If you’ve been following along with Telltale’s Tales From the Borderlands, you’ll definitely want to watch the launch trailer embedded above. While there’s plenty of flashbacks and wonder as to what’s going to happen next, the climax doesn’t come almost as close to winning you over as some of the other moments in this episode. I was totally excited by Butt Stallion making a re-appearance. I don’t feel like I know any more about the story’s mysteries than I did at the end of Episode 3. Pay attention when you get to Helios.
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It’s all looking like a lot of fun, and we can’t wait to see what shape everything is in for the final episode – what’s the deal with the past and present narratives anyway and are they eventually going to collide?!
From the opening with Rhys hilariously attempting to zig-zag as he runs from his masked captor, to the epic Borderlands staple credits sequence set to a great soundtrack, and all the way to the jaw dropping conclusion, Escape Plan Bravo manages to cram humor, heart, and tension into one of the best episodes that they’ve ever created in any of their series. At her “request”, the would-be Vault Hunters must recover the final piece of Gortys to unlock the secret, mystery vault trapped between dimensions. Hey, it wouldn’t be a proper heist if everything went the way it was planned, now would it? This is particularly true with something as filmic in its construction Tales of the Borderlands, where every shot is carefully constructed and so much of the humour relies on sight gags. Expect to see things like “skin pizzas” (don’t ask), finger gun battles, Handsome Jack-worshipping acolytes, enraged accountants, knowing looks, side-eyes, Cowboy Bebop references…
Escape Plan Bravo is one of those divisive episodes that some will love and some will hate.
Episode four is really about Rhys and Fiona. The problem for this reviewer is that all too often TellTale seems to lose the Mad Max-style grittiness that inspired Borderlands, and maintaining the mature rating seems like a chore for the adventure game maker.
Escape Plan Bravo takes this to new heights, as it brilliantly lampoons some of film’s more cliche devices. The hints and nudges stay just that, and don’t keep poking you over and over to make sure you got the joke.
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Actually, with this Tales From the Borderlands release, both of TellTale’s current series are about to wrap-up, and the developer is about to make a slight detour by adapting the ultimate sandbox game, Minecraft, into an adventure game.
