I have sometimes wondered what the easiest Platinum trophy in the Playstation catalogue might look like.
A couple of games in the collection have flirted with such an accolade, but have usually be spared by at least something of note that prevented it from hitting the very bottom of the difficulty scale.
In what should come as absolutely no surprise to anyone, the answer lies within an episodic, interactive choice-based story spin-off from the Borderlands series.
Set somewhere among the aftermath of Borderlands 2 and Borderlands : The Pre-Sequel, Tales from the Borderlands follows the story of tandem duo Rhys and Fiona. Rhys - a Hyperion employee and Fiona - a professional con artist, unexpectedly team up after a deal involving a monetary exchange for a faked Vault Key goes wrong and leads them to go in search of a real vault containing real riches.
It maintains alot of the key story-based values you expect from a typical Borderlands title. It's still got it's comedic edge, a dirge of wacky and wonderful characters - Many of whom are returning from the first 3 Borderlands games - and it's all tied together with some excellent dialogue and interactions between them all.
It should go without saying, but it's perhaps worth mentioning that, despite the above similarities, the core experience is completely different to what you're used to. The high octane combat and thoroughly detailed RPG system takes a back seat to make way for a story-driven experience requiring tentative button inputs to keep you engrossed in the lore, with regular intervention for dialogue options and button mashing sequences.
The game is also accompanied by a banging soundtrack that compliments the intros/outros to each chapter, which is definitely something I didn't expect.
I did have a major gripe with the game though. It does a good job of trying to build up the drama around the choices the player makes throughout the game and make them seem like they'll matter to a much grander scale later, only for this to not really be the case in the end.
In the interest of maintaining as much of a spoiler-free stance as possible - though I will slightly give it away to just summarise my point - the part of the game in Chapter 5 where it becomes apparent your decisions impact on the story relate to something completely immaterial to any sort of story outcome, and instead ends up being much more meaningless than that. It's hard to not be too vague, but you'll understand what I mean when you see it. I'd built this up in my own head to be a grand finale where your decisions may impact critical moments of life and death, or significant actions that dramatically change the plot or the ending - But it's nowhere near any of this sort of stuff, and that detracts from the experience for me when it comes to games like this where the player is given the choice to influence the course of the game. The climax needs to be hard-hitting and significant to the ending.
The dialogue prompts pop up very regularly too, so the game gives you the impression every choice matters and a big path is being woven in the background to come to a specific outcome tailored to your choices. If the idea behind the very regular interaction is to just ensure players stay engaged, then that's fine, but I do also feel like there has to be more to it than what this game gives you in the end. Ultimately, did the game make me care enough about who I could and couldn't take into my vault hunter group for the grand finale? Not at all.
Regarding trophies, this is medium-sized list, with a total of 36 trophies, including the Platinum, and it's an incredibly easy list to break down and go through.
The structure of the game is broken up into 5 individual episodes, with each individual episode consisting of 6 chapters. It's not clear when a chapter begins and ends other than the fact it'll just trigger a trophy notification, and the menus only allow you to begin a specific episode from the very start, so there's no further breakdown of chapters that allow you to replay certain portions of the game from the main menu.
The "Tales Twice Told" trophy, awarded for Completing Episode 5, is awarded upon conclusion of the story. Naturally, you'll start with Episode 1 and work your way through, playing the game exactly like you would in it's natural storytelling flow. You don't necessarily have to do it this way - All episodes are available to play fresh out of the gate and there's no pre-requisite to unlock each episode in conjunction with passing through the episode prior, but it wouldn't exactly make much sense to do it out of kilter anyway would it?
Admittedly, I don't have much experience with games of this variety, but it did remind me of Heavy Rain. This differs in the sense that all the decisions you make are relatively consequence-free. In Heavy Rain, every choice, decision or action you made carried significance to the shape of the plot. Characters could die based on your choices and the path of the plot could dramatically change, throwing up a variety of different gameplay paths and endings. That's what gave it the edge of difficulty it had, and Tales from the Borderlands lacks the same sort of depth in comparison. The interaction here feels completely token and does not have the same weight on your shoulders that Heavy Rain gave you when it came to making decisions.
Heavy Rain also contained intense quick time events and fumbling inputs or missing prompts could have dire consequential outcomes which impacted the rest of the game, especially if you were going for trophies that meant you had to achieve specific endings. Tales of the Borderlands is way more forgiving to almost an infinite degree. You can technically fail. I saw a "game over" screen a couple of times due to dropped or no inputs that caused the death of a key character, but all you'd be prompted to do was reload the last checkpoint and you were free to resume from where you left off. This lack of jeopardy makes it incredibly easy and feels like you're always just going through motions. In effect, you can't really lose or fail.
Each episode clocks in at roughly anywhere between 1 and a half to 2 hours in length, totalling a 10-12 hour experience for all 5 episodes. I didn't binge it all in a couple of sessions, and committed to an episode roughly every 3 days, to ensure the story remained fresh in my mind.
Each episode comes with 7 trophies, with a trophy individually dedicated to each chapter within an episode, and capped off with an overall completion trophy to sign off the ending. Rinse and repeat this format across all 5 chapters and that's how you end up with 36 trophies when you include the Platinum.
It's that straight-forward, there's really not much else to say. I almost wanted to qualify this game for an "N/A" in terms of overall difficulty rating but just for the benefit of consistency in attributing a mark to every game I've ever completed, it just about makes it onto the scale, but even that's incredibly generous in itself. There is certainly justification for why this game shouldn't even be attributed a score and I wouldn't argue against that at all.
You can still see a "Game Over" screen if you don't react quickly enough to certain button prompts that otherwise result in death, but that's about as far as I can stretch the logic, and I'm doing alot of heavy lifting to come up with something there.
However, after the struggles I was put through by Borderlands : The Pre-Sequel, the change of pace was welcome and it was refreshing to just sit back and take something in for what it was for a change. I didn't think it hit the right spot purely for it's superficial outcomes and lack of genuine weight the users choices ultimately have, but it's an easy Platinum trophy, and if you're after something a little bit different, it gives you that.
Notable Trophies -
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| Tales Twice Told - Completed Episode 5 |
Hardest Trophy -
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