One of my favorite memories was I was playing with 3 friends and I went into ffyl, one of my friends who was playing claptrap activated rubber ducky mode and no one could res me because we all bounced until I bled out.
I wasn’t even mad because I was laughing way too hard at 3 people trying to res me as they bounced out of control.
It was glorious.
At least they gave you the opportunity to not use your action skill, I kicked them all before they loaded in 
Claptrap was funny for the first week, maybe even for a few days of the second, but by a month in I was over him lol
I hate the dialogue in this game, after all, what’s the point of your character talking if every single NPC has the same reaction to all the playable characters?
The point is to learn about the character you are playing as that part is different.
The grinder was too good imho. It’s sad I spent more time there than actually shooting. The class titles I do miss. Now as for the NPC’s dialog I think the devs did an amazing job. True Sanctuary folk are rather bland, but bandits do differentiate hunters. I actually have experienced quite possibly my favorite moment from this. In either Carnivora or Konrads I saw a bandit run from the entrance back to his pals. "It’s a girl! Guys it’s a girl. Yea a girl.’’. I nearly pissed myself laughing. Couldn’t help but to think it was a shot at how guys act in games.
I agree. BL:TPS is very well polished and perhaps the best Borderlands entry to date. What it lacked in quantity it more than made up for in quality. It brought the Borderlands experience to its best possible evolution with many amazing features and quality of life improvements(most of which have unfortunately, been inexplicably abandoned in BL3)
I wasn’t super fond of low-gravity but it obviously made sense with the setting. I mean, I didn’t dislike it per se, and I wouldn’t even mind seeing it again-I simply didnt care for it being such a huge focal point as a mechanic. If we see it in the future, hopefully it will be used more sparingly.
But yeah, the characters unique dialogues with one another, characters appearing in cut-scenes, a lot of these little features that folks don’t always give a great deal of thought too really come together to create a sense of intense immersion that has not been in a Borderlands game yet(Tales excluded).
The skills trees were done really well and I loved the many multiplayer skill point options! That was the best. My daughter and I played as Auralia and Claptrap and the well designed characters and co-op skills possibly offered the best Borderlands experience to date!(Krieg and Maya was really ■■■■■■■ fun to though tbf).
The Presequel was the zenith of Borderlands fun and although it was far too short it is still my favorite Borderlands to date.
*I really do hope that the ending of The Presequel isn’t forgotten and left hanging in the breeze. So much set up and story building and to not see the pay-off would be far too much squandered potential.
In Presequel we basically ended up with a surplus of skill points anyways, however, I really enjoyed the lay out and approach towards the design of skill trees. Being able to move through the skill tree faster allowed for a lot of build diversity early in in the game and like you mentioned, we could obtain the major capstone earlier. Very nice!
I agree, I suspect this is why it wasn’t brought back. Ideally you want your players actually playing the game, not unlocking everything by cheesing one mechanic. I still think a “weaker” version should return though.
Oh man I forgot the combat banter between the vault hunters, that was amazing too.
Yeah! My daughter and I would be cruising around in a moon buggy and suddenly Clappy and Auralia would bust out into a full in ■■■■■■■ conversation.
So much variety in combat quips as well.
Awesome and IMHO, super underrated game!
I wasn’t around for the hate brigade on TPS and I still think it’s the most polished of all the Borderlands games (including this one). The characters were all fun, the skill trees were fun and interesting, I enjoyed the story (and even at its worst it’s still better than the story in BL3), and it had a ton of QoL. Balance was a little iffy, but it always is in a Borderlands game.
The real problems with TPS were that I think it tried too hard to address concerns BL2 players had about endgame - The Grinder short circuited too much of the chase, not enough boss specific loot/too many world drops, and a lot of the weapons were so balanced as to not be as interesting or fun.
Either way, general agreement with this list. All of these things on your list should be in this game except for the Grinder.
2K Australia =/= 2K Games
Two different developer teams
That’s the point of this thread. If you give another studio an opportunity to make an entry for your IP and they do some things better than you did, shouldn’t you maybe take some of those improvements on when creating your sequel?
They should, but TPS was also the least selling title in the franchise.
That would be so much easier to sell if the game wasn’t a failure, the least liked in the series, and had to be finished by the original company when the other one was shut down.
