Did I expect to love the heck out of Telltale’s Borderlands adventure game? I did not. And yet here we are.
I played both available episodes of Tales From The Borderlands over the past week—there’ll be five, when all is said and done. I’m really into it so far, to the point where I’ve started bugging my colleagues at Kotaku to play it.
I like Tales for a lot of reasons: The story is breezy and fun, a kinda mix of Cowboy Bebop space-western heists and Saints Row pop-culture gags. It’s a welcome change of pace from the “Your sister or your father will be murdered and eaten: CHOOSE” vibe of Telltale’s other recent series like Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead. The writing is funny—I laugh out loud regularly throughout each episode. It’s got a bunch of great voice actors—Nolan North, Troy Baker and Patrick Warburton!—lending their voices to a winning cast of characters.
The whole thing is unusually confident and self-possessed, and both of those qualities are exemplified in the episodes’ two musical intro sequences. Nathan’s already written about what makes both episodes good (and not-so-good: They’re still buggy and don’t run very well, and the action sequences are still amazingly shitty). For now, I just wanted to highlight those musical intro sequences.
The Borderlands series has a tradition of integrating cool pop music into their opening credits sequences, ever since Cage The Elephant stole the show in the original game. Telltale’s picked up the baton with ease. Here’s the intro to episode one, featuring “Busy Earnin’” by Jungle.
Here’s the full track, which also gives me fond memories of cruising in Forza Horizon 2:
And here’s the intro to episode two, featuring “Kiss the Sky” by Shawn Lee’s Ping Pong Orchestra:
So good! One of the best opening sequences I’ve seen in a while. Here’s the full track:
I’m looking forward to episode three, partly because I want to know what happens next in the story, but just as much because I want to see the next musical intro. This is the kind of relaxed stylishness I was just saying I wanted more of in Telltale’s adventure games, so I’m happy to see it.