Troy Redeemable, in a non-ovbious way?

Borderlands 3 Borderlands 3 SPOILERS
#1

My first play threw was the play threw I paid close attention to the story. So far every other time, I was just gunning to level up a character. That said, I did notice a couple things, both about Troy the character and the game play itself.

Despite the fact that Troy is clearly a villain supporting his even worse of a villain sister, there where these… shall we say, reserved moments for Troy, where he even stopped his sister from killing Lilith, right after Tyreen took Liliths powers and another moment during Eden-6 where is Dialog to you the player turns into a family nostalgia dialog of self reflection. These moments from Troy left me wondering, 'Is Troy convertible? Can he actually be swayed away from what his sister is doing? If so, when? ’

Every other games I played usually came with a very blatant ingame mechanic and strait forward que that you select, that could cause a games storyline to change, when the game is designed to allow for alternative storyline paths and alternative endings. (assuming they don’t pull a Mass Effect 3 at the very end)…

This game however, you will be given moments where the mission objective tells you to do something to complete the mission, but the right answer is actually to fail it on purpose. One of these happens on one of the side quest on Eden-6 when it comes to the beast rivalry. One of the leaders tells you to jump into a pit of fire. The game doesn’t actually show any other mission objectives, only the “jump into blah blah blah” basicly asking you to jump to your death on purpose. Most people might actually do it since they know they will respawn at the Hyperion New-U station. Me personally, I hate dying with a passion and was like “F* this” and just jumped up and down on the plank in front of the pit. After a little while, the monkey king finally said something about actually being wise and how he would have gotten a laugh had I actually done it. So I technically “Passed” his test of wisdom without jumping to my death.

After completing the storyline, never seeing a blatantly clear alternate choice that could convert Troy, and unlocking the Guardian and Mayham Mode stuff, for a while I thought, “well ok, I guess there is no way to do anything that could possibly cause the storyline to change and convert Troy to abandon his sisters psychotic murder path.”

But something just keeps bothering me about that… It feels too railroaded into that… If you treat the game as everyone has gotten used too playing games… Almost as if there is suppose to be another option, but in order to actually get the alternative choice, you would have to intentionally go against mission objectives, like I did with that monkey beast leaders test of Wisdom.

So now, I am not sure if how the game has ended with having to kill both Troy and Tyreen is the only possible ending…

BUT then again I am probably over thinking it and someone will likely data mine the game and find out that no such alternative option exist, not even has a deeply hidden option threw intentional deviations from mission objectives or what not.

After all, it isn’t like there is enough, non-mission objective content to even give enough head room to try and convert Troy away from his sister.

Please use Spoiler tags.

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#2

The game couldn’t fool me, after three games I’m wise to its tricks!

It’s not that kind of game. Any choices the game gives you are either for side stuff, xp, or a joke. For the main story you’re fundamentally just acting out a play.

With regards to different endings, all I’ve heard is that there is evidence of the narrative taking a different turn at one point in production, leading to a different ending. But that must’ve been scrapped for the current script. Never looked up the details, though.

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#3

I’ve seen a handful of people mention their thinking Troy was more sympathetic or would have made a better main Villain.

I felt like the writers tried to make him more sympathetic at points but also completely complicit.

He only spares Lilith so they can get it on Camera and Tyreen can power him up.

In their earliest echo shows remorse for abandoning their father, and having no choice but to leave.

But the next set of echoes in Devil’s Run we find out that the Cult was built on Troy putting words in Tyreen’s mouth, like Moses & Aaron.

The both switch roles over the course of the game, and Troy gains power and embraces his desire to rally the cultists, and Tyreen is humbled and used as a tool to the point of being drained nearly to death.

Neither show remorse for their actions, both aspire to wield the power of the great vault, and they both underestimate the toll trying to harness that power while fending off the Crimson Raiders will take on them.

The plot alteration that was rumored was that the Twins were initially meant to be two leaders of rival factions competing for vaults across the galaxy, our rivals moreso than our enemies.

