Alphabet soup translation: Tales From
The Borderlands Versus Life Is Strange.
I know I just talked about Tales, but bear with me here.
I was never planning to ever play
Life Is Strange but I crave story-rich games, and it was in the running for
Best Story in the 2015 videogame awards. The other nominees were Tales From The
Borderlands and Her Story. Tales and Life is Strange must have cancelled each
other out form their sheer opposite polarity, giving Her Story the advantage to
win (I also got Her Story, but since I’ve never played it that will have to
wait for another time.)
So, if I gave you two movies, which
one would you want to watch? A Scifi western with two fish out of water and a
world-changing event, or a high school hipster who geeks about photography and
can also reverse time?
I have been touting Tales to people
by saying “Try episode 1, I promise you won’t be disappointed.” I’m afraid I
can’t say the same for Life is Strange.
Granted, the time-reversal has a
spark of my interest, but buried under it is high school drama. I literally
turned sprinklers on to chase a bunch of popular clique girls off some steps
before dumping a bucket of paint on the lead rich girl, ruining her expensive
cashmere sweater. Afterward it was inside to convince Girl 1 that another Girl
2 wasn’t sexting with Girl 1’s boyfriend.
Between required interactions such as
that I have to listen to Max (the main character) drone on and on in a nearly
deadpan voice about every single little thought in her head as I examine
posters and drawers and everything that could possibly exist while thinking to
myself “Oh my Gooooooooodddddd.”
Every character is deadpan and there
is plenty of harsh language. It feels like, “I am dropping F bombs because I
want to be all grown up and serious business.” It is also sprinkled with drug
use and terms like “hella cool” and “getting blazed”
The rewind is cool, but it is, at the
moment, the only thing that continues
to have my waning interest. If you make a big choice you can see some of the
immediate effects and, if you find you don’t like it, you can rewind and pick
something else. This also works with dialogue for other characters. There are
also small things, like not breaking a snow globe, opening a window so that a
bird flies through instead of breaking its neck, and keeping some photographs
from being ruined.
One particular thing I did really
rubbed me the wrong way, remember the aforementioned girl and the ruined
sweater? I didn’t want to do that but I had no choice. Turning on the
sprinklers made the girls move, but I couldn’t even turn them on without
tampering with the paint bucket first. Your real choice comes afterwards, when
you can either mock the girl who’s sweater you ruined, or else comfort her. I
comforted her, but I still feel like a total jerk, perhaps even more so,
because it was my fault to begin with. Comforting someone doesn’t make it okay
if it was your fault to begin with. The girls weren’t even actively trying to
keep me out of the building, they were simply lounging on the stairs. You know what would happen in real
life? People would step over the girls.
Oh, also you can take the blame for
your BFFs joint when her overly-controlling step-dad/mall ninja starts giving
her crap about it.
So, high school drama peppered with
Prince of Persia rewinds, culminating to chasing a ghost deer through a storm.
There is impending disaster on the horizon to the entire town because of said
storm.
This ends Episode 1.
It still has my interest, barely, but
I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone based on the first episode. I am still hoping
it can redeem itself and that the high school drama-llama ding-dong is done.
Meanwhile...
Tales From The Borderlands launches right
in with a story of buying a super important life-changing Vault Key from bandit
thugs to screw over your new jerk of a boss, the key turns out to be a con.
Then, later, you’re in a bandit death race, which you kinda sorta win because
you’re the only ones left alive. Then you crash down into some abandoned
technological ruins and stumble upon something bigger than you could have
possibly ever imagine. Then the hologram of a dead guy says he’ll probably
murder you.
This ends Tales Episode 1
Really, Tales From The Borderlands
told more story in the first twenty minutes than Life is Strange told in two
hours.
Tales - 1
Life is Strange - 0
