Telltale games has a good problem with their Tales from the Borderlands series. The problem’s that it’s so good, and the bar keeps getting set higher and higher with each episode. The most recent, Escape Plan Bravo, is the weakest episode released, but that doesn’t mean the episode isn’t good – it’s great – but some filler moments weigh the overall story down.

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Picking up right after episode three, Rhys, Fiona and the crew are at the mercy of Vallory and her gang. Fiona strikes a deal with Vallory to steal the last piece of Gortys, the only catch is that the last piece is in Handsome Jack’s office on Helios.

This splits our group up into two in order to get the parts necessary to build a spaceship and a certain someones face to make a disguise. Escape Plan Bravo really starts to develop a relationship with Handsome Jack and Rhys, and it’s interesting to see the former in a more subdued tone due to his whole “I’m just a hologram” thing. Handsome Jack offers some great lines while Rhys is in peril, and even humanizes with Rhys, giving the character much more depth than beyond a villain.

Fiona and Sasha visit Scooter to ask him to turn their car into a spaceship, and he informs them they have to talk to his apprentice to help – who just happens to be Athena’s girlfriend. After some convincing, she agrees, and the group does their best Armageddon/Aerosmith impression and heads into space.

Telltale seems to be saving a lot of their plot points for the finale, because these fetch quest segments seem a little drawn out and like they’re stalling to pad out the length in an already bite-sized episode at just a little over an hour. Some good humor is sprinkled through, but a lot of the fat could have been cut out to make the episode leaner and more well-rounded.

While in space, the ship has some difficulties and forces the crew to take drastic measures to save the ship. Tales from the Borderlands finally kills off a major character here, but it comes off as a little cheap and mostly avoidable. There’s certainly nothing wrong with a comedy-first story to throw in some serious tones to have a well balanced narrative, but it grinds the momentum to a halt, and it doesn’t do the game – or the late character – any justice.

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Near the end of the episode, a scene with the accounting department and Rhys killing each other in a shootout with imaginary guns is hysterical, and it’s Telltale at it’s most goofy and it’s best. It’s the kind of humor that most games can’t nail, but being able to participate in scenes like this heighten the humor even further, and it’s an encounter I still watch on Youtube days after playing the episode – and I still find myself laughing.

Fiona also has to pose as a tour guide in Handsome Jack’s office to help Rhys in, and the back and forth between her and the Handsome Jack wannabees are priceless. While Rhys is usually used as a device for humor, it’s always exciting to see Telltale write hilarious lines for Fiona, too, as the situations she’s put in are a great contrast to her cool and calm attitude.

The last five minutes does a great job setting up the finale, and many of the plot threads we’ve been teased throughout the first four episodes are finally starting to come together, and it’s exciting to imagine what’s to come next for Rhys, Fiona, and the others.

Escape Plan Bravo may not be as consistently good as the previous three episodes, but it unloads some of the biggest laughs and delivers some of the best moments Tales from the Borderlands has seen yet.

This review is based on a review copy provided by the publisher.

Fun with Imaginary Guns | Tales from the Borderlands: Episode Four - Escape Plan Bravo Review
Overall8
Positives
  • Accounting and tour scenes
  • Rhys and Handsome Jack's dialogue
  • Set-up for next episode
Negatives
  • Major death feels cheap
  • Some events seem irrelevant
8Overall Score
Reader Rating: (0 Votes)
0.0

About The Author

Josh is a Senior Editor for New Gamer Nation. He'd love to chat with you about games on Twitter.

  • Nconnors13

    I haven’t played Tales from Borderlands, but every Telltale game I play, the second to last episode in the season is usually the weakest. Seems to hold true here as well (not that an “8” is bad of course).