There’s a lot of great conjecture here from well versed parties. I’m glad.
I suppose I should take this back and forth to be an excellent sounding board for the early formation of the shape of borderlands 4.
With the development of borderlands 3 and a lot of what I’ve been reading there seems to be a very specific reverence for the nature of borderlands 1.
It is after all the lightning in a bottle that catalyzed and changed the entire fps gaming industry.
Its always amazed me that the macroscopic perspective of how borderlands one came to be isn’t really considered in assessing its nature and trying to understand what qualities it has that drove its success.
Perhaps I’m stepping out of line here but I will go the long way in trying to help conceptualize the manner in which borderlands 4 might reclaim that magic.
Borderlands 1 is out of it’s mind. It effectively has two writers and producers.
This simple effective realization explains the core of what drives everything about borderlands ones appeal.
Matt Armstrong said that borderlands is a game about wanting things, But In reality borderlands is a game about contrast. Wanting things is actually just the “color” that we want. It’s like the paint chip at the hardware store that we’re trying to get.
But when you take that paint chip and fill the entire room with it it just doesn’t have the same effect.
It’s the lighting, it’s the background It’s all the other peripheral colors in your vision and how that color plays upon your sensibilities that creates the appeal.
Removing the underlying background elements or changing them or altering their proportion radically affects the appeal of the “color chip”
In all honesty borderlands 1 has some insane serendipity. But if it wasn’t for that hundred shades of brown that gearbox was trying to escape it would have never had the necessary contrast to be as appealing as it was.
It’s two different games. And that brings us to an essential truth about the nature of borderlands one that made it appealing.
Borderlands 1 was not a funny game. Borderlands one was a serious game that had funny ( hilarious) elements.
This simple truth is lost on most of the people that I’ve interacted with about borderlands 1.
There’s nothing funny about skag gully, there’s nothing funny about Kroms canyon, And really there’s nothing funny anywhere in borderlands 1. It’s all drab and depressing and it stays true to being on the borders of anything “civilized”.
It’s all the stuff that’s layered on top that makes borderlands what it was. And if it wasn’t for the underlying background none of the elements that are appealing would work so well.
The comic book style over the top placard of a boss introduction is genius. It cradles the player into the comedy of borderlands which essentially becomes satire on itself.
It’s the classic straight man. funny man.
And borderlands 1 never cracks a smile, not once Even after the final credits role. Nope. It never breaks character and stays the straight man throughout its entirety.
In a similar manner the delivery never breaks character either. But the path is that it takes clearly sets the universe squarely in the borderlands even if the delivery is comedic. TK Baja was delivered as a hilarious person but he’s a blind guy with one leg living on canned scag meat in the middle of nowhere.
TK Baja’s life is depressing AF
You meet the real TK Baja and you’re not going to be laughing.
I would go so far as to say You would feel a little bit of relief for TK Baja if he died in real life because his life was so terrible
but in the game TK Baja dying crushes you.
For another example let’s look at nine toes… Objectively there is nothing funny at all about a guy having three testicles and a missing digit on one of his feet.
But in reality if you go to a trailer park somewhere find a guy who cut one of his toes off who happens to have three testicles and meet him You’re not going to be laughing when you find out that he has an extra testicle.
Add to it the fact that he probably hopped up on some crazy alien psychotropes, testosterone and whatever kind of drugs you can manage to get on a trash planet like Pandora and yeah there’s not a lot that is objectively funny about nine toes.
And that’s the genius of it.
Borderlands 1 isn’t a funny game.
It’s the delivery that’s funny It’s the packaging It’s the framework and perspective of it. And it’s honestly a little bit sinister in the way it works. Your mind clings to the comedy so that it doesn’t have to look at the darkness.
You want to get borderlands 4 right?
Make a serious and somewhat scary game.
Put players in the situation where their backs are against the wall and the music is intimidating the enemies are intimidating and supply them with the means to fulfill an overcome that with the loot / leveling system.
And intelligently place points of comedic perspective and such in a way that doesn’t overshadow that essential drab backdrop.
Then when the time is right the delivery of comedic elements is just that much better. It’s a needed reprieve.
Go back and play through sledge’s safe house, underleveled with mediocre gear. There’s nothing comedic about the experience at all. The entire atmosphere is oppressive, intimidating, and repulsive.
Here the simple UI of the ammo vendors is the last bastion of anything good decent or comforting that the game provides.
And it’s definitely not the only zone like that.
I guess what I’m really trying to say here is that as much as I appreciate Anthony’s ability to write compelling narratives he didn’t understand what borderlands really was.
In bl1 the psychology of the player isn’t constantly being inundated with "hey this is funny laugh hey this is funny laugh hey this is funny laugh hey you should be laughing because this is a really zany game!
As for the antagonist you have to ask which element of the duality that borderlands requires to work well is the antagonist working for.
And throughout you have to maintain the essential proportion of contrast which is borderlands itself.
Not just visual it’s everything.
The contrast is everything.
I’ve talked about the backdrop which makes up the essential zipfian 80% of what borderlands really was.
Now lets talk about the other twenty percent…
Actually no I can’t do that I’m way off topic.
Let’s talk about the “antagonist”
Borderlands 2 didn’t celebrate the mini boss.
Borderlands 1 gave us the sequential overcomings of smaller bosses which culminated with our defeat of the destroyer. This was because the actualization/ realization of a cohesive overarching antagonist is much more difficult to pull off in a way that is palatable
Borderlands 2 largely aims to do away with that as much as possible because it’s trying to sell the notion of a primary antagonist.
I’m not saying that this approach is inherently not borderlands.
I would love to see a singular antagonist delivered in the borderlands universe with the correct contrast.
But I think that is best reserved for borderlands 5.
I can see that antagonist, I can feel what they could bring to the table. But honestly there needs to be some doubling down and refocusing of the core feel and character of the game itself.
If borderlands FINALLY finds it’s heart and soul then the next game is going to be best served by plentiful antagonists who are sequentially conquered and revisited as part of the core game loop. Obviously there needs to be a main pursuit to be overcome in the form of a boss but that can be a lotore decentralized than the twins or jack.
Tldr: the core character of borderlands is much more essential to borderlands than the “bad guy” ever was.
Also I’m really sorry it took so long for me to say this and that it’s probably in the wrong thread.
