Okay, played episode 1. I'd actually played this one before but not got any further. It looks pretty nice, slickly presented, the writing is pretty good. It's basically a two-hour-long QTE, where they've all but given up on puzzles and (the illusion of) branching choices, but it's a fun one. The writing is a little more try-hard than I'd remembered, like everything is wacky or a quip or a stylistic flourish, and they put lots of swearing in the text descriptions except they f@#!ing censor themselves (if you have to do that, just don't swear - it doesn't automatically make you cool or clever, anyway). Buuut it's energetic, there's lots going on, and even if it's not incredibly original it's done well. Really, the only question is, is half-playing this interactive animated show as good as just watching an episode of Rick & Morty or whatever. And I think my answer is "not reeeeally, but it's close enough that I'll play at least the next episode".
I finished episode 3 and can't be bothered to play any further. Non-TWD nu-Telltale is not quite on the 'don't even bother trying these' pile with Deponia, Lost Horizon, Syberia etc, but I'll be dropping Batman very quickly if I sense it's got all the same issues.
Basically, this game comes down to cutscenes, QTEs and branching narrative. (They pretend to have currency and inventory systems but they're fake.)
The cutscenes are fine, but it's all got that 'hey, this video game writing is almost as good as something you'd see in a movie!' vibe. Like, it mimics the Guardians Of The Galaxy movie style well enough to get you from gameplay chunk to gameplay chunk (or just wholesale steals from Spaced), but it's not strong enough to carry the whole thing, and it regularly slips into cringily try-hard.
The QTEs are just that, and often very annoying, and I don't know if it's because they frontloaded with a great climax for the first one or if I just stopped being impressed by the production values, but the action scenes felt like they got less impressive as they went. None of them were as good as the Wallace & Gromit ones, frankly.
The narrative doesn't really branch, and it doesn't get away with it as much as TWD.
Also, a continuing Telltale irritant is that either they're using the same models for a bunch of primary characters, or they're so unimaginative in their designs that it just looks like they are. Every man is the same white guy with pointy chin and ruffled hair in some shade of brown. Every woman looks the same as each other and all the ones from TWAU. What makes it worse, is they keep introducing plots in these games where one person is disguised as or haunted by another, and it's incredibly confusing because you can't tell how alike they're supposed to now look in this storyline seeing as they all look the same anyway. Again, TWD mostly avoids this, and if a character looks like Lee, he only shows up years after Lee died and you can be confident that they've done it intentionally to let you know Clem is thinking the same thing.
It boils down to the fact that I don't care about any of these characters or storylines enough to do another two hours of QTEs. My not knowing the Borderlands lore at all may have factored in, but the writers just haven't got me invested at all.
Rating: slick but slight and soulless
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