Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy: The Telltale Series (PS4)

In Telltale Games’s choice-based narrative adventure format, you’ll often find yourself asked to make hard decisions that won’t please all the characters you’re interacting with. In most of the properties they chose to adapt though, you often found yourself speaking with characters you might not be too bothered to upset. Some of the tension would be lost as your choice could really come down to who you like more, but that’s why Guardians of the Galaxy was a brilliant choice for one of their interactive stories. The small band of misfits seen in Marvel’s 2014 science fiction film are all humorous and likeable in their own ways, and with their conflicting personalities, it turned out to be easy to create situations where you will struggle to balance the group of endearing but often ideologically opposed hotheads.

One way Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy: The Telltale Series makes this uneasy alliance even more turbulent is with the premise of the plot. The five individuals who make up the Guardians have a run in with the galaxy conquering titan Thanos as he pursues a relic known as the Eternity Forge, and when the Guardians get it their own hands on it, they soon learn of its incredible power. Anyone who has previously died can be brought back to life with the relic, but someone else must die for the ritual to work. For a group of bounty hunters going up against some of the galaxy’s greatest threats, it’s fairly easy for a few members to immediately imagine people from the past they can have back while others recognize that the death toll of a revival makes it a dangerous tool. Things get even more complicated when an example of how the relic’s power could be misused shows up in the form of Hala the Accuser, a Kree alien who wants to revive her fallen race and has a superweapon to potentially fuel the Eternity Forge if she gets her hands on it. Still, with the emotional weight of using it for themselves in play, the player finds them trying to weave through keeping the group together and deciding the fate of the forge knowing that not everyone can be pleased. Thus, the player is required to perform frequent emotional maintenance to try and keep the group’s connections in place all while protecting the galaxy on the side.

Like many of Telltale’s choice-based narratives, much of the decision making you do will not lead to huge divergences in the story’s course of events, although some obvious key choices involving the Eternity Forge’s uses can certainly lead to more meaningful branches in the plot’s outcome. It is more about the customization of the narrative’s events, a story you participate in the crafting of rather than one that will compromise good plotting for the sake of a spur of the moment decisions. Your choices have some weight, especially since you’ll be trying to balance out how you treat each of your teammates to ensure things aren’t too turbulent, but the entertainment value is mostly going to come from experiencing a well-structured and sometimes hilarious sci-fi adventure with a bit of interactivity thrown on top.

Your main character for most of the game will be Peter Quill, the self-titled Star Lord the only human in a band of aliens and your control over him allowing you to tip him towards different personalities without ever breaking from the roguish but sometimes goofy charm fans of the film would have come to see. Dialogue and action choices at different points in the story can allow you to make Peter a more compassionate leader focused on keeping the band together or someone who rarely misses a chance to add in a snarky retort. In fact, one of the best aspects of the choice-based system is that fairly often there will be a funny choice you can pick that isn’t such a break from character that it could lead to an entirely irreverent playthrough. You can certainly make Peter flippant and self-centered if you like, but his humor isn’t too clownish if you keep indulging in it, and the sillier moments are more entertaining because they’re properly couched in the current moment and the source material’s already deliberate subversions of expected conventions. For example, when a character stands up and starts giving a detailed history of the Eternity Forge, you are given the options to listen along like one might in a normal game, but you can also have Peter gradually express his own waning interest or even interrupt to spare everyone a bit of long-winded exposition. Every option feels like it can emerge from Quill’s personality, partly because if he does listen along with true or faux interest he still manages to pick on a teammate who was bored out of their mind during it so you get something amusing even when you follow a more straightforward story route.

