More thoughts on the twins

Borderlands 3 Borderlands 3 SPOILERS
#1

Long post, plenty of spoilers.

So… I know a lot of people have complained about the twins, and certainly I’ve made posts complaining about bl3 writing and some of the stuff I felt could have been done better, but I just… keep thinking back to it so here we are again.

Anyway… what I think bugs me the most is that I think the Calypsos could have worked? Their character concept had the potential. But the writing never pulled it off, it just made them annoying and uncompelling. And for me the big point I realised they were never utilised right is one that a lot of people point to - when Troy gets Maya’s powers, and goes on about being the one on top now, and then drains Tyreen’s powers to fight the vault hunters, only to… die. And Tyreen not really caring.

So, I think this was a very obvious point where the villain dynamic could have changed. Despite always going on about being a team, Troy was always given the lesser role, and he felt as if his sister was always the one getting whatever she wanted and tossing him scraps. Now he’s the more powerful one, he gets a chance to be in the limelight. He doesn’t need her anymore. And for Tyreen? That should hurt. That should make her furious. If he drained her powers entirely and left her like Lilith, she would suddenly no longer be the powerful person she’d set herself up to be, she’d have nothing. And her only option? Siding with the vault hunters to try and take Troy down.

Now, the vault hunters probably want nothing to do with her, but seeing as she’s Troy’s sister perhaps their connection would give her a chance to take his powers away from him, and that’s something they’ll just have to deal with. And then kill her later when she inevitably betrays them.

The COV could even end up being divided. You could have those that side with Tyreen as the original more powerful twin, and those who side with Troy as the new leader. You could actually use the fact they’re streamers and have some streamer war going on with callout videos, fake apologies and all the other drama you can imagine. You could watch a teasing sibling rivalry where they used to joke together turn into a spiteful and vengeful feud…

And at the end of it all… and the end, Tyreen just begs her brother to come back. To be her brother again. But he’s not interested, he feels as if she never really respected him and she never will. And so she decides screw it, if I can’t win then I’ll make damn well sure he can’t either, because there’s nothing like that kind of spite between siblings.

So, you defeat Troy, Tyreen gets her powers back, but so does Lilith (and Maya or Ava, depending if you want to tweak things so Maya doesn’t die), and now it’s two against one… and with their help, you can take her down.

I don’t know… I feel like an actual conflict between the two of them would just make them feel more human? If you’re going to the trouble of setting up twins as the villains, making their relationship substantial is kinda important, otherwise why bother? Tyreen doesn’t bat an eyelid when you kill Troy. Killing Angel in bl2 made Jack furious… I kinda wondered if they were so busy making Tyreen ‘evil’ they forgot that villains can have emotions and attachments? Even if they treat other people like crap?

Idk… a lot of the cast is underutilised, and lack any kind of arc, but I’ll make another post about that in a bit (yes I’m still salty about the tftbl cast).

8 Likes
#2

Troy’s potential has been wasted. Dunno what happened during story writing but its obvious Troy was supposed to play a bigger role, especially with how his personnality changed after the evens of Promethea.

Also, I think he should’ve been the final boss of the game. Cause they missed “The Des-TROY-er” pun and it makes me sad.

8 Likes
#3

Oh I never even noticed that! That would have been great.

#4

GBX hire this man!

#5

This would have been better than the story we got. Lots of potential in these ideas.

#6

I think the reason the twins are annoying is because gearbox wanted to represent them as a group of arrogant content creators. Basically they showed their power on local clans, but the way Troy managed to make content to show in the echos gained the recognition and the power in the rest of the clans to the point they obliged them to join or die.

Troy´s potential has been wasted. The Des-TROY-er idea of @EzioILMentore was a great idea to add.

Tyreen is just a selfish person, she manipulated Troy since Nekrofateyo and she used him as a tool or instrument to gain popularity. The way he gained power absorbing Maya was too much for Tyreen to handle so she just argued with him the rest of the game until his death.

I love the idea of the twins. His father, who told stories of his adventures and reaches Nekrofateyo as the end of his journey, but sentenced the twins as their end too. That´s the reason they went to Pandora in search of opportunities wanting to become greater than his father, maybe in search of approval or maybe the tyranic control and universal mayhem .