In the existing narrative the break in the narrative would be most likely need to involve their difference in feelings about their father, and we don’t get to the third act of the story without making that impossible.

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#4

Well though I don t think an alternative ending exists I find yours thoughts interesting as they show there were space to make Troy and Tyreen more interesting by showing a more human side to them.

My personal idea was a on/off personality, meaning there what Troy and Tyreen build as a public face for their cult ( what is shown in Mouthpiece echos) and there what they really are but this side is never really developped , as they hack into our personal echo channel that would have been the oportunity to more personal true talk about how they really feel( notably about their real family) but writing mostly focused on making them hateable which fell flat after a while.

#5

What I saw was Troy loved his father, I saw a glimpse of that, for a moment. He also loved his sister, was integral in making her desire come true “Hey Tyreen try this…”

We are given the subject matter that Troy was torn between, perhaps in another universe is a happy fatherson tale… but it wasn’t to be. Troy chose, and somewhere in his heart was the fragment of another choice.

See all these words I gotta type here?
A gesture, 100 words. A picture, 1000 words…

Sometimes the things that go unsaid, but are in plain view, have the greatest impact. Why does everything have to be plated up AND served these days, geez

#6

I remember an old topic about a first version of BL3 's scenario.

The player was an “intergalactic streamer”, he had to choose to join “team Tyreen” or “team Troy”, then the story would take a split path depending on this 1st choice, ultimately killing the other team leader, and maybe then joining Lilith to kill his former team leader. Or something like that.

#7

Also, that Echo log that appears after the boss fight, is clearly from Troy, meaning he was still talking with his father all these years, but probably lying, saying they were living a normal life or something.

#8

Idk about being able to redeem Troy but along the lines of not doing the missions as the game tells you.
The Easter egg in battleborn says not to open the vaults. I wonder If there is anyway to get through the game without opening them.

#9

The only moment I can tell where you could make a change is by simply not entering the vaults. Though this would mean not being able to get some of the unlocks, if the system actually allows you to talk to the NPCs or just go to sanctuary to complete the mission without going into the vault.

I am not sure the game would let you refuse to place the vault keys on the pedistals and still progress the story. That may also be true about entering or refusing to enter the vaults as well, the game might not have content to let you progress the story without entering the vaults.

If the game lacks content to allow you to progress the story while refusing to place the keys or refusing to enter the vault, then we are pretty much railroaded into how we all know the games story goes, with us the player having to kill both Troy and Tyreen with no alternative paths or even chance to redeem Troy, much less even keep Typhon D from dying.

sigh the sad truth may simply be, Editory/admin change in direction for the game development and the dialog we are theory crafting about is simply left over elements of a previous direction that got abandoned.

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#10

Ah the Spec Ops: The Line approach, where not playing is the ultimate victory.

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#11

Many, like myself, would had liked to see the story dig a little deeper in Troy’s dilemma
I wouldn’t call him redeemable as ultimately he chose the easy and appealing path to the dark side and followed his sister. But clearly he knew what they were doing was wrong.
It’s probably me imagining things but I always feel the level scaling to be awkward toward the end of the story. I don’t believe in a radically different second ending but maybe there was more in the last chapters at some point.

As for side quest with multiple endings. I can think of at least two. Both on Eden-6

On the blood path and Sellout

#12

Both he and Tyreen are downed after that fight and then she gets up and goes Super Saiyan 2 in an explosion of energy. Troy, on the other hand, and every trace of him is gone.

It fits the logs that he would be the one to have an ongoing connection, but nothing in the narrative indicates that either twin had any communication with Typhon directly. He says he’s been keeping track of things, but either twin could have held onto it as an heirloom of their past lives, or in a more sinister turn, to eventually tell to their Father that they surpassed him as Vault Hunters and had become gods.

#13

It is true that there is no direct evidence to say who kept the Echo log and why. All the implied and circumstantial suggest Troy was the one who kept it.

