Tales from the Borderlands, however, is funny. I for real laughed, with my throat making noises and everything. And it's not just Borderland's wriggling psychos and dubstep (I mean, that stuff is there) but characters that made me laugh because they're properly funny human people. I like them. I think they're cute. I seriously want to find out what happens to these people. On Pandora. The space world of Borderlands that I have never really cared much about.

The first episode of Tales from the Borderland also feels much bigger than any of Telltale's previous opening episodes. It's a little over two hours long, it hits a bunch of locations, it's told from two perspectives, and it introduces four main characters and several side characters. It's a really neatly presented pilot, and you don't have to know much of anything about Borderlands to enjoy it.

And whether or not my choices 'matter' (I'll compare my story to someone else's after the next episode, though it feels a bit like ruining a magician's illusion out of spite), it matters to me that I'm making them. It'd be flippant to call Tales from the Borderlands an 'interactive movie' because it's not like watching a movie at all. My role feels creative, even when I'm just selecting the joke I want my character to say. I feel like I'm taking risks, too. If I want two characters to bond, there's a sort of puzzle to it, where I have to read their personalities and the situation and predict how they'll respond to each other. It's not challenging to any degree, or something I can fully fail—more like a fun activity I invent for myself as I test the characters' wants and limits.