Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy: The Telltale Series review

Telltale’s latest interactive story marks their first foray with a Marvel property, and it’s somewhat fitting that it would be Guardians of the Galaxy. After all, Telltale is becoming so adept at collecting licensed properties to make games about maybe they should change their name to Taneleer Tivan. This new tale offers up some pleasant surprises by smartly blending elements from both Marvel’s movies and comics featuring the Guardians, while returning to Telltale’s own roots some when it comes to gameplay and weighty decisions. It still carries many of the issues seen in more recent Telltale games, though, as Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy is plagued with bugs, glitches, and inconsistent writing.

The first episode begins with the Nova Corps once again begging the Guardians for help. Thanos, the Mad Titan, isn’t hunting for Infinity Gems this go around, but instead is after a Kree artifact called the Eternity Forge. No one knows what power the Forge would bestow, exactly, but the fact that Thanos is after it means it is definitely something that should be kept away from him at all costs. Thanos isn’t the only one who has eyes on the Forge, however, as one of the last remaining Kree in the galaxy, Hala the Accuser, sees it as a way to enact revenge on Thanos for pushing her people to brink of extinction.

Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy is an interesting venture. Similar to its Batman series, Telltale has decided to step outside what is perceived as canon in either Marvel’s comic or movie universes with this property and tries to forge its own iteration of these characters. In doing so, the team throws off some of the potential creative shackles from pre-established canon, like how they use characters and organizations like the Nova Corps, Yondu, The Collector, Hala, and Thanos. For even a casual Guardians fan, this had all the parts needed for an epic space adventure, and it was a mostly fun one, too. Telltale was able to capture much of the humor and light-heartedness of the Guardians successfully, and utilized each character pulled from Marvel lore to their fullest.

There was a cost for this creative freedom, however, and it came up quickly. Operating outside of known canon meant this adventure couldn’t stand as well on its own, adding problems like having to lengthily explain a lot of the universe since pre-established backstories and encounters no longer necessarily apply. Constant flashbacks into character histories, and even a section that explores how the Guardians first got together, often derailed the pacing of the adventure. Just when it felt like you were going to hit an interesting payoff for whatever “B” or “C” plots that particular episode of the series had introduced, you were derailed by yet another scene of Star-Lord camping with his mom.

These flashbacks also felt like desperate attempts at fleshing out characters who border on being somewhat flat to begin with, since the Guardians’ dynamic and appeal relies so heavily on the group as a whole being polar opposites of one another. Telltale’s writing was at its finest when the group was together and arguing like lunatics. When they inevitably were separated at various points in each episode, the lengthy exposition that would soon follow came off as weak—a problem that is often seen in other Guardians of the Galaxy related-media as well.

The writing also suffers from a lack of consistency, an issue that has become more and more evident as Telltale’s games have become more popular. This has resulted in the company attempting to keep up a breakneck pace to meet a once-high demand. Part of the solution to this is multiple writers working on different episodes. What ends up happening is drastic shifts in tone from episode to episode that can be jarring, particularly when you marathon the episodes once the entire season has been released like I do. Other examples of this include callbacks to previous episodes, which often feel tacked on and out of place. It gives the sense they were added in late, shoehorned into an episode that might’ve been being worked on at the exact same time as the one before it.

What Guardians of the Galaxy does well, though, is help Telltale return to its puzzle-solving roots. Many of its more recent games have shied away from allowing players to actually move around a lot in the world, and instead all the action has been increasingly  heavy on quicktime events. While there are still a fair amount of QTEs here, you also get some time in Star-Lord’s jet boots and get to walk around ancient Kree temples and other places in the universe as you try to figure out some puzzles. There’s even an elevation element, where Star-Lord has to fly in certain rooms to reach potential clues.

The other major gameplay aspect of Telltale games is, of course, making choices. At this point, everyone knows each choice you make can potentially affect gameplay, and I think Guardians did a stellar job at providing branching paths, particularly from episode three onward. There, you have one major decision that causes a drastic shift and can lead directly to many different characters living or dying. In fact, I triggered an ending that only 5.9% of other players received based on my choices. And no, that doesn’t mean just that 94.1% of other players got a different ending. There are multiple endings and results based on whom you befriend and how each situation becomes resolved. This was the first time in quite some time where it felt like my choices really had some weight with a Telltale game.

Of course, this was when the game was working properly. I feel like I’m beating a dead horse each time I review a Telltale game now, but their engine, the Telltale Tool, has not aged well. And because of it, it feels like each subsequent game the company tries to make has more and more technical issues with it. Some are comical, like Star-Lord’s weird speed-walking animation. Why not just let him break out into a run? Others are annoying, but far from game-breaking, like NPCs at the Knowhere bar blinking in and out of existence in the background of a scene with characters talking. But then there are others that are unforgivable.

One glitch nearly made it so I couldn’t finish the game. In chapter four of episode three, right before you make that aforementioned big branching decision, all the Guardians meet with a new friend to discuss how they’ll proceed going forward. No matter what choices you make, the game will glitch here and you won’t be able to talk to the people you need in order to trigger a cutscene that moves the game along. You’ll be stuck, forever, unable to talk to anyone, waiting for a scene that will never happen. I reloaded the checkpoint half-a-dozen times, even going back through all my conversations right before that moment hoping a different path would resolve the glitch, but to no avail.

This is a bug that Telltale is well aware of, is present in both PC and console versions of the game according to some digging, and that still hasn’t been patched even since episode three’s release at the end of August. Luckily, during my digging on the internet, I was able to find that completely quitting out of the game and then starting back up from the last checkpoint should resolve the issue and it did. Anytime a bug requires you to restart your game or your system, though, there’s clearly some technical shortcomings that need to be dealt with, and hopefully, what with all the changes going on currently at Telltale, that ends up happening in future games.

Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy: The Telltale Series is not Telltale’s best work. Like most of its other recent projects, its engine is really showing its age, and it’s getting to where the games are almost unplayable at points. The writing for Guardians is also clearly handcuffed by wanting to do something different with an established property, instead of working in pre-determined boundaries, and ended up causing more creative problems than solutions in the long run. That said, there are a lot of touching and even humorous moments in this particular series, showing Telltale’s writers had a strong grasp of the material. Being able to explore the world and walk around as Star-Lord was also a nice throwback to earlier Telltale games, instead of the more quicktime driven ones from recent times. Still, you’d have to be a pretty big fan of Guardians of the Galaxy to occupy your gaming time with this one.