I´m learning how to write in english so any correction you see. I´m happy to learn from my mistakes.

2 Likes
#7

I get that they were meant to be annoying content creators, but I don’t think they ever used that to it’s full potential in that area… I mean the videos they make to mock Lilith/Maya are just… probably closer to something from the 1900s than any streaming vid, or vine/tiktok meme… it feels totally disconnected from what they’re supposed to be. It’s just not good?

I’d rather have them plugging their merch, adding in sponsorship, fake apologies, drama, all the stuff streamers are actually notorious for? Not just tacking on ‘like, follow and obey’ at the end of whatever they have to say like somehow we forgot they were supposed to be streamers. They could have had them be both kinda annoying and humorous, and relevant to the modern age, by doing parody right. But they failed.

Their backstory/Typhon was fine, but their personality and their connection to each other fell flat. There could have been a lot more interesting stuff done there.

And that Des-TROY-er idea is gold.

(Your English is fine btw!)

2 Likes
#8

While I agree there was some wasted potential, I don’t really see some of the things others do.

I think one of the problems with Borderlands 3 is that they tried to make the characters too realistic, and maybe this doesn’t work as well wit cartoon characters as it would with real life ones. We had the same with Ava, who was a pretty realistic self-centered teen to me but who got slated for not crying too openly about Maya, and here I feel that Tyreen did show a caring side with Troy but it was done quite subtly - the scene where she recovered and said “you did it Troy” before absorbing what was left of him I think was her way of showing emotion, which is probably not that unrealistic for a psychopath.

And I saw the squabbles between Troy and Tyreen as just that. I never got the impression that something big was brewing between them and I think the fact that they didn’t turn on each other is probably more realistic, given that they were twins after all.

As for the streaming, the audience they were playing to wasn’t us: it was the bandits. So it didn’t need to be sophisticated (in fact, that probably wouldn’t have worked as well for their audience) and was better suited to being garish, which I think is what they were trying to achieve. They were claiming to be gods, so I feel any apologies would have been counter-productive.

Like the Des-Troy-er idea, though! I do think the boss fights were not terribly well done and fighting the Twins together might have added an interesting dynamic

#9

There’s also that scene between Tyreen and Typhon right before she kills him where you can see the childish angst on her face. Very subtle, but it’s there.

2 Likes
#10

i want the option to bring back maya, but sacrifice ava and im all good.

#11

We might have to agree to disagree then, I certainly don’t think bl3 had an issue with writing character’s too realistically. Tbh, they mostly reduced them to one or two traits, with little in the way of nuance.

Ava’s problem, from my perspective at least, was that we never got to know her well enough, or for her to demonstrate more depth to her character, so it was very hard for players to see her as anything but an annoying inconvenience that got a fan favourite killed. She didn’t get a chance to really learn from her mistakes, or grow as a person. Her powers, when she got them, were just handed to her.

And I personally still don’t feel sold on Tyreen’s reaction. There relationship always had the potential to turn nasty because it was built around a power dynamic where Tyreen was always the one in control - Troy was a parasite who relied to her to survive, and she could guarantee his loyalty because of this, and thusly took it, and him, for granted. But upsetting that power balance by Troy absorbing enough power that he no longer needs her… that felt like an inevitable point for the relationship to change. It felt as if it was what the story was building to. But his death really didn’t add much to the plot at all.

And you could argue that it’s ‘realistic’ for Tyreen not to give a visible reaction, but really why write her like that in the first place? Do you enjoy emotionless villains with no attachment to anything around them? Or do you prefer villains with strong motives, attachments, and a vicious streak a mile wide when people touch what’s theirs? If you go to the trouble of writing twins… but then do nothing with their relationship, and show next to no reaction when one of them dies, why write twins at all? Couldn’t you just have had a singular villain? Or some random henchman?

As for the streamer stuff, I get that they weren’t streaming to us, but again, you have to ask, if you’re not going to properly utilise that angle, why even have it at all? You could have a cult and all that entails without streaming… especially on Pandora… The reason you might chose to include it is to give a more modern spin on the cult following, with a medium that players understand, as a means of parody… but if what you create is far enough removed from what players actually see, it just doesn’t hit the mark.

