Borderlands v.1: Encounter
by Taraka
Ben Frank’s Review

Borderlands: The Encounter is a plot driven scenario which starts off quite promisingly. Unicorns have appeared from nowhere and are attacking and ravaging your small fertile section of the Empire. As the most expendable unit, you are chosen to find out where they came from and why these magical creatures are attacking. A promising concept.

Unfortunately, the idea withers in the execution phase. Why, after all, if the problem is so serious would they choose you? Why should you care to help? These questions definitely do not get answered by the characters in the scenario, who in general have scanty dialog at best. I found it hard to actually care about what was going on, in large part because I found it hard to find characters who seemed to care about what was going on (in more than one dimension.)

Further, while the towns seem passably fleshed out the outdoors is barren. Everything of import could easily have been contained in an area 1/4–1/3 of the size of this scenario. You spend a lot of time wandering about searching, and as it turns out you can’t find anything anyway until you reach specific points in the scenario plot.

The plot is enough to carry the scenario for a while, but dies in the end as well. I will not reveal the ending in case you choose to try this scenario, but suffice it to say I found it quite anticlimactic. Suddenly, I was there, it was all a misunderstanding, and I was done.

  While the concept was neat, the execution still needs some work. So, by the way, does the graphics file which does not work properly on my mac— all the graphics are too small, a problem I have found in a few other scenarios as well, which might be rectified by full testing on a mac system before release. The different Unicorns with different skills was an interesting extension of the Blades world, but not enough to completely redeem the scenario itself. In the end, I give it a 6.

— Ben Frank

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