New Tales from the Borderlands Thread - Welcome To The Nuclear Fallout

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  • so there's a fiona vaultlander if you finish ep 5 with anu/fran relationship of 50% or above

  • So in the final ending which would be considered the best, everyone lives including Louie who they say was brought back because they simply got his parts back from the rubble. (which really begs the question why in the second best ending where everyone lives but Louie why did they not get his parts). I really do not like how the ending really is the only thing that changes, but how you get it is just taking a collection of choices that have very little reason for why the ending would end the way it does.

    Anyway, Rhys appears in a phone call one last time to thank you but also still chastises you. It is pretty clear this will be the canon ending going forward. (Again, I also really don't like it when a choice based game has a developer chosen "correct" ending when the purpose of the game was making story choices) Also going forward, I have no idea what the Fiona set up will be for in terms of next game it will be followed up in. It seems because the shard heals people and Felix's watch also healed people this is connected in someway. If I had to guess Sasha got warped to the galaxy the shard is going to or something. Not sure how this works outside a solo Tales game as I cant see BL4 focusing much on this, unless it gets sidequested. Or DLC'd or something.

    Now its Gearbox and they don't know what's next either so no real point in thinking about it too hard. Could even end up like every other Borderlands ending where they forget the ending set up to the next game anyway. That war is still coming right guys? I think its canonically been what, 9 years now? lol

  • edited October 2022

    It’s the one constant I see in BL games, and it was something even in the original Tales is guilty of…sequel bating with no idea of what comes next. Gearbox always does it, which wouldn’t be a problem if they had a roadmap or a consistent development team making these games. They don’t meet either of those criteria. The original BL had a different director/writer/team as BL2, so did the Pre Sequel, so did Tales, so did BL3, and so did New Tales (not counting Wonderlands). They set something up, playing it off as hugely important, meaningful, and symbolic, but end up having a completely different creative lead take over and force them to rectify it somehow. It gets infuriating because of the lack of consistency, a failure to follow through, and putting future writers into a box that they need to work out of.

    The MCU benefits from a single figurehead in Kevin Fiege to connect everything together. Casey Hudson for Mass Effect, the sole director of all three games and a consistent leading figure, even when other people left he could oversee everything. Hideo Kojima with Metal Gear, same thing. With Borderlands, who is that one person? I guess Randy Pitchford, but that’s not a good thing.

    Poogers555 posted: »

    So in the final ending which would be considered the best, everyone lives including Louie who they say was brought back because they simply

  • edited October 2022

    Tales 1 does not sequel bate as hard as the rest though. Tales 1 I would say simply ends more ambiguous, there isnt a real set up for a sequel. BL1 is the only one that ends that actually is directly followed up on in the sequel with Angel and the Hyperion Satellite. BL2 ends with the idea of vaults on other planets and we did get there, but def not in the same way it was being presented there. Pre-Sequel's ending is easily the worst in terms of following up as it very clearly says a war is coming and then that didnt go anywhere. BL3 surprisingly doesn't outside hinting Lilith didnt die and then the last DLC basically confirming that. Now new Tales throws Fiona in for another set up that will probably be greatly changed by the time they get to it.

    Fairly certain BL4 will follow up on the War thing as I remember I think I saw someone tweeted (probably Randy) that seemed to hint they'd actually follow it up. Where Fiona finding Sasha fits in, not sure how it would work out in a mainline game.

    I really have no idea who heads creative direction at Gearbox, I don't know how it worked at Telltale either for comparison. Just in general I hope the creative team actually looks at BL2 and Tales and tries to capture that style of writing and world building, because right now a lot of it feels like throwing everything and anything into the story with no regards of what it means for the greater universe. Or better yet, actually collaborate with the original creative team leads from Tales.

    It’s the one constant I see in BL games, and it was something even in the original Tales is guilty of…sequel bating with no idea of what com

  • edited October 2022

    I think 6k is actually a more accurate estimate. SteamDP's VG Insights I would say is the most accurate estimation vast majority of the time and it has New Tales as 5.9k on Steam.

