#garbage queen tyreen

[quietlydiabolic]

[quietlydiabolic]

I colored lineart by @ohnoits-jo​!

This feels pertinent:

[quietlydiabolic]

The problems with Borderlands 3′s story

Most of the common complaints about BL3's story don't bother me that much. We're not given a lot of background and history about the twins and their motivations, and that's okay. Borderlands has always been a little light on those things. Would I have loved it if they'd done more there? Of course. But compare it against BL1's "blink and you missed it" plot, and the primary antagonist (?) Commandant Steele. What we know about Steele: she worked for Atlas, she was a siren, she had a Russian accent and pretty braids. That's it. What are her powers? What is her personality like? What's her motive? Who knows? It didn't stop me from enjoying BL1.

Frankly, not even our boy Jackie got much background in BL2. Character development? Yes. Motives? Kinda. But his history was left intentionally sketchy, the biggest difference being BL2 has you pick up echo recordings as a mission, in BL3 they're there if you happen to stumble across them. (Based on reddit comments, I do feel like many gamers did NOT find them.) Almost all of Handsome Jack's back story and driving force was fleshed out in the many many spin-offs and DLCs that followed.

(And I hope, I hope, I hope that the Calypso's get similar treatment. Not optimistic, but man oh man do I hope.)

What I AM ticked off about is the lack of appropriate reactions from the twins, and the lack of any payoff for ideas that the game toys with and subsequently drops.

The hint of a possible schism? Great stuff. It's just part of the normal ups and downs of sibling rivalry? A valid choice. But the way it's handled feels like it was just dumped and forgotten. If the plan was that they patch things up and continue working as a team, then SHOW US THAT, don't just "let's never speak of this again". There's no payoff!

I do think that Tyreen grieves for Troy, she essentially drops the chipper streamer / televangelist shtick after he dies, getting snippy and brusque. But it really feels... so, so unsatisfying. Jack reacted violently to Angel's death. It's a turning point for him as a villain. The fact that Tyreen doesn't just... doesn't make sense.

Even Typhon's reaction. He's set out to stop his evil kids and knows they're past the point of redemption. He knows this is going to end with their deaths. But he still should've shown some grief for his son! Even if Troy wasn't the favorite, it's still his kid we're talking about! Yes, he should have been understanding to the Vault Hunters's, but still crushed at the loss of a child. As is, his reaction is unnaturally, and uncharacteristically cold.

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The Borderlands franchise intentionally leaves the player characters underdeveloped and always has. I don't mind that.

The cut scenes have the Vault Hunters's sitting out, and honestly, there's an explanation for it each time. (IE: They're trapped in the docking station because the doors won't open when Lilith loses her powers. They're off raiding the vaults when a couple other key scenes happened.) Unfortunately, this is not super obvious. They should have made it clearer, I see a lot of people confused and frustrated about this.

The real problem I have is that BL3's story is that it relies on horror-movie type set ups where the protagonists suffer temporary bouts of stupidity for the plot to advance.

Lilith's power is Phaseshift. SHE TELEPORTS. Why the hell does she conveniently forget this when the twins attack?

Maya's power is Phaselock. Why would she grab Troy when she can, you know, just leave him trapped in a bubble? He was already 👏 in 👏 a 👏 bubble 👏! She's an accomplished fighter, and let me tell you something about real fighting: you never, ever, EVER give up distance if you can possibly avoid it. It's phenomenally stupid.

These are not unintelligent characters. They just suffer plot-induced idiotitis. A good writer can work around those things. There was no reason for this nonsense. I waited until I got far enough in the second playthrough to make sure there wasn’t something I missed the first time... and... yeah. No excuse.

[quietlydiabolic]

tumblr be thirsty

“Oh, I should reblog some of the massive backlog of serious Calypso Twins fan art that I’ve got bookmarked.” 

(Side note: I do not tumblr correctly.)

“Holy shiitake mushrooms, why are there five pictures of Troy for every one picture of Tyreen?”