In addition to those, I still remember Sawtooth Cauldron - especially when jumping down into the Cauldron itself with the music - really got the adrenaline pumping.
Also so memorable with Brick expressing surprise and admiration when you jump off the top. BL3 areas in comparison are not bad at all, but not much stands out and is memorable
Imagine saying BL2 Level design is better than 3
The warden only healed and grew stronger to god warden or what ever on my first playthrough. I’ve beaten him probably 7 or 8 times trying to get him to that level again. But he never does or dies to quickly.
But then again I shredded Billy someone people had problems with so they nerfed him.
First playthrough he was hard because I was vary much under leveled. In fact I beat the game without doing any side missions and it was quite frankly pretty damn difficult at time. But when I actually did do the side missions on my second go it was a cake walk.
Gearbox better come up with the best story expansion ever made for BL3 if they want some redemption, otherwise I will think twice before buying another Gearbox game.
i feel like they rushed her death to make us not like the twins…but hey at least claptrap got him a lady lmao.
About the level design, just as I had suspected from looking at the trailers before release, there is no variation between areas on the different planets.
In BL2, we got tundra-y, grassy, good old desert landscapes and more all just on Pandora.
So just because you have to see a space-warping sequence to get to a new looking region doesn’t really feel like it’s that special, they might as well have just kept all of the action on one planet again. After all, Pandora has multiple vaults anyway.
i agree with this Eden 6 was to me the most fleshed out planet but even there it was all green except the small volcano area.
The other places felt different to me. Different species of animals and different terrains. Yah pandora had similar terrains but for the most part it’s just desert wasteland.
However I really don’t get the criticism of this kind. It’s a universe that has 6 galaxies all inhabited by the same intelligent species(human), nature is diverse but always has a familiarity. So of course the different worlds are going to have a similarity to each other.
“Slab did you just…did you just jump off the crow’s nest? GOD DAMN you make me proud!”
Yeah I remember that to, I liked Sawtooth Canyon as well, another one that’s better than almost every area in BL3. I especially liked Brick’s story about him and Tiny Tina riding on his back. Brick is an awesome character that I wish they would get just a little more in depth with. I think there could be more to him than just being a rage monkey, loyal to his friends, and likes puppies.
I gotta agree with ya there. The different planets didn’t feel like we were going to different planets. Honestly they just feel like more fast travel locations. Sure they looked different, different styles of areas, but when we’re just going there and doing the same things then it doesn’t feel different.
I think maybe they just needed to give us different things to do on each planet. Something other than just running around doing missions that made each planet feel special. Also they could have done something to show us the lore of each planet. I don’t know if the Erydian writings do that, I haven’t gotten them all yet. All the ones I have gotten just talk about the destroyer.
It’s a minor criticism, to be sure and overall the game has a pretty diverse set of locations, but then there’s Athenas.
One map? Srsly? Hopefully the target of some DLC content.
I agree a different mission set up would be nice.
I know the typhon logs kinda give stuff about each area but I’m not sure on the writings.
I started a separate topic with this earlier today, but it feels more at home here as a reply to this great (but sad) topic which hits very close to home for me, so I’m posting it here and deleting my separate topic.
As I make my way sequentially through the worlds of Borderlands 3, I’ve noticed that each world and many individual maps feel like lazy, inadequate homages (there are some exceptions) to previous games & DLCs in the series.
Pandora, well, that’s obviously referencing most of the main skag infested wasteland areas of Borderlands 1 and 2. With less enemies and less interesting locations.
The CoV circular Racetrack references that vehicular Boss arena from Borderlands 1 and MotorMama’s arena from the BL2 Torque DLC.
I found a Devil’s Suckhole big pit in the centre location somewhere, I seem to remember.
Tannis’ dig site was obviously a reference to where you meet her in person for the first time ever in Borderlands 1, minus the chests (not a SINGLE chest there!), rakks, and Spiderants (god, I miss Spidersnts! Never thought I’d say that!).
The Holy Broadcast Centre VR Rescue mission was an obvious nod to the Claptastic Voyage.
Sanctuary 3 is obviously Concordia 2.0.
On Promethea, Meridan Outskirts & Metroplex felt like Opportunity meets Blade Runner’s Los Angeles (loooove the look of those levels, particularly Outskirts just seeing that huge, beautiful, 80s sci fi colour palette city dominating the horizon).
Lectra City felt like a far less threatening Opprtunity meets Lynchwood.
Skywell 27 was an obvious nod to Elpis and its various locations (where does the oxygen come from so people don’t need atmosphere suits? Lol referencing another topic of mine…).
Atlas HQ felt like a zero threat, low budget Crimson Fastness (Atlas soldiers, chests), leading into a much more relaxed and less interesting journey through the Corporate Head Offices of Helios Station.
Neon Arterial (ugh, so boring) felt like an actually even LESS exciting Borderlands 1 Knoxx DLC Driving Simulator 2019.