If I remember right, it was Tyreen that killed their mother. Tyreen seems to be the one willfully eating everyone’s life force and enjoying it. Every time I see Tyreen agree to Troys suggestion it is always begrudgingly. After all, Tyreen even calls her own brother a parasite and eventually absorbs him for power after that fight on Pandora.

Seems that Tyreen barely has enough liking for her brother and family to allow Troy to live as a helper/play thing, barely getting along as brother and sister and close, but not to close to that edge where Tyreen could/would actually just off her brother.

Perhaps Troys interest and skill for echo net streaming and how useful it was to influence the COV in mass was the only think keeping Troy a decent distance away form the Razors edge of his sisters willingness to betray him.

Looking at it that way, and understanding how streaming and developing a fan base would work in real life, Troy would have likely had to do an early start on it, not long after both of them left Necrotafayo. Tyreen likely would not have seen much use in it at first, but also viewed it as an amusing pass time to watch. Then they start interacting with the Psyco’s and start appealing to the psyco’s, Tyreen watches Troy develop his Echo Streaming career using them and they eventually develop the COV from Echo Net streaming. Tyreen lets Troy do most/all the echonet streaming work, since she likely doesn’t wanna be bother with it too much, while Troy would end up feeling happy cause he is helping his sister.

But because of Tyreens nature, even subconsciously, Troys echonet streaming, as a useful tool to Tyreens desires, is likely the only thing really staving off a large part of Tyreens willingness to betray Troy, but it is still something that even Tyreen isn’t being honest to herself about. She keeps mentioning “FAMILY” and knowing how to use them. Given her usage of the word family and what she does to her own family, from all the Psyco’s she absorbs to her own mother, I think it is safe to say that she would have betrayed Troy a long time ago, if it where not for Troys interest and usefulness in eachnet streaming. Tyreen would not have had a personal cognitive dissidence about if she was willing to kill her brother early on, had Troy not been useful in others ways.

#14

Well, the Echoes showing their early time on Pandora in Devil’s Razor show that Tyreen was always the person presented to the Bandits, not Troy, and he was the one putting words in her mouth. In a sense he was using her.

Tyreen was the one who pushed for them to build a ship to escape, but leave Typhon behind, but Typhon admitted he was never going to let them leave the planet, for there own protection, so he was indeed their captor. That makes Tyreen’s desire to leave justified, especially with Typhon telling them stories about exploring while keeping them stuck with him.

When traveling on the log conveyor to rescue Dalton Troy says, “Well mom, that one’s om Tyreen…” And goes no further. And Typhon says, “When Leda died…” on the way to her grave. Tyreen never says anything about killing their mother, so it’s not clear it was matricide or some accident etc?

As far as their relationship, it plays out more like a sibling rivalry And codependency. Troy doesn’t hesitate to pursue any of their mutual interests after reluctantly burying the parts of their ship prior to their escape.

He actively threatens Ava, saying call him if she ever becomes a siren, right after killing Maya, tries to Kill Wainwright and the VHs, experiments on prisoners and followers to make them Annointed, and after sleeping with Aurelia implies disbelief in whether she was a Siren or not, as if he might leech her if she was.

The pivot in his narrative that I think some people are feeling was a hint at a redemption arch, was actually the revelation that he was just as twisted by suffering as Tyreen was, but was repressed by his inability to sustain himself as freely as she was.

It’s easy to forget that Troy could possibly have leeched Tyreen dry at any point in their lives forcefully, and she could have left him behind and used the threat of leeching to make anyone help her. Their relationship was toxic in the end, but symbiotic prior to that. When Troy was liberated and empowered as an equal the story shows that Tyreen is uncomfortable with his newfound ego.

An odd bit of humor is when Troy calls himself God King the first time she says, “We talked about this, You know how that sounds…” as in: incestuous.

Add to that her quip about not being able to have lovers because she leeches them all. She makes clear her power is to some degree involuntary and the only person she may actually touch without harming is Troy, meanwhile he can and did get it on with Aurelia. Throw that into the resentments they might begrudge, along with Aurelia telling Troy that rivalry and betrayal is part of being family. At the same time Tyreen seems to revel in bringing in another empowered woman, or “Cold, Rich, *****” as she calls her, into the fold.

