Dlc3 and main game stories have a similar problem, I think

Borderlands 3 Borderlands 3 SPOILERS
#1

Namely, loose threads and buildup without the climax.

Dlc3 tried to do a big buildup to reveal that The Company was Jakobs. Although it was kind of easy to predict, it still is an interesting idea worth exploring; were they experimenting off-world? Were they on Gehenna originally, and moved to Eden 6? How involved was the Jakobs family, and how would Wainright react to what his corporation had done?

Problem is, after that Jakobs logo appears in the elevator, it’s not touched on again. Just the dramatic reveal (which, again, you could pretty much guess ahead of time) without delving into the implications or explanation.

Additionally, Rose seems interesting, but we don’t understand her motivations, and we only get a glimpse at her backstory through an echo or two. Given what she knows and how much of an impact she makes, why aren’t we told what changed her from daughter of a scientist to psuedo-revolutionary anarchist gangster?

I’ve found these problems in the main story, as well, specifically in regards to two things; Troy’s tall puppy syndrome, and whatever the hell Lilith did in the end credits.

The Lilith problem is simple; the game acts like it’s obvious, but it really explains nothing. Did she turn into a fire hawk logo shaped barrier? Is everyone on the moon dead?

As for Troy, they really built that one up quite well. He surprised everyone by taking Maya’s power and life, proving that he is more than just a ‘leech’, and immediately it starts going to his head. Soon he is competing with and challenging Tyrene while working with her, and it makes the dynamic much more interesting.
It even escalates back on Pandora, when you raid the cathedral; he is getting impatient and angry, even abusive, because he feels oh so important and above everyone, he even risks hurting Tyrene to get the job done, ignoring her hilarious screams in his boss fight.

But then, he just dies and Tyrene eats him. That is not a problem, but if it’s going to play out the same as if he had never changed character, why bother with all the drama? No climax, despite almost a 3rd of the game building up to it with all this tension between them from him gradually becoming more and more self-important.

All they had to do was throw in a line, like “you’ve forgotten who the real star is”, or “enough!”, and it would have gotten the point across, but Tyrene shows almost no I’ll feelings about it before absorbing him.

No climax.

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Let's talk about the PLOTS AND SIDE STORIES the BL3 story didn't solve (previous games spoiler)
#2

There’s a tradition in Borderlands to just go without fleshing key characters out, especially Sirens, save for one. In Borderlands one after the fact we’re told that Steele was a Siren, but it’s explained no further that I am aware of.

In Borderlands 2 the big reveal is that Angel is a Siren and her story is hinted at in echoes, but not fleshed out and then she’s gone. We get Maya’s actual backstory a bit, and Lilith’s story focuses on things she’s doing now, not her past, other than a few quips about being picked on in TTAODK.

TPS we don’t get anything else on Angel or Lilith, we get the Watcher and Zarpedon and anything from echos is pure speculation (Emily Swan).

Borderlands 3 we get Angel’s backstory, (but nothing new on her mother, outside of the Jakob’s portrait with Jack). Lilith & Maya’s stories deal with the hear and now, and Ava’s role as a would-be Siren doesn’t get fleshed out other than we could assume Maya picked her to be her heir, and it wasn’t something specific about her other than Maya taking a shine to her.

I haven’t played through Amara’s playthrough to see if there is any additional dialogue she provides about herself.

Tyreen and Troy’s story as Typhon’s children isn’t delved into too deeply. We never get any insight about when their power’s emerged and how that played out, what possibly made them so twisted outside of being isolated with their parents and losing their mother (who we only hear about as being an Atlas researcher or some sort who died). It’s not brought up if their being Sirens is random or was it possibly that Typhon being in good favor with the Siren Queen of Athenas was a factor on a Siren emerging from his lineage? We don’t know when and how they discovered and honed their powers, or even how they were successfully separated as infants, and Troy’s prosthesis/ cybernetics were made and attached, and how far they extend (his entire lower jaw and cheeks appear to be backed by cybernetics).

The Nyriad journals serve a similar function as the Tannis Journals that span the first two games and BL3 via he asides about Typhon and her entries with the Vault Keys in her lab.

