The best thing about Tales from the Borderlands episode 4

I love Tales from the Borderlands. Today I want to discuss one of the best things that happened in Episode 4. I've deliberately delayed writing this because it is spoilerific, but now that a significant amount of time has passed, I'm doing it. Still though...

Tales from the Borderlands episode 4 has both of what I feel are the saddest and most fun moments of the game so far. This is about the latter of those, namely the finger gun fight between Rhys and the accounting department on Opportunity. It is the perfect salve to follow up the saddest moment and keep the episode from being a major downer, but the thing that really made me fall in love with that scene is that it lampshades the nature of combat in the game itself.

Do we have a name for this genre yet? These choose your own adventure style cinematic games that Telltale made so popular? In some ways they feel more like interactive movies than traditional video games. You could boil them down to cutscenes with quick time events, but although quick time events can go horribly wrong and draw lots of ire, Telltale (and now other studios) are making quick time event games which keep most players engaged with good storytelling.

The finger gun fight is a game of pretend amongst the in-game characters, but the mechanics the player uses to take part in it are the same mechanics used for fights the game presents in earnest. It highlights the very fact that playing the game at all is an act of playing pretend. No matter how serious the situation is in terms of narrative, the player is essentially always engaged in finger gun fights with the computer.

I wonder how long Telltale Games has wanted to do something like this. Could it have worked in any of the other properties they've made games like this for? I feel like Tales from the Borderlands, with its unique brand of humor and the characters' ability to make the tales they're telling a little taller, make the finger gun fight work.