That tension only exists between the twins After Troy gains Maya’s power. On the way to Forgotten Basicalla they joke with each other playfully, and likewise when they taunt the Vaulthunters after Aurelia is dead.

Tyreen actually only objects to Troy taking lead in Konrad’s hold when he oversteps her in talking about their plan when you find Tannis’s lab, saying, “Troy, we talked about this…” and at the Cathedral of the Twin Gods when he berates the COV instead of asking them out of devotion like Tyreen.

They are actually on the same page and Tyreen willfully drains the Vault to power Troy until he starts overtaxing her during the boss fight and she asks him to stop and he won’t.

If there were a point to offer an alternative narrative in-game, allowing Troy to drain Tyreen to death and become the main villain would fit as that moment.

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#15

Something that got me thinking regarding Troy and Tyreen was the latters reaction to the others death. Tyreen was incredibly bland in terms of his death - almost as if it was inevitable.

Troy was always pawned off as the leech - and Tyreen reminded him of that a lot. But then we saw that he was capable of leeching and controlling powers on level to Tyreen. Maybe even more efficiently than she could (though that may be because he leeched Maya rather than Lilith).

It’s never said in story but I think it would add some depth to both characters if this was intentional. That Tyreen was somehow aware of her brother being just as capable as she is and so had been leeching off him to keep him beneath her.

She has this warped idea of family - that it means blind loyalty to her and her goal. So it was perhaps why she didn’t just leech him straight away - they were technically her powers by birth as typically only females could be sirens. But a shred of loyalty continued to keep him around - he was her brother in blood.

Then when he accidental leeched Maya, it became clear to me at least that he was perfectly capable of being a strong siren. Perhaps even more so than Tyreen as he showed more emotion towards stopping us and had a drive - a purpose. He was always considered weak and a leech. But he had discovered he could be more and even went above Tyreen. He even put her through massive amounts of pain and almost killed her in order to try and open the big vault.

So when he did die, Tyreen was neither upset or happy about it.

I’ve always been a fan of the idea that Tyreens preppy attitude was just a persona and that her leeching powers reflected her true personality - always hungry to leech more subject, never satiated. So that’s probably why her having kept Troy subdued for her purpose tickled my fancy. I couldn’t ever see him as a ‘good guy’. He felt more like a disposable asset.

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#16

I’ve seen this a few times, and Typhon literally tells the player he had to cut Troy off of Tyreen, he was a parasitic twin, literally surviving off of her at birth. That information leaked before the game came out as well, but is confirmed in echoes.

Typhon goes on to say Troy was always sick. This is because he didn’t have the ability to support himself, because as is the case with parasitic twins, they share vital organs or systems with their twin that they rely on.

He isn’t cybernetic by choice, it’s because there was literally less of him left when he was cut off of Tyreen. The reason he mentioned he didn’t have a choice about leaving when Tyreen decided to escape because she was literally keeping him alive with infusions of the life force she was draining from everything else.

If she had ever stopped leeching things then he would have died. If he had drained her completely he would have died.

The karmic irony is that when Tyreen tried to leech the Destroyer, she was converted into a one-armed parasite, mirroring Troy, and was still thirsting for power such that we win the boss fight with her because she has to stoop over to drain more.

What gets lost in all the wishes we have for the story is that the depth is there already because both twins had to accept their fate as killers because they needed that to survive. Troy had to cosign on Tyreen’s actions as a matter of survival, and when he got Maya’s powers he continued to kill people and pursue absolute power at any cost, even though he apparently had his health and no need to leech another siren to maintain himself, I’m assuming because he was draining Eridium instead.

Tyreen could control herself, to some degree because she managed to not drain Ava, and stopped herself with Lilith. That implies that she may have been addicted to draining people. The other implication is that she could have just lived a normal life and not drained anyone, but then Troy would have drained her completely to survive or she would have had to let him die.

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