Why the BL3 Story Has Villain Problems: An Entirely Too Long Tinfoil-Hat Theory by a Drunk Fan Who Cares too much about Story Dynamics

Borderlands 3 Borderlands 3 SPOILERS
#21

I agree with a lot of the OP. Especially the whole Troy/Tyreen dynamic, I really thought there was going to be a real break between those two. Everything was pointing to it.

I do have a guess that the game originally was planned to be more dynamic; more choose-your-own-adventure; the choices you made as a character would influence how the story went and who/what you faced. I’m not 100% sure about the more pure MMO stuff, but you do provide a good theory for it. But again I’m almost sure there originally was going to be at least a more dynamic aspect to the storyline that was ultimately scrapped; adding dimensions will end up multiplying your problems, and maybe it just got to be a little too big to corral so they stitched together aspects the diverting plotlines into one.

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#22

I think of this every time I hear talk of Borderlands and MMOs. Can you blame me? BL1 weapon models on a BL2/later graphics quality, and that character creator? Winner.

So naturally any fan theory involving the existence of a BL MMO is of interest.

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#23

As a writer, I have one question: Would it not be easier to just create a different villain entirely? To write a story around them instead of trap yourself in a corner by writing an entirely new… everything… centered around two pre-made villains?

I’ve had to do things like that. Write an original story with several pre-made characters. SO much more difficult than writing from scratch.

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#24

As a writer? Yes. As a game developer… Hell no. It’s not just the character ideas themselves that would need to be changed from the work that had been done already. My theory is based on the idea that they already had 5-16 months of dev work in the bag before they released their first screenshots and vids, and major changes started 7-10 months after that.

By that point you have not just the villains, but some levels dependent on them finished. Aesthetic assets in other levels. Storyline beats. Set pieces. Boss fights. Potentially even early voice work.

There’s a massive time and money sink in making a major change like that mid dev cycle. In my theory, a lot of money got spent retooling the game as much as they did, but it’s much cheaper than throwing all the previous work out for a new villain/storyline.

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#25

I mean, there is a point at which every creative artist, writer, director, game dev, etc., steps back and says "yes, I’ve put in a LOT of work, but this part needs to be scrapped for the work to be coherent…

OHHHH… oh. Now I get what you’re saying.

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#26

@Arsonist My guess would be that A LOT more than 16 months were invested into the Troy and Tyreen thing before they decided to go another direction. Like a lot more. My guess is the Typhon Deleon being their father thing was written that way not more than 12-18 months before release. Otherwise, how do you redesign the entire game around it? I think video game stories are mostly written on the fly and to justify game mechanics, as opposed to starting with the story and designing the game around that.

Of course, I have no inside information. I did take creative writing in college (I was an English major, believe it or not LOL) and I remember the writing process of even short stories being really, really fluid.

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#27

Right, it’s emotionally draining and a lot of work on a single writer to trash a lot and go forward, but the production cost goes a lot higher on a story dependent project like a game. The end result of a pretty disjointed story comes from the decision to modify rather than throw out.

It’s really really hard to estimate exactly when the shift happend (if it did, again, this is all based on my theory), or how much dev work was put into it before it happened because of how tight lipped GBX was about development during the whole cycle. GBX is a relatively big company with multiple teams working on different projects.

I’m trying to use timeline information to make some educated guesses about development here, so to clarify on the timeline-

  • BL2 came out in 2012, with it’s last major DLC (for a while) coming out in June of 2013.

  • AC:M came out in Feb of 2013.

  • TPS comes out in late 2014 - while it’s important that 2k AUS did most of the heavy lifting here, at least a portion of GBXs team is helping with this up until release and through it’s dlc packs and characters.

  • The next major release after that was Battleborn in 2016, with various DLC and new characters being rolled out through 2017.

The battleborn bit is important here because GBX had a lot of teams heavily focused in on that rather than BL3. For sure, work was being done at this time, but my guess is that a lot of this was early dev/storyboard concept type things. Probably early designs and ideas for the Vault Hunters are being kicked around too, since they’re something the series is already known for.

  • The tech demo featuring moze comes out early 2017.

  • Destiny 2 comes out 4q 2017, but reviews don’t turn on it until a month or two later when the games more grindy mmo stuff becomes available.

So when I’m talking about actual dev time for BL3 here… let’s use the Moze tech demo as an example - I think we’re mostly looking at the time a little after 5/16 when BBN launched, because GBX still had a lot of teams working on the online aspects of the game as well as creating new levels and assets for DLC. There’s probably about 6-8 months of meat on that bone before the tech demo when GBX was actually doing in game work, and not dealing with story concepts/storyboarding/etc.

Then they continue down that line of thought until they hit the Destiny 2 backlash in late 2017. That’s around the time that I think the call was made to kill the more ambitious ideas for the game and just make “more borderlands” and deal with the assets they had.