    So if we estimate each console sold 6k and even say Epic sold 6k, after splits, and let's say everyone bought the 50 dollar deluxe edition, New Tales in its first week has made about 893,940 dollars. (I didnt include Switch because I have no idea what an accurate estimation would be, but I feel very safe in saying it probably has sold the least)

    This also isn't related but I actually cant find anyone making commentary videos on this game in a playthrough or livestream that isn't sponsored. That post mentions it a little, but seriously pretty much all coverage has been sponsored to a point where it feels sad, like the only way for this to get any traction is to pay people to play it. I think the only person I've seen so far who has been fully playing it without sponsorship and is commentating on it is DomTheBomb, (who I think ended at episode 3 for now and said he finds it very meh) like I can't even get a general feeling for how others feel because I cant find anyone.

    Not that we didn't already know, but yeah, this game was a huge flop. https://www.reddit.com/r/Borderlands/comments/yeij3m/new_tales_from_the_borderlands_was_a_massive/

  • Gearbox releasing a narrative intensive game after 3 years of the writing being their biggest criticism, when the writing is greatly criticized.

  • Copy/paste this and post it to r/borderlands lol.

    Poogers555 posted: »

    I think 6k is actually a more accurate estimate. SteamDP's VG Insights I would say is the most accurate estimation vast majority of the tim

  • I gave it a little bit more of a chance, I watched some clips.

    It’s just… not good guys. I could give points for effort in some parts, but it’s just not good.

    It’s uncanny. On one hand you have the crew behind Tales 1, who put their heart and soul into a game that was close to being shelved for not making money (with a skeleton crew no less), and on the other you have New Tales, backed by Gearbox itself, and this is what they come up with. They literally do not animate the shark fights! Do you know how many more complicated things Telltale animated in Tales with a crappier engine? Look at the intro for episode 5 or 4!

    I can’t even man…

  • I keep seeing a lot of people mention how Anthony Burch was a part of the game and this for whatever reason negates any criticism of the game because he was lead for BL2 and worked on TFTBL1. I feel like there is a lot of misinformation about it like so many thinking Burch was responsible for Tales 1's story direction. At the start sure, (and I believe he is credited in a video somewhere as this) but pretty much everything changed from the original story pitch he sent off to Telltale with the only real thing remaining was a Pandorian Con Arts and Hyperion Lackey team up to find Atlas treasure. (Burch has also said for the most part this all started with him sending stuff off to Telltale for them to handle, but that isn't the exact quote just my memory)

    He is also listed under external writers, which I assume would be a bit more contract based. I don't really want to assume just how involved he was as an external writer because we really don't know if this means he was more of a consultant or a contractor who was writing a lot. But worth nothing out of the 3 external writers, he isn't even the lead writer among them. So I am a bit surprised so many people think 1 guy in a position like this seemingly negates the entire writing team consisting of people who did not work on the original. I mean it takes 2 seconds to look up the writers of Tales 1, including the season lead which you'd think would be important considering Tales was the only other post TWD game to keep consistent creative leads between episodes.

    Lastly this is all just subjective criticism, but I do think Burch's writing simply hasn't been as good as time went on. I think right now a lot of people are kind of looking back in nostalgia simply because BL3 and NTFTBL's writing is so bad. I like BL2's writing overall and I think it is his best work. I mean don't forget BL2's writing was being criticized all those years ago too. I think once Tales came around it really complimented BL2's storytelling. Pre-Sequel is the thing I see being brought up a lot saying how well written it is, but I feel again everyone is forgetting that when it came out, people felt the writing wasn't the best. Lot of annoying/forgettable characters and the overall Handsome Jack origin story that felt kind of off especially considering his relationship with characters like Lilith and Roland. I don't think Pre-Sequel is bad in any way, but I do think if we are comparing it to BL2 it isn't nearly as good, and like I was saying I think right now that writing is being more fondly remembered simply because the writing now is so poor that "okay" writing looks amazing.

  • Also I really wish I wasn't so negative about pretty much everything about NTFBL, but just... damn. How is Wolf this close to concurrent players of this brand new game?

  • I thought Anthony Burch helped write the dialogue for Handsome Jack? I vaguely remember either him or Telltale saying he was brought in specifically for that.

    Poogers555 posted: »

    I keep seeing a lot of people mention how Anthony Burch was a part of the game and this for whatever reason negates any criticism of the gam

  • Honestly, the fact that they haven't advertised his involvement at all makes me think he wasn't really involved that much, because "Written by BL2 lead writer" would have been a decent selling point for some people.