Anyway, I’m not getting at anyone for enjoying the game. If you like it, and the characters, the way they are, more power to you! But for me personally, I found the story/characterisation to be a big problem, and while it’s difficult to make antagonists that measure up to Handsome Jack, I would have been much more impressed with them if they embraced what was unique about them and made it a bigger part of the story.

2 Likes
#12

The only thing for me that I really hate about the twins is:

My first playthrough and I’m exited… You see all this eridum frozen people and wonder what they are… Then when you killed mouthpiece Tyreen: “you wonder what these are? Look on the screen!”

This could be a nice mythos until the mid or even end game but no they said it in the first 5% of the game…

I’m not like the majority of the borderlands players. I don’t hate Ava and I don’t love Tina. Both mean pretty much nothing to me. The story is good except for returning to Sanctuary very often…

1 Like
#13

@pinkfrogsrus Good thread and thoughts. @Arsonist did a thread a while back on their theories as to why the Troy/Tyreen/Typhon dynamic seems kind of weird and why the story, as it pertains to the Deleons, does not quite seem to add up. I have linked that thread below. Interesting read and thread as well there.

3 Likes
#14

I think Troy could be the main villain, but he wouldn’t do it by betraying Tyreen. Troy likes to tiptoe around the idea that he could be more powerful, but his character wouldn’t fit killing her. As bitter as he is on being a parasite, he cares about his sister and legitimately enjoys her company. Devil’s Razor ECHOs and talking to us about their history supports this. His dialogue in his boss fight too: he tells Tyreen to endure the pain since they’re so close to their goal. ((Also because Troy has way more depth than Tyreen, but I like the idea of Tyreen being the villain better. Troy is just too passive a dude.))

…Until this. This bugged dialogue supports this too. The vault hunter killing Tyreen and Troy becoming the main villain was an idea they had. Would explain the inconsistency. DBPhantom has a fan theory that we were supposed to nearly kill Tyreen, Troy anoints her to try to save her, she dies anyway, and he blames us for it. Right? Why introduce anointed for just simple gameplay purposes?

1 Like
#15

I think I read that a while back actually, it was very interesting! I don’t know if I buy into it but I’m certainly curious to know what went on in development

Huh, never seen that before. I wonder if maybe during your fight with Troy, he could have drained too much energy from Tyreen to help him fight, unintentionally killing her, and then blaming the vault hunters… I certainly would have enjoyed that more than what we got.

1 Like
#16

Yep, that seems to be the case. There is a ton of cut dialogue. The worst part of BL3’s story is there are hints of a more solid one littered everywhere, its very frustrating. Though there are still some weak beats I’m not sure would’ve been changed if the writers had more freedom. (Vaughn, Aurelia, etc)

2 Likes
#17

:point_up_2: x 1,000 if I could. It’s not so much that BL3’s writing is bad, or its gameplay mechanics are bad, or the skill tree designs are bad - it’s just so readily apparent to me how all of the above could and should have been better.

Is that me just being greedy? Perhaps. But it’s hard to feel excited about liking something so much, that should have been so much more.

3 Likes
#18

Pretty much my sentiment. I still like bl3… in fact, the reason I’m still talking about it, even to complain, is because I love the franchise so much. But it could have been so much better, and it’s hard to ignore the missed potential. Especially after waiting so long for the game.

4 Likes
#19

The most likely reason for this is cut content due to word budgets. From what I say it looks like a lot of stuff was cut, and we ended up with a patchwork story in the end. (had they been able to keep most of the audio, it would have work out better IMHO)

#20

Same here. I was expecting the next evolution in the franchise, like TPS to 2 and 2 to 1. It was the perfect time to build on everything TPS added, gameplay and story-wise. But its the same pitfalls again. I totally get not having the war, but what we got is underwhelming. For all its quality of life features, there’s little to spice up the formula.

I legitimately think the Twins could’ve been amazing in their own right. There’s so much background material that isn’t properly communicated, or the stuff that is properly communicated is confused with itself. Seriously a waste of the twins (and the rest of cast t b h ) and I’m upset about that.

1 Like