There are diversions from how the characters are portrayed in the films and what their backstories are, partially because this game’s first of five episodes came out a month before Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 was released in theaters. However it does also use the space it has as a story not restricted by canon to have some surprising twists and take a deeper dive into what makes individual Guardians tick. The gifted assassin Gamora is able to properly explore the full depth of her troubled relationship with Nebula, the two having been raised by Thanos and having far different views on what he’s made them into. Gamora is perhaps the most level-headed of the group and a good emotional core and straight man to sillier moments, but she is not overly serious either. A more grounded anchor for Peter to bounce off of at times, Gamora is a harsh contrast to Groot, the large friendly tree-man only able to communicate by saying “I am Groot” and thus hardly a conversational partner for it. He is endearing and simple in his contributions and the game has a fair bit of fun with his voice quirk considering its choice system is so heavily dependent on dialogue. There are moments in the game, often during a pivotal flashback to someone’s past, where you play as each Guardian, many of these serious explorations of their potential reason to desire the Eternity Forge, but Groot’s segment makes hilariously clever use of how you control him.

Rocket Raccoon, a foul tempered anthropomorphic tech wiz raccoon, is Groot’s odd couple friend who translates for him at times and ends up the most volatile ally, but with his well written wisecracks and some surprisingly deep emotional exploration if you chose to pursue it it’s hard to dismiss him even though he’ll often be the person kicking off a split decision for the group members. Being able to take a look back at his past is one of the better aspects of this more freeing approach to structuring the game as something not trying to be strictly compatible with the films, but not everyone is quite as good in the game as in the movies. Drax the Destroyer is an alien warrior who loves violent conflict but has the charming quirk of not quite getting metaphors or non-literal phrasing. His lack of social graces doesn’t make him awkward but his blunt delivery of things most people would leave unsaid can certainly be funny at times, but Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy: The Telltale Series sometimes doesn’t know how to wield his specific brand of humor. A character might say something and you’re waiting for Drax to misinterpret its meeting but he passes it by without comment only to have a clunky attempt to make it work with a comment that was less ripe for his brand of comedy. That’s not to say he will make you roll your eyes or he’ll lose your interest, his dead family and warrior ways still providing some decent emotional energy to accompany his bloodthirstiness and silliness, but it seems the game does handle its joke writing better when it’s not so much a format as it is a personality type that can lead to amusing lines.

On the more serious side of things, Peter Quill will routinely have flashbacks to his time on Earth, the only human out in this story’s particular region of space having a bit of his heart still on his home planet thanks to the untimely passing of his mother. Delivered with far more unflinching seriousness than other parts of the plot, living out the last moments of his ill mother’s life as a young Peter can make for some decisions that can be painful both if you consider her ultimate fate or if you try to root your mindset in the moment, the uneasiness important to making the player consider the Eternity Forge more carefully than if their avatar in the story was just making decisions for other people. One advantage of the story never branching too far off from specific events unfolding is the game is able to ensure narrative threads are paid off well though, and even if you don’t want to bring people back from the dead personally, knowing the histories of your friends still informs a good deal of interactions so you aren’t just giving a large chunk of backstory that ends up going nowhere. A later addition to the group in Episode 3 does introduce a delightful new member of the crew as well who provides an innocent outside perspective to a group whose unspoken issues with each other can now more directly be addressed, and when you do end up having to make some big choices with greater impact than most, you will feel the sting of knowing you can’t please everyone. Sometimes you may even end up picking someone’s side simply so you don’t wish to alienate a character with constant rejection, but thankfully it’s not such a stressful balancing act that you’ll be nervous at every moment you might say the wrong thing.

As for how your interactions with the story actually unfold, there are few types of gameplay that emerge. Mostly you will be watching the plot unfold until your opinion is required, a set of four choices appearing that you’ll need to pick in a limited amount of time. Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy: The Telltale Series is usually pretty generous with these timers so you can mull over your options properly, but some of the more meaningful ones remove the timer entirely so you can weigh the impact of both options before they slightly divert the path this sci-fi tale will take. During the fairly common but not overbearingly so action segments though, it becomes less about how you want the story to unfold and more about ensuring the fight choreography goes off without a hitch, the battles visually impressive but your input mostly boiling down to properly timed button or direction presses and the occasional aiming of a cursor to hit something. These battle sections are often underscored by classic 70s and 80s rock that tie back to Star-Lord’s abandoned but not forgotten connection to Earth, the choices pretty catchy at times like “You Make My Dreams” by Hall and Oates while others like Sparks’s “This Town Ain’t Big Enough for the Both of Us” were chosen more for being better matches for the fights than being recognizable hits. Electric Light Orchestra’s “Livin’ Thing” was a clever choice for the main menu and recurring theme of the adventure though, but even better is when you’re in the middle of the action and able to help the Guardians essentially fight in a rhythm. The timing is never too harsh to hit so it’s easier to just enjoy the impressive animation and battle choreography on show, the game usually having a good handle on its visuals including things like character expression save for the expected Telltale roughness that plagues their games like having weird flickers of wrong emotions.

