Tales from the Borderlands

You all probably saw this since it was released months ago, but I just saw it and thought it was awesome too - if Rhys and Fiona looked like how they sounded!

What was Tales from the Borderlands like in your cycle?

Sorry. Couldn't resist. I'll see myself out.

Firstly the filthy AI propaganda was nipped in the bud. Loader Bot was self-destructed on more than one occasion, until its will to live was broken and it stopped showing up. Prothean!Handsome AI along with its nameless vessel, that has succumbed to cybernetic implants, were properly air-locked at he first convenience. It was integrated into that spam/advertising satellite and set on a 10k year journey into the sun. That mechanic was more useful in the long run and there was no reason to drop the space station from the orbit. Gortys was used as a bait to lure out the Traveller which was dealt with using Thresher Maw riders. Gortys was properly disposed afterwards. The scam money was used to lure out the revolutionary CL 4 P-TP before it started another robot revolution.

edited 10th Dec '15 12:03:53 PM by googlebot

If the Tales crew after shows up in a future Borderlands game, I hope they continue to fail at most things. They're never going to rampage through a group of bandits like "proper" Vault Hunters.

Intro round up

Episode 1 Zer0 Sum Busy Earnin

Episode 2 Atlas Mugged Kiss The Sky

Episode 3 Catch a Ride Pieces of The People We Love -Its the whacky sitcom you didn't know you wanted

Episode 4 Escape Plan Bravo To the Top 'AND I DON"T WANNA MISS A THING!'

Episode 5 Vault of the Traveler Retrograde ... ... ... Is this the darkness of the dawn?

-sigh-

So did anyone else have difficulty playing Episode 2?

Because the game will exclusively not allow me to play Episode 2, and I just finished Ep 1. I've already sent a support ticket to Telltale with the supportool thingamobob attached, and who knows when they'll get back.

There's something about needing a special patch before you download/install EP 2. I bought the whole thing on Steam for the Winter Sale and I'd rather not uninstall the game, then install the patch and then reinstall. I'm not even certain how that would work as their instructions seemed to imply that you buy "the base game" first and then "manually download Ep 2 from in-game" after getting the patch. Which sounds wrong somehow.

Drivers are up to date and the other episodes work except for 2 apparently.

Huh. I heard that was a thing, but it didn't happen to me when I first got the game a few months back. You might be able to get it to just load Episode 2 again. If that's not working in-game, have you tried verifying your game cache? (In you Steam library, right-click on the game, go to the Properties > Local Files, and the option should be there near the bottom.)

Really, really liked this series. Hope you get to play it.

I had to reinstall it, and that fixed it.

I also finished it last night. :)

This game was both on my to-play-obsessively list, and acting as a filler for me while coming off the emotional high from Life Is Strange. Some good old-fashioned Borderlands humor should have set me straight but...

...despite expecting Jack to be a crazy Jackhole it's always amazing how they manage to make him so nuanced. His remorseful dialogue when you bring up the picture of his daughter. His cold speech towards Rhys about what success looks like. I almost felt bad for him until he tried to hijack Rhys again, and by that point I was just done.

Besides wondering how Athena escape in-between the Presequel and this game - my biggest question would be what happens to the story if you self-destruct Loader Bot in the beginning.

Loader-Bot just uploads himself into another loader-bot and gains some occasional snark to Rhys.

I love how they come this close to making Jack sympathetic and even redeemable, only to pull the rug and go "nah, Jack is a piece of shit and always will be." There is nothing left in Jack to be redeemed.

edited 2nd Jan '17 8:33:14 PM by SilentColossus

He can't be redeemed because at the end of the day he can't be trusted. But they make Jack sympathetic in a way a lot of villains aren't. I like that as shallow and capricious as Jack seems to be, the character has enough depth that he can go to those places, show vulnerability and express those basic human wants and it feels believable. I love it when a story takes the time to show that.

Yup.

And then he decides to kill and/or torture you for whatever petty reason comes to his mind. Jack is a violent narcissist convinced he is a hero. What he does is heroic, including killing employees for not knowing who Rhys is. Or otherwise harming his ego. Anything that deviates from that is against the hero and has to die. Painfully, if possible.