That leaves us with… probably about 16 months of hard dev time actually spent building game assets, tweaking mechanics, getting graphics together, etc. etc. etc.

In reality there was a lot of work that was done before then, but how much of it saw actual Dev time from GBX is debatable.

Keep in mind, that’s 16 months of most of gearbox working on all this to produce all the things we don’t think about in a game. That’s a lot of game data and things that have to be reworked because it’s not going to be an online mmo style looter shooter anymore. And that still only gives us about the same amount of time before the game is given it’s gold cert. I believe that happened about 3 months before release in sept of 2019.

The timeline works out for me, although if the timeline is right, I worry a lot about the potential for crunch, especially with pitchford at the wheel.

From different series and interviews I’ve watched, they are and they aren’t. They’re kind of fluid, but not in the same way writing a short story is (at least in my experience). You want to have a story at the start of development because it’s an anchor to what the game is trying to be. A good video game story should create in world reasons between powers, mechanics, and give an idea to villains and how levels heavily influenced by those villains can look…

At the same time, more than any other medium, the story is subject to change based on things outside the writer’s control. Technical limitations is a big one. Many times a CEO or game director hires a story team to make a story based around a super ambitious concept or idea, and they make a great story to go along with it… only to find out later in the process that the technology isn’t there to support it - the series fable has a big list of that.

Actual dev time is another issue - you may have to rewrite a story to be longer or shorter based on work that was done very early on in the story process because of lags or speed ups based around just how… project based gaming is. A big centerpiece world or level could get trimmed down to next to nothing thanks to just general office issues that cause delays.

Basically the story and mechanics ideally would be in service to one another, but there are plenty of ways one can drastically impact the other… and with the huge teams involved in video games these days, I think VG writing is probably the most dynamic, stressful, and hard jobs in the business. It’s not like a book or story where you can just axe a section and rewrite it with different points, or even like a movie that might have reshoots or heavy post production edits to highlight special effects or remove issues that might be problematic.

You’re constantly having to evolve your work based on a project based development pattern out of your control. Your story is both the basis for a player to relate to the game, but can’t be so set in stone that it doesn’t give leeway to the teams actually working on coding, developing, drawing, and animating the ideas.

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I think we have to face it
#28

Everything you have said above sounds right and makes a lot of sense. I don’t see how this is any different than screenwriting though - scripts change constantly. The biggest difference between video game writing and screenwriting is that with video games, there’s just SO MUCH MORE you have to write for a game like BL. Characters are saying ■■■■ all the time, even just off-handed stuff. All that has to be written.

The biggest issue I see with video game writing is that so much of it is really bad. Your average, middle of the road screenplay is still pretty good, whereas your average video game story is … let’s just say it is not. BL’s story is not great but it is a damn sight better than 99% of video games. The standards for video games are just different because they are not consumed the same way.

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#29

The main difference is that movies tend to have a much easier process to market because they don’t have a heavy IT based interactive component. The main reasons you might change something in a movie is “the actor ad libbed a line”, “it’s not testing well”, what have you… well you can reshoot, or change on the fly during filming or post production.

Taking out a whole section of a game involves all those hours of work in level design, cut scenes, assets that may or may not need to be reused - my point is the main cost isn’t just time and the money it takes to reshoot a small sequence. If you lose that, you’ve lost hours of animating, balance, level design from a lot of people. A lot of very overworked, underpaid people in a lot of instances.

I think this is a big reason why writing can be bad in video games - very often it has to get warped so you can reuse or reskin assets rather than go back to the drawing board with concept art to come up with something that’s artistically better… but not financially viable at the time.

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#30

Good point. Case in point, I am pretty sure the dev team must have reused and repurposed at least some writing and assets from the cancelled BLTPS Luxy’s Space Resort DLC for the Handsome Jackpot. They are literally almost exactly the same base story, from the (admittedly) limited research I have done on it. It would be dumb for them not to have.

The main point I was trying to raise is that there seems to be 2 different standards for video game writing and writing in other media. I think peoples’ and critics’ standards for video game writing are very, very low, whereas the standards for other media are extremely high.

But this should not be the case! Most people spend, let’s say, approximately 5 times longer with a video game’s story than with a movie. (10 hours minimum for most games, vs. 2 hours-ish for a movie).

Well damn, if you have to be with it for like 5 times as long, why don’t we hold video games to higher standards?!? If we keep accepting ■■■■■■ video game stories, the devs will keep making them!

I know it is a hard job. As I said above though, point me to a job that is not “hard” and I will shake your hand. They call it “work” for a reason. Best I can tell, these guys get paid a lot for what they do. So they should be able to figure this out better than they have. I just think we as players need to start demanding better and we will get it.

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#31

Don’t forget the unreasonable deadlines demanded from the publisher and the stress associated with crunch (I’ts an open secret these day’s, hell some are even proud of these practices :disappointed:)

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#32

Yeah, that’s what I really don’t like about my assessment. A little over two years for a triple platfom AAA title by a decently sized publisher should give a lot of room. If I’m right and they changed horses mid stream though… there’s a big potential that the captain made a visit. I’ve heard nothing but good things from the GBX dev teams and they’ve treated me well - I hope they’re being treated well.

