By: Robert Murphy
Why is something so gruesome just so damn funny? This was a
question I asked myself multiple times during this episode of Tales from the Borderlands and it is
something of a Borderlands specialty
to begin with. Atlas Mugged brings
our rag tag group of characters into the light more, what kind of characters
they’re and what they’re all about. On top of this, a monkey wrench is thrown
into the pile when Handsome Jack is brought back in a holographic form. You
also have skags, Psychos, an ancient Atlas project and a blood thirsty assassin
thrown on top of it all among the long list of things destined to try and kill
you. Whether or not you can come out on top still remains to be seen.
When you last left off in the story, the group found
themselves in an odd Atlas bunker with a map to an unknown treasure, whether
this is a vault or a vault key or just a hidden treasure trove is not known yet
but your team is anxious to find out. Not like you have much else going on now
that the 10 million dollar deal you had going before has blown up in both your
characters faces. This trend of bad luck tends to continue onward in this
episode, it seems you can never catch a break when you’re trying to pull off a big
time heist and everything seems to want to work against you. I found myself
wondering just how much more bad luck can come across my characters after
narrowly escaping death within the first twenty minutes of the game. Assassins
started to have it in for me, my old boss from Hyperion paid me a special
visit, bounty hunters came for my head and old enemies with a grudge wanted to
put a bullet in my back. I just couldn’t catch a break but God was it fun.
Rhys has found himself in a bit of an odd situation in this
episode; it would appear the Hyperion drive I placed in my head last episode
had an imprint of a long lost friend, Handsome Jack. Even stuck in a hologram
mode hasn’t changed his attitude though as he tries to rip out your vocal cords
for talking too much, I really did miss this guy. Jack pops in on many of
Rhys’s storyline and causes him to come off as a little crazy. How you deal
with him will especially cause this to happen but no matter how you treat him,
he’s still better than ever. His humor throughout the story had me laughing
non-stop, whether it’s giving me the rundown on who my former Hyperion boss use
to be or phasing his hand through the crotch region of my buddy Vaughn and
putting on a little puppet show, it was all brilliant. Handsome Jack’s presence
also makes the story so much stronger, where before in the first episode we
only saw Zer0 come into play, you now have a heavy hitter among your group and
it makes the story feel more apart of the Borderlands
games. You feel like you could have seen Rhys or Fiona somewhere in the
background of one of the previous games and that’s something unique.
As for Fiona, she and her sister (Sasha) are going through a
bit of an emotional time after their long time friend and mentor betrayed them.
Depending on how you went in the previous episode things could be really somber
between the two. Sasha is still young so her emotions come out more in anger
over what has happened and it’s up to you to decide if you want to join in on
that. You can also take the risk of trying to take the high road and getting
her to forgive him for betraying you both. It’s not the sort of thing you have
come across in a Borderlands game
before that’s for sure. Yes, you’ve dealt with death and loss in the game
before but this whole situation digs into an emotional angle that you don’t
deal with a lot in these games and it was a nice touch by TellTale.
This brings me to the wonderful storytelling that comes
together this time around. Atlas Mugged hits
so many different layers; the first episode was fun and fraught with classic Borderlands danger but now you get to
see a whole other side to things. Borderlands
2 did a great job of taking the characters from the first game and bringing
them to life as unique people for your character to interact with in the story
and that’s what I feel is being done here as well. Last episode Zer0 had more
personality in the ten to twenty minutes he was on screen compared to the
entirety of the second game. Rhys, Fiona and all the characters are terrific
really and with additions like Scooter in this episode, I can see the future of
Tales from the Borderlands getting
even better.
In conclusion, episode two of Tales from the Borderlands is an excellent continuation to the
story. Every minute was filled with laughs, danger and some more emotional
scenes that will lead you to some tough decisions this time around. The
addition of Handsome Jack to the story was also a great step forward and led to
plenty of laughs and interesting scenarios. Our main characters get more
revealed about them too and become more fleshed out in terms of their story and
their relationships. I’m interested to not only see where everything headed but
also to see just what will happen to present day Rhys and Fiona. All I can say
is, keep things coming because I’m ready for what happens next.
Good:
- Plenty of laughs and hilarious dialogue
- Handsome Jack as well as other returning characters like
Scooter
- Fantastic continuation of the story
- The emotional point between Sasha and Fiona (there’s one
between Rhys and Vaughn too)
Bad:
- Ain’t got nothing for you here
Scully Rating: 9.0
out of 10
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