With the utmost sincerity: What is it that you love about Borderlands?
The problem is that I must always describe what Borderlands is like at its peak, when it truly lives up to all that it's supposed to be. This is, unfortunately, not always, and for long periods it's been "not often."
There is nothing quite like Borderlands. For all that Borderlands sometimes fails to live up to its own promise, nobody has ever gotten close to Borderlands. Rage 2 tried to copy it whole hog and was dogshit. Destiny 2 has slowly but surely vanished up its own ass. Overwatch and its ten dozen knockoffs have made half-hearted attempts at its style but never gotten close to the series' charm.
At its best, the appeal of Borderlands is this: serious, meaningful stories that just so happen to take place in a fundamentally unserious world.
The world of Borderlands is stupid. The world of Borderlands is very, very stupid. It's absurd. It's asinine. It's an absolute clownshow. It's Cowboy Bebop as written by the Onion. Everything is either run by corporations or abandoned by them, which leads to the juxtaposition of bright, shining iPod Futurism with Mad Max scavenger world chaos. Everyone has become the most extreme and unhinged version of themselves.
And when it is at its best, Borderlands has the courage to say: okay, so this world might be a truly absurd and farcical place, but what if you actually had to live there? What then? What if we were to extend to this world some suspension of disbelief? What if we were to look at this world we've created and treat it as a place that could exist? What stories could we tell in such a place? How do the unique aspects of our worldbuilding allow us to tell unique stories?
This is what allows moments like the time in Borderlands 2 where Handsome Jack uses Eridium slag to mutate Bloodwing and make you fight her, then when you win, blows her head off with a bomb collar, and treats this as a genuinely horrifying act and a genuine loss of a character who someone truly loved. Then Jack fucks around trying to find a violin, can't find it for like ten minutes and then gets mad when his cruel joke doesn't land, and it's genuinely hilarious, because this is the exact kind of petty, malicious, insecure douchebag he is.
When it works - and trust me, as a fan of the series, I know it often doesn't - there is nothing quite like Borderlands. There is nothing that can quite match the simultaneous absurdity and sincerity of Borderlands when Borderlands believes in itself. I just wish it did so more often.
Patricia Tannis is truly the character of all time. She's a mad scientist. She's autistic. She's bisexual. She has objectum sexuality. She's the leading scientific authority on her special interest. She's a condescending asshole to everyone. She watched all of her colleagues die and spent roughly two years in near total isolation while slowly descending into madness. She was in a polyamorous relationship with two chairs and watched one of them get tortured to death. She wants friends so badly. She hates social interaction to the point that someone saying hello to her in the street caused blood to spurt out of her nose once, and she considered this a win because it ended the conversation. Someone called her pretty one time and she dry-heaved into a bucket for four straight hours. She is known to bite. She steals people's shin bones. She takes power naps inside a monster carcass. She calls her secret lab a 'terror pavilion.' She thinks music and people who like it are stupid, except for this one singer she enjoys. She's deeply attached to the people in her life. She's currently one of the most powerful characters in the setting, and her scientific curiosity is what set all the events of the series into motion in the first place. Patron saint of strange and offputting women. More people should be obsessed with her.
i will be 100% fr here. regardless of your opinions on borderlands 3 you have to admit that it massively expanded the universe and elaborated a lot on the overarching lore.
regarding borderlands lore id like to share with u the fact that i sometimes, shock horror, talk to people on the official discord, and it seems like the sentiment of "the eridian shit is vague and boring i want more corporation lore" has spread significantly, at least over there. it's funny because i've been saying shit like that since forever but only now am i finding so many other people who think the same. its so funny.
no i also agree like at first the eridian shit drew me in but after a while I realized they were just going to keep it vague and mysterious because they dont know what to do with it or are to lazy to thibk it through but like the corporations are such a big part of the games (minus 4 for some reason which actually is one of the turn off of the game tew me) and like the corporate wars and how they colonize and propogandize planets is so interesting and we really only get they explored the most in ghenna and I need more of it because its so interesting
not to bitch about borderlands 4 again but I finally forced myself to watch the teaser for the new invincible. tell me why this bitch looks like another warden rip off gtfo my face
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