeah, I really loved this episode.
Kind of hope it doesn't suffer a major rewrite with the second episode like Wolf Among Us, but considering this is Telltale doing their own thing instead of being hounded by canon rules, I highly doubt that's going to happen again.
I hope it won't be a length illusion like in The Wolf Among Us when the first episode was long but the others were shorter. I don't mind that this much but sometimes it can ruin season's perfect mood. But after seeing Episode 1 of GoT which was also long, my doubts are smaller now.
I just want to play so bad as Rhys or Fiona again.
Also, am I the one who likes Fiona slightly better? I don't know if it's because of her English-like outfit or the personality, but I just...do. Though Rhys is funnier, that I must admit.
Can't wait for the spoilerous review.
I agree, I loved the episode. Borderlands is one of my favorite video game franchises and Telltale did an amazing job of incorporating it into a solid story-based instead of gameplay-based game. I still prefer GoT Ep.1 more (mainly because I am a fan of GoT show and books more than the BL games) but at the same time I loved this one too.
Added the spoiler review stuff, so yeah!