And then we have the two Female villains in these last two DLCs, Eleanor & Rose. Eleanor is a explorer and scientist who gets powers from the heart of a vault monster. Rose’s mother was a Jakob’s employee involved in their research making hybrid monsters and gestating a Vault Monster. That she says it’s in her blood, and that she has both distinct unnatural eye color and a prominent Tattoo with protruding thorns seems to indicate that she may be some sort of hybrid herself. Of what kind, we just don’t know.

They leave the lore of the actual sirens in action pretty nebulous and that’s great for head canon and fan theories, but it does lesson the impact of the story. Especially when they sacrifice one such character in the minimum each game, and a bunch in the same way.

DestroyerEats Steele. Tyreen consumes/ merges with Destroyer.

Angel dies + Roland, Lilith shows up when she shouldn’t and Jack uses her powers.
Maya dies because Ava shows up when she shouldn’t and Troy uses her powers.

Troy aspired to Godhood and gets defeated, his last bit of power used to summon the Destroyer.

Jack aspired to Godhood and gets defeated, his last bit of power (The key) is used to summon the Warrior.

Rose aspired to to Godhood and gets defeated, his last bit of power is used to summon the Ruin.

Angel’s mom dead and a mystery (Hyperion scientists new her and she had informed them about Angel when she was a child, as mentioned in the Arid Nexus and Boneyard Side Mission Echos)

Rose’s mom, dead and a mystery (Worked for Jakobs and with the experiments on creatures, as mentioned in the two echos in the Facility)

Tyreen and Troy’s mom, dead and a mystery (Worked for Atlas, very active libido)

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#3

Elsewhere on the Forum I posted about the video series on lore that connected the dots I missed in Nyriad’s echoes that tie up the Calypsos Siren origins, but opens the door to another interesting plot twist that could be added:

Nyriad mentions a final gift from her sister sirens, that she could trap the horrible curse of her power from being passed on by living out the rest of her days in the Vault on Nekrotefayo (sp?). And so that’s where her powers remained, and when Typhon and Leda opened that Vault and killed the monster within (quite possibly Nyriad if you consider how she might have transformed after leeching millions of Eridians to power the great machine to trap the Destroyer) and consummated their victory carnally, the power of Nyriad entered Leda’s womb.

Leda was a woman seduced by Zeus, who took the form of a swan, and as a result gave birth to Titans. The Greek Mythology runs through most of the Atlas characters in Borderlands One, and general mythological names go with the Sirens. Since she worked for Atlas and sought out Typhon it makes me wonder if her relationship with Typhon was a function of an assignment? A sleeper agent tasked with discovering vaults and sirens for Atlas, in so much as willfully gestating them.

It may just be a game mechanic of convenience, but Leda understood the machine, and Nyriad’s logs are all in the same geographical areas as Typhons. Is it possible that Leda learned enough about the language and history of sirens and Eridians to know about Nyriad’s power being trapped? Did Typhon know as well?

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#4

I mean, if were necroing this I’ll chip in my 2 cents.

  1. I thought the reveal of the company being Jacobs was a joke. A poorly done joke admittedly, but they wanted to to play it up like some secret when it was blatantly obvious what company it was. Honestly, I would have loved it to have been some different, unused, and potentially even unnamed company that was a competitor of Jacobs, but meh.

  2. Her motives are pretty base, but they’re there. She wants to continue her grandmother’s work and kill the town because it represents those who gave up on what could have been. That was my interpretation anyhow. It’s a cheesy spaghetti western. The villain ain’t gonna be too complex.

  3. Lil and Rose are VERY different cases. Lilith is gone, but it was a sacrifice to get rid of the moon…not sure if that means destroying it or teleporting it, but I do believe that what they were going for was “she used all her great power and left a (possibly permanent) mark on the sky in it’s place”. Rose was a person who used animal training techniques (i.e. her whistling) to manipulate/use creatures. Though, I will admit I have no idea where her glowy powers came from since she isn’t a Siren. If she was, her arm would have glowed with her eyes. Oh, and yea. I’m, like, 99% sure everyone who was on Elpis is dead now…because the writers of BL3 hate every game they didn’t write apparently.