    Poogers555 posted: »

    I keep seeing a lot of people mention how Anthony Burch was a part of the game and this for whatever reason negates any criticism of the gam

  • I believe he wrote specifically the Jack-O-Pedias?

    lupinb0y posted: »

    I thought Anthony Burch helped write the dialogue for Handsome Jack? I vaguely remember either him or Telltale saying he was brought in specifically for that.

  • A lot of this is my memory but if I remember this all correctly, Gearbox and Telltale partnered up in 2013. From there Burch gave a general outline of what the story should be. And then pretty much all of that changed outside the idea of hunting down Atlas stuff. This was also with the first original team, as neither Burch or the team that ended up being the Tales team were the ones to name Rhys and Fiona, just to give context of how many changes were going on in terms of team members and stuff (not to mention the original/one of the original storylines that had 3 characters).

    So by the time the team that made Tales got to it, so much was already changed, and really by this point Telltale was the one steering the ship fully. Burch then joined the writing team at episode 3 as another writer, but was not the lead writer, but I think it would be safe to say was probably move involved with Tales 1 than New Tales. If he helped write Handsome Jack dialogue before joining in episode 3 that wouldn't surprise me, but if we are talking overall storyline, not a lot of what Burch first pitch remained.

    lupinb0y posted: »

    I thought Anthony Burch helped write the dialogue for Handsome Jack? I vaguely remember either him or Telltale saying he was brought in specifically for that.

  • They literally do not animate the shark fights! Do you know how many more complicated things Telltale animated in Tales with a crappier engine? Look at the intro for episode 5 or 4!

    Telltale didn't have the budget for a massive gunfight in Episode 4 and yet they still made a hilarious massive gunfight in Episode 4.

    Step the hell up, Gearbox

    Cocoa2736 posted: »

    I gave it a little bit more of a chance, I watched some clips. It’s just… not good guys. I could give points for effort in some parts, bu

  • Dojo really changed the name of the thread and then didnt say what he thought of the rest of the game

  • I have to actually finish episode 3 to give more thoughts, lmao

    Poogers555 posted: »

    Dojo really changed the name of the thread and then didnt say what he thought of the rest of the game

  • edited October 2022

    "So in this scene, there is a gun fight happening!"

    "So in this scene there is a giant monster!"

    "So in this scene, there is this living god thing that can kill everything with their mind beams!"

    Every character in said scene

  • Ok but, Froopy is the worst character in the game right.

  • -and then the door is a frogurt machine and the Foop thing comes back and everyone starts doing ballet!

    Ekelund21 posted: »

    Ok but, Froopy is the worst character in the game right.

  • Noooo! Turn back now! You will find only pain that way! Don't do it!

  • edited February 2023

    This is another edition of me complaining about New Tales, but it does feel pretty crappy knowing that the "best ending" is obviously the canon ending. No way in hell Gearbox is going to follow up on the different endings. So either those characters will never be seen again or the ending where everyone lives is the canon one. That's just something I really do not like, because what is the point of playing games where the entire focus is on making narrative decisions but then the next game doesn't care and chooses the "correct" ones?

    Kind of like how I guess Rhysha is 100% canon. Something tells me Gearbox didn't even know there was the someone else option, but in fairness it was very hidden, but still. Less forgivable is that fact that saying No is very clearly an option but is ignored for the "right" choice. It just feels lazy knowing this is what the attitude is for handling determinate options. Is the design layout just "Player choice doesnt matter in anyway cuz I sure as hell dont want to figure it out, so we will just use my choices as the correct ones."?

  • Man tries to warn Gearbox to not make an in house Tales from the Borderlands game before termination. Circa 2020

  • edited February 2023

    We did it guys. Looks like we saved the universe!

    one year later

  • I liked it!

    AChicken posted: »

    Noooo! Turn back now! You will find only pain that way! Don't do it!

  • edited November 2022

    Guess I’ll be the one to be different here and say that I liked it! The first Tales is better, but I still really enjoyed this one. Especially Fran and her Frozen Yogurt. Collecting the Vaultlanders was fun too.

    There’s definitely one category that this game does better than the original Tales and that’s customization. I remember any customization change I made in the original Tales would be gone/ignored by the next episode. Here, not only does the customization changes stay until you want to change them, but the customization changes are already there from the beginning if you decide to replay the game. I played the game for a second time and had Fran in her foop outfit and Anu and Octavio dressed as goths from the beginning of the playthrough.

    Also, getting the perfect ending is relatively easy. Keep the skateboard score above 70% and the friendship scores above 50% and everyone will survive.

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