T w e n t y S i d e d

My column this week is a list of reasons why I think we should be worried about Borderlands 3. If you’re susceptible to clickbait behavior, I’ll tell you ahead of time the article gives five reasons. (Number 4 won’t be surprising at all.)

All of this brings us to the question, “So what would a good sequel look like?”

The series is in a bit of a tough spot. In the Telltale spinoff Tales From the Borderlands, some of the main characters are dead. I like the original vault hunters Brick, Mordecai, Lilith, and Roland, but some of them didn’t survive the events of Borderlands 2 and the rest have completed their various character arcs. These characters are mostly a collection of jokes and callbacks at this point. That’s fine, but we already heard those jokes by now. Several times. I’m not saying these characters need to be dropped, I’m just saying it would be a mistake to try to make them the center of yet another game. They can make cameos, but they should not be the main characters again.

Borderlands 2 demonstrated that what these games need is a solid villain. Handsome Jackass is dead, so we need someone new. The obvious, low-effort route would be to give us another colorful villain with a different gimmick, and have the player characters fight with him over the vaults. The previous gamePrevious in terms of chronology. showed us that there are tons of vaults on many worlds out there, so this game should probably have us hopping from world to world on an adventure.

Let’s talk about how I’d do it… Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Borderlands 3 Could be in Trouble”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

My column was on hiatus over the holidays, but now it’s back with a discussion of why esports generally make for lousy spectator sports. I say this as someone who has probably watched a hundred games of Starcraft 2 over the last month. I love watching these games, but only because I’ve clocked enough hours with the game to make sense of the gameplay. I don’t watch many other esports, but they all have more or less the same problem. Read the column if you want to hear why I think it doesn’t work and what a more approachable esport might look like.

So let’s talk about watching Starcraft 2 games… Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Experienced Points: Building a Better Esport”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.