About the story (and prequels)

Borderlands 3 Borderlands 3 General Discussion
#1

This thread is about me rambling aloud, and based on almost 0 information on Bl2 and 1, wondering about the unfavorable comparison between Bl3 and its predecessor.
Feel free to pitch in and enlighten me! :slight_smile:

I think we could agree the story of Borderland 3 is mehā€¦ Actually the DLC, while much shorter obviously, are somewhat more engagingā€¦ Mostly, I thinkk, because the underlying theme / story is more interesting, engaging and believable that the Calyspo twins story and ā€¦ Ava! :stuck_out_tongue:

At any rate, I donā€™t mind it. Bl3 is my first Borderland, Inspired by the enemy psycho on the posters, I had low expectation for the storyā€¦ and was pleasantly surprised by the fun game play.

Now, on youtube I stumbled on a lot of video where they say, allegedly, Borderland 1&2 was so much betterā€¦ And, well, I fear this might be a sensitive topic that mostly attract deeply partisan responseā€¦ But, without having played it, but just inspired by the general aesthetic of the game and fun fact like claptrap being an important characters in Bl2 I somewhat doubt that Bl2 had a deep and meaningful storyā€¦

Perhaps though, it had a more engaging villainā€¦ The Heist DLC had interesting lore bit about Handsome Jackā€¦ Personally I quite liked Queen Tyreen, I was a subscriber of her! :stuck_out_tongue: But I can see she was quite lowly rated by many other viewersā€¦ And Ava was another low point.

To summarise, maybe it all boils down to:
Bl3: has Ava (bad), has irritating excessively puerile youtuber: bad.
Bl2 has (allegedly magnetic) Handsome Jack: good.

#2

You really need to play at least BL2. Maybe I should lock this thread until youā€™ve done soā€¦?

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#3

I agree he should play it.
You would only spoil yourself with this topic. It is a great game that stands the test of time a lot of people still enjoy it more than BL3.
Tho be warned the first 20 or so levels Gun play isnā€™t as accurate like in BL3.
But is it fun? HELLL YEAAAAH
Honestly see for yourself. Going to love that game even in 10 more years to come

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#4

Itā€™s not just Handsome Jack in 2. But the overall story in 1, 2 and pre sequel were a lot more interesting and made sense. Tales should also be included but might be hard to play given how the company shut down.

But what stuck about these games were also the characters. If you compare some of the characters in these that return to 3, they feel butchered.

Vaughn got the roughest stick of them all for me. He went from an incredibly smart individual who had the potential to be a leader for those fallen from Helios (ex Hyperion staff now abandoned on Pandora) and a potential future asset toā€¦naked bandit guy?

If youā€™re a fan of lore also, if you go and play 1, 2 and pre sequel, youā€™ll notice the glaring holes of discontinuity in 3.

3 is still massively fun and enough explosions to keep the likes of Torgue satisfied for a hot minute. But if you do go and play the others (highly recommend) I think youā€™ll understand peopleā€™s complaints.

And if you canā€™t play Tales, Iā€™d watch a play through. I ugly cried twice in that gameā€¦the second time, I had to take a break. It was, to me, perfection.

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#5

Honnestly, having replayed B2 et B PS recently I hardly see the hype for BL2. I think itā€™s just a case of people having had so much fun back in the day cause the game was, at the time, very good that theyā€™re not very objective now.

BL2 : Interesting story, with lots of very interesting character. Gameplay is honnestly quite a bit rigid. Much content at max level.

BL PS : Amazing story (The writing and the humor are in my sense much better), but only one real DLC, making it a bit short. Gameplay is very also very good, and much more balanced than the other two. Huge lack of content and replayability once at max level though. The asutralian accent and humor is a bit omni present, you like it or you donā€™t

BL3 : Really boring and cringe writing. Gameplay is honnestly awesome. Balancing is a catastrophe. Annointement make farming more diablo like, a grinding process, when the old borderland game where more a matter of collecting rare item that you only had to drop once (maybe farm a few more for specific part, but thatā€™s it).

I really think that the main difference between old Borderland and BL3 is this ā€œgrinder vs collectorā€ feeling. They thought they would add more replayability by dumping tones of RNG, but I think it hurt the game more than anything. The second difference is tge quality of the writing that became terrible

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#6

I thought it might be just that! :open_mouth:

#7

Play it, then come back and tell us what you think.

#8

That being said, big content creators in the borderlands community go back to these games and get a lot of views for doing so. Along with mods, self made challenge runs - the game is still playable after 7 years.

Whereas many, many people dropped from playing 3 not even 7 months after release. On release I had , 40 friends playing it. These day? Iā€™m lucky if I have 2ā€¦

#9

So i hype BL2 more than BL3 also i prefer to play BL2.