Some parts will give you full control of characters though, free to walk around a small place, interact with objects and people around you, and work to find the way onward. These often involve some small puzzle or threat that aren’t too difficult to overcome and would probably be too weak for a game built around them, but they break up the plentiful cutscenes with some low pressure exploration that provides a sometimes needed break from making occasional rough decisions on which friends to side with in an argument. In some ways it can be that needed decompression between emotionally charged moments you’d want in real life, other times it’s a good way to have smaller but still meaningful interactions with people or get to know them better even if you had no context from the movie to go by. In fact, the moments the Guardians are getting along, having fun, and just living life instead of battling for the fate of the galaxy are what help ensure you don’t lose interest in your companions and will always want to find the best outcomes, all while laughing along the way since the game does ease up on the interpersonal conflict enough that it isn’t overwhelming.

THE VERDICT: Thriving on the strength of its comedic but emotional story rather than its interactive segments, Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy: The Telltale Series is an exciting and entertaining ride that can make the choices interesting if only occasionally impactful. The core Guardian cast and their close associates are fleshed out wonderfully to help you grow attached to them and understand them only for that to ensure the decisions made when interacting with them can feel weighty and important. You’re not just customizing your story, you’re trying to guide a friend group you want to maintain, the shape of events interesting to mold even if the destinations for different branches are pretty similar. Action segments are often simple bits of exploration or timed button presses during scenes, but they add moments with different energy levels to balance out the pacing while sometimes showing off excellent fight staging and music selections.

And so, I give Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy: The Telltale Series…

A GREAT rating. While its time of release made it a bit of a victim of the gradual homogeneity of Telltale’s approach to game design and the episodic format losing some of its luster, having Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy: The Telltale Series all available in a five episode package for continuous play allows for its emotional beats to hit better and its simpler interactive elements to sting less. Primarily this is a story of a band of lovable misfits finding their relationships and morals tested by a relic with a terrible but alluring power and the game lets you decide if that power will be embraced or shunned. It is, as said earlier, best thought of like a story whose path you influence but don’t necessarily direct, the game needing to keep things on certain tracks to ensure satisfying pay-offs and interesting developments but not completely abandoning your input either as you will notice your fellow Guardians treating you differently based on how you’ve interacted with them before. The plot and its heavy emphasis on character interactions both emotionally rich and hilariously silly rarely misses the mark on how it marries such disparate tones, Drax perhaps needing more capable hands guiding his humor but many other moments entertaining and helping you to care about the cast before you’re then given a deeper window into their personal lives. There are definitely some moments that hinge more on you caring about that element, a cave full of stone-eating worms not the most compelling setting for how much time is spent there, but they serve important roles in setting up character conflicts and helping you to relax between more intense moments as well. While a more flexible and responsive story path could have been intriguing, the narrative is excellent on its own and is simply being presented through the Telltale choice-based format. If the plot was layered over more truly interactive action it would definitely benefit from having proper gameplay company to captivate you as well, but the story is the main attraction and is told fairly well no matter how you decide Peter and the others should act during it.

While the irreverent jokes are definitely one of the defining elements of the Guardians of the Galaxy characters that set them apart from many sci-fi stories, Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy: The Telltale Series does excellent work with the flashbacks to ensure its cast are more than walking punchline factories. They are complex individuals that can work during moments of levity and disharmony, their fleshed out identities making this story entertaining just because you want to see its characters interact more while also caring what happens to them. The interactive side could be more robust to be sure, but that’s hardly a reason to miss out on a plot that people who liked the films will likely love as well.