I think what made Borderlands 3 so wildly difficult for the audience to connect with was largely because it is almost entirely disconnected from the first two games. Ellie, Moxxie, Brick, Mordecai, every returning cast member doesn't quite feel like their original self, and they really feel, to me, like they're just there for Gearbox to go "see! They're here too!" Without really meaningfully concluding their character arcs that have been begun again for some fucking reason. They have all their "iconic" and "quirky" traits turned up to 11 and just exist to drop one liner after one liner. Not once did I feel like everything and everyone you met was connected via a force like the resistance as I did with 2. Even 1, which puts a LOT of emphasis on isolation and separation being why Pandora is such easy pickings, feels like a connected world.
Moxxie and Ellie do not need to reassert their character arcs, they have already happened, in either subtextual ways or just plain in your face text. Rehashing them feels as futile as it did when The Dark World spent the entire film having Thor walk back on all his development for the first film. (Do not even get me started about that fucking film)
Lilith is just so... I don't even want to talk about how poorly written and borderline obnoxious she is in 3. I *liked* seeing the more insecure side of her AND Roland in 1-TPS. They're both very hardened, weathered people, but they dance around love like two nervous schoolchildren. It's sweet.
And then she comes back in 3, and for some reason this time YOU'RE the corporate peacekeeper and you're going after.... Twitch streamers? The fuck? There is so much character assassination happening with Lil. She watched Roland tear himself apart over what Atlas was really doing with the Lance. She watched him be "reborn", in a sense, when he decided to take the Crimson moniker for himself, and wear it with pride while freeing those under corporate enslavement or terrorism. (I am a firm believer that Roland is much more deserving of the title of "The Pheonix" - not once is Lilith actually reborn). He is quite literally a revolutionary. Lilith is too! (He even has the fucking red beret!!!!!! Come ON y'all!!!!!) I don't believe for a second that Lilith wouldn't AT LEAST question the motives behind killing Troy & Tyreen. (Who are very obviously made to be incredibly obnoxious, terrible people in order for the audience to more easily ignore the complete inversion of the story telling. Then the Typhon logs try to walk it back a little but slightly humanizing them (and then demonizing then again) and it's suuuch a fucking eyeroll.
I get that they were trying to do the whole grieving widow thing with how angry she was, but it felt undeserved and unnecessary after TPS. You know, because that was the entire fucking point of that game.
I know I'm missing some context from Tales, which I haven't played (I'm aware Scooter dies and that's how Rhys and Vaughn are introduced but I can't stand either of them). But it is also so bizarre to me that Lilith is comfortable with working with a reformed Atlas like, AT ALL. I don't think she would place such importance on her relationship with Rhys over the threat of corporate takeover. Especially after she watched, in real time, what it had done to the love of her life. What it had done to HER. Atlas made him a shell, that she helped build back up into a person again. And to have that taken from her just as she was about to watch him become something so great, with her at his side, is devastating! It is unforgivable! And Lilith is an angry person who can hold a GRUDGE. She has way more reason to distrust Atlas than she does to trust Rhys.
And Rhys is fucking incompetent! I never felt like Atlas were part of the "rebellion" in 3. They're an armed fucking militia in a corporate war with Maliwan. And the only interest between either of them is acquiring the power of the Vault, while preventing the other from doing so. It doesn't matter if Rhys has "good intentions" or not. He owns a company. He will do what he needs to make sure it survives when it comes down to the nail.
All of this is to say that it just felt like them throwing characters at a map and deciding where to cameo them based on that. 3 is just fuckin Cameo Simulator. I enjoyed that we got to go to other planets, but again, none of them felt connected to one another. This is supposed to be a galaxy with established trade routes and interplanetary communication, is it not? I understand that war disrupts the supply lines, but it's just so.. disconnected. And I also understand that it's intentional that the citizen NPCs don't know anything either, because they're civilians, but also none of the Important Characters seem to know what the fuck is happening anywhere either.
Borderlands 3 really is the shitty school play version of an intense broadway show, or some shit. But without any of the heart. And that's a shame, because the gunplay is actually really fun, but I do genuinely think that 1 was integral to my own radicalization when I was younger. And I have an incredibly difficult time, morally, playing a game where I'm a corporate enforcer who is killing for the interests of an entity, as opposed to a person.
At least the original 4 didn't know what they were walking into. That they were being manipulated. The Destroyer was meant to be a trap and kill all 4 of them after they realize they've been working for Hyperion all along. And this angers and radicalizes ALL of them. Just. Ugh. And I just can't get behind Gearbox refusing to pay CL4P-TR4P'S original VA despite raking it in with the character merchandise based on his voice acting.
It just really makes me super sad to see Borderlands get the Fallout treatment, but at a slightly lesser scale. It used to have meaning, and I GUESS 3 does if you squint, but it isn't a worthwhile one, nor do I feel it is like, at all appropriate given the context of past games and also just, like, The World. Like, what an odd fucking message to send.
I haven't played 4, and I don't want to, because I would really rather not set myself up for such disappointment again.