Basic things make this game more engaging for example BL2 really is about us the Vault Hunter. The characters in this game talk to us we are involved in important moments throughout the whole story cause WE ARE THE VAULT HUNTERS.

See and this is a BIG problem I have with BL3.
Its not just we ainā€™t matter in order to progress the story its like we arent there at all.

But there is another really important thing to me, BL3 completely ignore all the past except for the end of BL2 where we get the map for the different Vaults.

There was very little love for existing characters and the writing just ainā€™t my type of coffee.
Just so much things went wrong with BL3 in general.

Buuuuuuuuut the gun play man its just way to goodā€¦
If I want realistic gunplay i go play Battlefield or CoD i would give away the gun play for a real sequel to BL2.

#10

This is not true.

They explored some of the other manufacturers (Jakobs, Maliwan, Atlas 2.0 under Rhys). If anything, they have spent too much time on Jakobs (Eden-6 and two DLCā€™s worth of story). I donā€™t get why they havenā€™t followed up on Katagawa Sr. yet.

They brought back almost every Vault Hunter from the previous games, even Pre-Sequel. Both Aurelia and Timothy played significant roles considering that they were both DLC Vault Hunters for arguably the least popular game of the series. Gaige! They even brought back two characters from the Telltale games (Rhys and Vaughn).

Tiny Tina, Brick, and Mordecai are back. Sure, they might not have done them justice by many peopleā€™s opinions, but they are not completely ignored either.

Tannisā€™ role is even larger in this game than in the previous games. Iā€™m sad that Zed didnā€™t make it back and of course devastated at the loss of Scooter. Ellie is back.

The most glaring omission to me is Athena. Salvador and Axton have both made small cameos in BL3 (Salvador in Crimson Radio and a DLC wanted poster, Axton in an Iron Bear skin and on magazines). No hint of Athena at all.

And, of course, Claptrap.

#11

This pretty much. Jack was a fantastic villain but the rest of the cast were also strong. Some of the most imperfect and charismatic bunch Iā€™ve ever seen. All of them stood fine on their own, and even side mission characters like Karima (i love her!) and Zafords/Hodunks stood out to me.

TPS as well. Ofc this story was about Jack, but goddamn did it give so many characters to love. Playing BL2, I wouldā€™ve never known the Sheriff of Lynchwood, Athena, and Wilhelm would be some of my favorites in the entire franchise playing the first two games. The new faces were just as good too, Aurelia and Timothy were surprisingly complex. Zarpedon might not be talked about much but for what its worth she was a good contrast to Jack and had a good backstory. TPS and BL2 had really exciting story beats as well that made you grip at and feel what was happening- and itā€™s all earned. Itā€™s really not just Jack as some people make it out to be.

Tales really hammered it home that even without loot, Borderlands is Borderlands if its characters are strong. The stories arenā€™t as complicated as MGS or whatever, but they donā€™t need to be. getting emotionally-invested in these characters to be affected by the twists and turns that happen is extremely easy because of how likeable they are.

Anyway OP, you should really play the old games. Man, if you didnā€™t like the story in BL3 now, I hope you donā€™t feel even worse knowing how better they did it in the older ones.

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#12

Im glad others agree ^^ Iā€™ve always said this but the story of BL2 isnā€™t all that complicated. Itā€™s the characters that really fleshed out the universe for me.

Which is where 3 suffered for me - the only character I can think of in the main story that got properly fleshed out was Wainright and he got an entire planet to himself.

Ava and the twins arenā€™t entirely a bad idea. But they just werenā€™t given any kind of contrast to their characters or arcs and when they showed a glimmer - looking at Troy - it was snuffed before it had a chance to really be something.

And as Iā€™ve said, returning characters feel different and off. The biggest for me being Lilithā€¦now I donā€™t like Lilith as a character but I do love how she was made. Her dorkiness, hot temper, her unsurity about her powers and leadership - it rounded her out nicely. After pre sequel, I muttered both her and Moxxis name but they were still well written characters.

But god was she flat in 3. None of that attitude from the advertisements - her giving the bird to the twins or her leading an army of people in to fight the calypsos.

The Lilith I know from 2 - power or no powers - would have arrived on Nekro with all the soldiers we picked up from each planet, gave a ā€˜supā€™ then commanded those crimson raiders to kick some ass and a smirk on her face.

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#13

Also - the two moments in tales (I wonā€™t spoil it) but iā€™m sure you know whichā€¦Iā€™ve never cried at a video game like I did for that. And I donā€™t enjoy Tale games but that game was just perfect for Borderlands. Itā€™s probably why it burned me more when I saw how the characters where treated in 3ā€¦

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#14

I think the strong story in Tales is strongly correlated with the game format, where the play-making decisions at key points is more informed by the story than constantly being in the flow of action. That genre of game has to have a strong story, since itā€™s the primary selling point. A couple of times, I completely missed the prompt on-screen because I was so caught up in the story.

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