  4. Uhm…while, I could comment on the “antagonists” of the main BL3 story, that is not what this is about so instead I’m going to pose a question…
    How is this rant about the writing issues of the antagonist pair of the main story connected to a solitary villain who uses her ability to command a giant beast to kill us then vanishes without a trace? How are the problems similar? The climax was clear for Rose. Open ended, yes, but very much clear and very much a climax.

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#5
  1. Agreed.
  2. That’s fair. Pretty cheap, but fair. I guess I just expected a bit more, given the attempts to make us feel invested.
  3. Oh, for sure. Very different. Lilith’s case was still portrayed very badly. Very little explanation other than some shallow attempt to make Ava look somehow wise or competent.
  4. The point was that both have the problem of climaxes that either don’t arrive, or fizzle out like a sparkler. I wasn’t really satisfied with Rose, but it was far more egregious with the Calypsos.
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#6

This bit…

So, the Sheriff’s logs explain that thr Devil Rider’s tattoos are laced with Core. That doesn’t necessarily give them powers though.

Rose also says something about her connection to New Horizons being in her nature, or in her blood. I took that to mean, and maybe I said this up there, she had been experimented on in some way, as a child. Her literal thorns sort of imply it.

If the crone was actually Rose’s grandmother, or at least a contemporary, the glowing powers could be derived from the taming bloom of that yellow plant, which may have been spliced into her DNA, and contributes to her ability to tame beasts?

Rose having literal thorns is on the nose as it is, but that being indicative that she had hybrid DNA with plantlife fits the new lore. There’s also a chance she has some of the elemental deer proxies as well.

#7

I’ll admit I have yet to find all the ECHO logs, but I don’t think those “thorns” are a result of genetic modification. Plenty of people get body mods in real life to have things like head horns or ridges on their arms. Some people actually have legit spikes implanted in their skin. I figured that is what Rose did.

Again, haven’t heard all the ECHOs so I may have missed something, but I feel that if she had been experimented on, that may have been mentioned at least in passing. I’ve only heard one where Rose’s mother taught her how to whistle, that her Grandmother developed the technique, and that it was important to learn it.

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#8

It’s dialogue Rose says herself. I don’t think it’s even in an echo, it’s her speaking over the PA in the facility possibly. I’ll have to go back or check out a YouTube compilation.

#9

That’s interesting. I have run the DLC with each character in the past week just to get caught up before the update and I don’t remember Rose saying anything like that. She mentions her grandmother and carrying on the family’s work, but nothing about genetic experiments on Rose herself.

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#10

The little bit of narrative her about her grandmother, the nature of the research, and her being the only one who could control the ruiner definitely contributed to my perspective.

Is the actual dialogue, and the title of the Echo, Powerful Smell, at least in combination with the Floral aspect of Bellik control, implied to me that Pheromones were in part what Rose used to tame the beasts, along with what appear to be her core-derived abilities.

Her grandmother being a researcher and the “in my blood” line with generic research being the context seems purposeful to me.

Maybe that’s too big an inference @Jordangold527 but the use of the Facility tech only goes so far, and her glowing eyes are definitely something biological. Putting all the pieces presented in the DLC together, Rose is a unique character with unique abilities compared to everyone but the Vault Hunters.

Did Gearbox Quietly Introduce A New Lore Thread & Timeline?
#11

I definitely felt like Core was just eridium/slag 2.0, with the way people seem to have infused themselves with it and gained powers, like the anointed and slag enemies in B2.
I like the tattoo idea, but I wish they’d done more with it.

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#12

No corpse, so good money is they aren’t necessarily done with Rose.

Then again Captain Scarlett survived too.

If you’ve ever played Portal Games, the use of Core is very much like the use of the mineral/ chemicals in that game. Eridium & Slag were basically user like mutagen in TMNT & energon in Transformers not much else. Or to reference my other long-winded topic, Philosohers Stones in Full Metal Alchemist.

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#13

Ah, man, I reeeally want to kill Captain Scarlett. I hope she comes back for a single side mission that ends with her death.

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