Jack loves his daughter? Maybe, but she is willing to die to escape him. He pumped her with so much Eridium she'd die without it and used her as a slave. Rhys, as one person put it, mutilated himself to escape Jack.

All of Jack's likable traits are drowned in a sea of awfulness. Which applies to pretty much every horrible person ever.

edited 3rd Jan '17 1:57:09 AM by SilentColossus

More random thoughts:

• Atlas Mugged and Vault of the Traveler... I'm rewatching their intros on Youtube and I'm blown away by how well Telltale did these. They capture the mood flawlessly. They fit Borderland's satirical musical moments but match the game's (slightly) more dramatic tone. Rhys looks genuinely pissed off at LB's sacrifice. He doesn't even seem to notice the debris of the Hyperion ship he's hurtling through. The way Rhys and Fiona were headed in completely different directions and the camera angles even reflect that, staying to the left for Fionna, and to the right for Rhys. And of course, the title logo breaking apart with all the other debris = gorgeous.

to the random youtube guy whose comment I was reading while I typed up my own thoughts and listening to the intro. I hope there are more Telltale games that do-

Awww.

• The splash image at the Chapter Menu was a bit misleading though. After watching their relationship develop throughout the game and learning how they came to be at odds in the present - the image that the Chapter 5 image shows makes it seem like Fiona and Rhys will be fighting over the Vault Key. Neat how the chapter separated them completely.
• Still laughing at the one Jack-entry where he warns Rhys not to try and sleep with Fiona.

Season 2?

edited 6th Jan '17 6:54:12 PM by Soble

I've not heard any news of one.

Maybe some day...

There'll be one. The story ended on a cliffhanger. And while Borderlands 3 could include them - Rhys and Fiona aren't really "badass" in the way that the regular Vault Hunters are. At best their story is a side story, so they'd probably be mission contacts in a DLC. But since they start their own Vault team it's unlikely they'd interact with anybody else, or else the final team-up scene was pointless.

Something I just learned - apparently my ending was off the beaten path because I'm hearing about some ending where Rhys actually fights with Gortys during the final battle, and something about Street Fighter moves. My Rhys didn't do that. Episode 5 had him face off against Jack alone, and Fiona alone against Vallory and The Vault Monster.

I kept backtracking through the plot to guess where my finale went differently - Rhys trusted Jack to deal with August and Vasquez, Fiona had Vasquez killed, Rhys told Fiona and Sasha about Jack, Fiona let August die and told Athena to kill Cassius, and Rhys tried to rule Hyperion, but Jack ultimately forced him into uploading Jack into the Hyperion network. Rhys also didn't let Yvette go and... left her to die I guess.

Somewhere in this motley of decisions - I guess Rhys and Fiona's relationship was poisoned to the point where they didn't work together in the finale. But since Rhys's pod crashed elsewhere... the only change I could see making sense would be for Yvette to help Rhys get to a pod earlier. Or maybe by rejecting Hyperion Jack is destroyed earlier and Rhys doesn't face him alone, he ends up fleeing with Fiona.

Anyway, guess I'll have to go back through.

...Okay, how exactly did your game end? Because I can't help feel like you missed something.

Yeah, you didn't get the Vault Monster fight at all, not even with Fi and everybody? Did you still go into the Vault?

Yeah, the game is supposed to continue after the showdown with Jack and Vallory. What you described isn't the ending.

edited 7th Jan '17 12:10:50 PM by SilentColossus

Soble do you know who the Stranger is?

Wait, so you're saying you did the Vault Monster fight but Rhys wasn't there? That I could see. I haven't finished my take-over-Hyperion run yet.

I think he is talking about the part where Fiona blows up Gortys. Which occurs in like the first 50 minutes of a 2 hour episode.

That's what I thought at first, but then I wasn't clear on what happened to them after that, whether the credits rolled or what.

I don't think there is an alternate ending.

...kay.

I guess what I'm basically saying is that I missed out on the giant monster fight. Fiona solo'd that. I don't know what route you had to take to have Rhys join in, and I'm not sure exactly how the plot could have changed to include him - lest the final battle with Jack not occur.

The Stranger is Loader Bot and I definitely got to the credits of Episode 5.

edited 7th Jan '17 5:34:42 PM by Soble