Tails: The Backbone Preludes

Like its predecessor, Tails: The Backbone Preludes tells an unconventional and surreal story with confidence, resulting in narratives that are sincere, vulnerable, complicated, and heart-breaking. The only downside to this branching narrative style of storytelling is that it's easy to accidentally take the short route and leave the experience feeling like something is missing. Ultimately, Tails: The Backbone Preludes tells four phenomenal stories that either deepens the characters that players know and love, or introduces them to new players entering this stunning world for the first time.

Tails: the Backbone Preludes tells an intriguing prequel that easily hooks the player with its story and characters, despite its glitchy flaws and potential soft locks. For those wanting to get into the Backbone universe, then this is an excellent place to start and the perfect way to introduce yourself to Howard Lotor’s life along with a genuinely charming supporting cast.

Some storylines are bittersweet triumphs, some are tragic ends, and others are just life moving forward. Every finale gets its own couple-paragraph epilogue in the narrative web, allowing me to see how the original game’s characters came to be. And while all are satisfying conclusions, it’s hard to resist starting over. The untrod paths reach out and beg me to uncover the details I missed.

It’s a complimentary piece to Backbone, which can stand before or beside it but shouldn’t be set apart from it. However, in context, it’s a terrific addition to the series. While it isn’t as compelling or fully featured as the first act of Backbone, it is a much more solid experience. The series, as it is currently, is a lot stronger with the inclusion of Tails: The Backbone Preludes. It’s a great collection of fiction. But without Backbone, it completely lacks the ability to stand on its own.

Tails: The Backbones Preludes is the prequel that fans likely weren’t expecting and didn’t know that they wanted, and due to a lack of variety mixed with brevity, they may also walk away still expecting and wanting more. But what’s here is a set of well-crafted stories in what is still a highly-engrossing world with a bunch of great characters to see a little more of, so even if it’s just a slight chunk of what Backbone can offer, it’s still one for fans of the series and fans of well-done narratives to check out. And hey, it’s still one of gaming’s most unique and best dystopias. If we have to spend time in some sort of hellscape, it may as well be here in Vancouver.