It’s not like they haven’t taken some things from it though.
All those things were great and should’ve come back in some form. When I first played with a friend and tried to inspect, it brought up their PSN profile and I was like “wtf is the point of this?” Lol
I liked it way better than BL2
It only needed some good circles of slaughter
I haven’t seen any Legends in the Vendors. The highest I’ve seen are Purples.
I wholeheartedly agree with the positive things people have said about TPS. This topic makes me happy because it felt like I was the only one that appreciated that game.
TPS did a lot right, but I didn’t realise while playing it at the time, bu thinking back on it now, it probably did have the most QoL improvements in it. As soon as I realised that 3 had exactly the same responses from NPC’s to the VH’s I felt disappointed as it was a step down.
Anyhoo, agree with the points rasied, hopefully some of the dlc with address this.
Elpis was absolutely beautiful, a gorgeous locale. I recall hearing people complain that it wasn’t aesthetically varied, and to be honest, I disagree.
Numerous games have a snowy region, a desert region, and a lava region. Elpis found some immensely creative ways to alter the geography of the landscape in that you couldn’t do on a high gravity planet, the unique colour schemes in each locale, and the visually distinct style behind Dahl technology made it very interesting to explore.
Meteorites rained from the sky, exotic, colorful, gaseous emissions appeared from under the planets crust, the stars and nebulas in the sky were stunning. Pools of searing magma, frozen cyro deposits or other indeterminate chemicals littered the terrain.
Rock formations almost broke the laws of physics, the maps were jam packed with verticality and underground caverns, locations showed the interesting aftermath of The Crackening, and you got an idea of where the different fauna lived and how they adapted to the climate.
The developer of Kenshi put careful care into researching how geography is scientifically altered over millennia, and they built the world with that form of environmental storytelling specifically in mind. You can see the formations created before sea levels dropped, where natural disasters occurred, the way rocks form realistic to what happens on earth. I have to wonder if the developers of the Pre Sequel did something similar, the construction of the terrain is fantastic to me.
I’m not sure if it’s due to the HD texture pack, but the attention to detail is stunning, and holds up extremely well. Detailed diagrams on ships, beautiful, mysterious Dahl technology, the weathered scrapped together locales and bits of machinery Elpis settlers use, the scavenger groups patched together hideouts littered with their own forms of grafitti and repurposed abandoned spaceships and military gear.
Environmental storytelling within how each locale had a historical purpose during Dahls settlement of the moon, from the (fictional, supposedly creates cyro technology) methane harvesting and re-purposing plantation, abandoned scrapyards, military outposts, tourist locales, and trading centers.
The laser weapons felt satisfying to use, and I love how each brand had distinct characteristics unique from their other guns by the same manufacturer. I really enjoyed the synergy between Athenas’s builds, such as Maelstorm with Return Fire/Prismatic Aegis.
I loved the references to Australian culture, and I felt overall the humour, worldbuilding, and storytelling were all quite sharply written. The humour doesn’t necessarily make me laugh out loud, but I don’t often (only Tales has made me to large extent beyond chuckling), and it was overall pleasant and witty.
Zarpedon and her history within Dahl is genuinely interesting to learn about. Felicity is a genuinely sad moment for me, and I felt she was a very compelling character.
Picking a character is almost like picking your style of humour, I loved Athenas dry gallow wit, and seeing her come out of her hardened shell and begin to show joy and appreciate the parts of life she never got to experience as a child.
Claptastic Voyage is probably my favourite Borderlands dlc, the glitch weapons are creative and fun to use, the locales were gorgeous and unique (including the optical illusion dreamscape), the storytelling surprisingly heartfelt and fleshed out, the music exhilarating, and the final boss absolutely fantastic.
I am immensely sad that 2K Australia got shut down, and we never got to see the promising looking DLC.
Hopefully the ideas behind the planned DLC are revisited in the future, and lessons learnt from the new gameplay mechanics, creative skill trees, adaptive dialogue and banter, and quality of life improvements mentioned within this thread.
Tps was fun, but it lacked so much content. The zones were dull, the quests were dull, The same boring 3-4 enemies. The sotry was fantastic and it gave us one of the best DLC of the franchise with Claptastic Voyage. It was a 50/50 fun/boring entry for me and the one I played the less. VH were awesome tho.