Meeting the Eridians heading into the Forgotten Basilica was really cool but ultimately underwhelming. Various Eridian ruins areas from previous games referenced here.
Athenas felt like a microscopic version of that village and surrounding area from Tiny Tina’s DLC…Flamerock? Flame-something.
Eden 6 (Floodmoor Basin and Jakobs Estate) felt like a dull, mostly empty, shinier / brighter Jakobs Cove, minus the zombies and werewolves (but plus dinosaurs, which helps some!).
The Anvil is pretty obviously a callback to the infamous Prison (what was its name again? Lockdown Palace, that’s it!) from the Borderlands 1 Knoxx DLC, there is even an area called “Hector’s Lament” and, referencing Mr Shank, there is The Shanks gang.
The Anvil also contains one of the creepiest missions in the game (“We’re on the blood path nooooow…”), which culminates in a tiny, disappointing reference to one of my very favourite Borderlands questlines, Clan Wars, when the Fingerbiters fight the Shanks and you must choose a side before making the other faction hostile and wiping them out.
So…uh…yeah…still loving the combat and the mechanics and how everything looks and feels, bit still feeling pretty let down by how most of the game is either disappointingly tiny and too empty or disappointingly large and too empty, and how most (there are a few great ones, don’t get me wrong) missions, side and main both, really fail to draw you in emotionally, leaving only the old (but sadly unsatisfting if you’re not emotionally invested) Borderlands trademark quest pattern of “Go to these locations, fight things and find things at each location, return said things to mission giver, maybe fight a boss, repeat”.
So much wasted potential here after such a long, long wait.
And I complain bevause I care.
EDIT: Obviousky, I haven’t finished the game, or even Eden-6, yet.
Please feel free to add references for locations further along in the game or anything I may have missed in my post!
Thanks!
EDIT EDIT: To be fair, it HAS been a lot of fun to explore and experience thus far, and it IS impressive that they have been able to cram in this much fan service vis-a-vis previous game references.
I wonder why they paid so much homage to the first game. Maybe because they recently re-played it before polishing it up to make the enhanced edition. It’s my favorite in the series, so I didn’t mind, but I mean they literally recreated the opening sequence with being on Marcus’s bus and being contacted by a siren. There is a late-game side-quest that also puts overt references to other side-quests in the Arid Badlands from BL1 (which was very funny, imo), too.
Maybe a lot of content and story continuity from BL2 got passed over in lieu of trying to follow the first game more directly.
When BL2 came out, I remember being disappointed initially because it was so much more story-driven than the first game (yes, I just wanted a shoot-loot sandbox light on story like the first one), focused on an entirely new villain and didn’t address the questions left surrounding the vault, or the Eridians. My opinion has changed now on BL2, but at this point I think TPS had better story and added more to the lore than this game does. The story in this game gets in your way (unlike the first game), it’s unavoidable to have to listen to the calypso twins, and it’s off-putting to think about going through another play-through.
I suppose that with 3 they wanted to return to answering some of those questions or fleshing out the Eridians but… does anyone feel like they did?
BL2 seemed like it was putting into place a trope where all of the past game’s vault hunters would return to be involved in the current adventure and it seems a lot of people, myself included expected to see Axton & Sal, so that was a disappointment. I guess the flipside is the universe is getting pretty saturated with characters and it’s hard to find a place for everyone. The characters they did choose to include were not all utilized well, though. Plain poor writing.
Idk. That DLC they released for BL2 didn’t actually tie anything together. The way BL3 started and how Sanctuary III was presented seemed so rushed. The ship? Oh yeah, the SHIP. All of a sudden, here it is.
Bleh. It would be nice to have a fresh set of eyes again to judge this game, without having played any of the others or knowing anything about the universe. The only significant lore I feel like this game added was one character, Typhon DeLeon and how he found the first vault, but not much else.
I wish the Calypso twins never existed as ideas…
We don’t talk about Sanctuary 2.
(great post by the way!)
potential spoiler!!!
what about the first siren leech cant remember her name…the one from the eridian logs
Oh, did I do a bad? I’ll edit.
no i was warnning ppl about what i typed as potintial spoiler lol lmao i guess now that i look urs was to but i was reffering to mine lmao
I haven’t actually gone through again and listened to all of the Eridian logs, so I will put a touch of a grain of salt on what I think about it, so far.
However, I am not at all interested in doing this while having to play the game again so soon. Not without the promise of more content.
ill give u that… u gotta really look for the important s*** and lore they kinda just sprinkle around its there but it aint in ur face obvious most of the time.
The one who couldn’t absorb the destroyer which makes me think even this destroyer was not the real destroyer either.
@miles_wimbrow
I don’t like typhon. Not his charecter just that he’s the first. Vault hunters seemed older then say 20 years. He is also apparently responsible for killing alot of those gigantic skage of which we see there bones everywhere. I don’t see how he could have killed those 20, 30 years ago. Just looking at them and far in the ground and being just bones for there size make me think they are much older.