Not sure how crazy this sounds, and obviously, some game stories are better than others by a wide margin…

But I still think that games as an art form is still very much in the infancy process.

When I make comparisons to writing a game vs a movie, for instance I reference moviemaking as a process that’s always evolving… but it’s had well over a century to get things right. I mean you watch enough things about marvel making blockbuster after blockbuster, or how certain studios in the 90s churned out romantic comedies, etc… there’s a way to efficiently film all of those. The medium has just had enough time to figure out a lot of processes to the point that with the exception of some high concept films, you can budget your time a lot more efficiently than you could back in the era between the 1900s-1950s.

Games are still a lot newer, and have a completely different set of problems and challenges when going through development. You could make the argument that up until the mid 90’s, story was at best a tangential concern. Since then it’s been brought up as a much higher point, but there are other factors too. Developers have pressures from publishers, producers, ceos, etc to get a game out on time, and frequently story is the thing that gets the back seat with all the corporate interference.

I think the next 20 years in gaming is going to be very telling - it’s equally possible that we see an explosion of new visionary game directors who get their products out on time that tell great stories… or we could go deeper down the money hole and look at some twisted new take on predatory practices like lootboxes as they get even more normalized than they are now and not a lot happens.

Which is way off topic, but just something I figured I’d throw in.

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#33

No one caress about the human cost anymore. :frowning_face:
If I may be so brazen to paraphrase Alan Moore:

“I love video games as a medium, but I despise the video game industry.”

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#34

@Arsonist Agree 100% about the video game infancy thing. The problem is, that is not precisely correct. The video game STORY business is in its infancy, but video games themselves are not really.

Video games have been around for nearly 50 years now, but it is only in the last 20-25 years that the physical media of video games has been big enough to store the content that comprises games.

We have a long way to go with VG writing. But I think the improvement starts with better criticism of the medium and players demanding more.

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#35

I don’t fully agree. Look at many of the indie games they tell a pretty succint story. Look at anything Naughtydog. Santa Monica studios did a fantastic job with God of War. The gameplay/story telling is there.

GBX botched this one, hands down while BL2 was a success story. Difference? I think it comes down to the develoment/production teams actually knowing what experience and story they want to tell. And as far as OP has explained in his theory is that the production aspect screwed the development team over by way of major project shifts.

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#36

Indie developers also have the benefit of extremely small compact teams that aren’t at the behest of a corporate overlord. Still an amazing risk to take because of the money involved, but you could make the argument they have more freedom than anyone in AAA.

I agree with pretty much everything else, except that… and hear me out here… I don’t think the story for BL2 is as good as people give it credit for. It knew when to hit it’s emotional climax though and the combination of a great character idea and Dameon’s stellar delivery made it easy to ignore the hiccups.

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#37

I understand what you are saying, but just do a quick google search for the top 100 games of all time, go through it, and give me an honest assessment of how many of those games you think have any story at all, much less a good one. About 25% of them have zero story (other than the very basic NES-type setup), and way LESS than 25% of them have a good story.

In your example above, you actually support my point even further, which is that criticism of video game storytelling (in the same sense that film or writing criticism exists) is super new. The studios you cited and the example of indie games - those are new things. Indie games didn’t even really exist 15 years ago because there was no distribution network. The AAA game storytelling revolution also really just started about 15 years ago.

My point is that the medium being criticized evolves along with the criticism. Each one pushes the other to improve, and that takes time to happen. It does not happen, however, unless it is demanded by each side.

EDIT: My point about improvement being “demanded” by both sides is that just like critics need something to evaluate, artists also need critics to evaluate their creative works. It is the only way people improve at what they do.

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#38

That also plays in line with what I’ve been saying though- Indie stories are better on average because a) they don’t have to worry about corporate overlords telling them what story to tell or what mechanics to sell and b) they have smaller teams that cut down on the things I’ve discussed about project management that make telling a good story hard.

I’m not saying that criticism is a bad thing at all.

I’m saying the reason we’re not there yet is that there hasn’t been a good framework set up yet that can hit most games to make a project platform that doesn’t involve banging the storyline around… more than it needs to.

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#39

Fair point. But it all comes down to support by dollars. If it makes money, more of the same will be produced.

For the sake of the original topic, BL3 has made me hesistant for the future of the BL series. Not liking how this has been handled. @Arsonist alludes to BL not really having a great story anyways. So…pauses is a story actually important to the fan base? If it is, then yes, we need to let GBX know.

Note: Video Games are odd since it can be fun and have no story (as you pointed out).

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#40

I agree with both of you guys. This is a good discussion. There are art issues AND business issues and, for better or worse, business decisions usually win out.

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