{"id":37850,"date":"2017-07-27T06:00:49","date_gmt":"2017-07-27T10:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=37850"},"modified":"2017-07-27T09:54:42","modified_gmt":"2017-07-27T13:54:42","slug":"borderlands-part-3-cast-of-character-classes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=37850","title":{"rendered":"Borderlands Part 3: Cast of Character Classes"},"content":{"rendered":"

When development on Borderlands began, there was a “religious war” among the team as to whether the game would be an RPG or an FPS at heartAgain, my source for this is the Gearbox talk at GDC 2010<\/a>.<\/span>. Sure, this was supposed to be a fusion of the two gameplay styles, but you can imagine all the different possible games that could arise out of that simple idea. It’s not like this is the only game you could make with the elevator pitch of “FPS+RPG”.<\/p>\n

In fact, that idea had already<\/i> been done, eleven years<\/i> before work began on Borderlands. System Shock came out in 1994, and it was basically a mashup of Ultima Underworld and Doom. But that was just one game out of dozens you could conceive of, and the Gearbox team needed to figure out how their particular take on this genre blend was going to work.<\/p>\n

Our heroes. Or what passes for heroes on Pandora.<\/div>
Our heroes. Or what passes for heroes on Pandora.<\/div><\/p>\n

For example, you could imagine this shooter gameplay in something more Fallout-ish, where you’ve got dialog trees and stats for influencing people. You can imagine something more like KOTOR where you’ve got a morality meter and lots of binary player choice. You can imagine something more like Elder Scrolls, where the player wanders an open world, looking for dungeons and questsIt’s a good thing they never made this, since I probably would have played it until I died.<\/span>. You can imagine something like Dragon Age, where the player character plays a particular role and gets caught up in a bunch of political intrigue. Or maybe something like Deus Ex or Dishonored where you could employ stealth and diplomacy to vary between lethal and nonlethal playstyles.<\/p>\n

But in the end the “RPG” we got was more the Diablo style of RPG where the character-building stuff all feeds directly into combat. There’s no dialog wheel, no factions, and no moral choices. Every NPC gives you the exact same dialog regardless of character class and behavior.<\/p>\n

Gearbox even stuck with the Diablo II approach to character classes, where “character” and “class” are the same thing. Once you pick a class you’re going to be playing a particular character with a specific appearance, nameYou can rename your character, but this isn’t really for the sake of “customization”. The NPCs will never acknowledge your chosen name and other players will never see it. The character name feature is really just an interface convenience so you can tell your saves apart.<\/span>, and voice actor. These four characters became so important to the look and feel of Borderlands that they were each given their own stylized introduction at the start of the game.<\/p>\n

Mordecai<\/h3>\n

This is Mordecai's big intro from the opening cinematic. I have no idea why these are so washed out and sepia tone. These introductions will get more colorful as the series goes on.<\/div>
This is Mordecai's big intro from the opening cinematic. I have no idea why these are so washed out and sepia tone. These introductions will get more colorful as the series goes on.<\/div><\/p>\n

You can tell they were still messing with this class close to release. Morty’s intro movie shows him flipping a sword around like a ninja, but once you get into the game you find out he’s designed around sniper rifles, revolvers, and his pet bird, none of which appear in his little vignette.<\/p>\n

His action skill is built around his pet bird Bloodwing. You hit the button and suddenly Bloodwing appears and begins pecking your enemies to death. She’s active for a few seconds and then vanishes again. Bloodwing can deal massive damage and I don’t think enemies can hurt her. She’s also a bit glitchy. Sometimes you’ll call on Bloodwing to help you out while you cower behind cover and wait for your shields to recharge, only to discover her AI got stuck and she’s flying in circles, not attacking any of the dudes trying to murder you.This glitchy behavior was jokingly referenced in Borderlands 2, where the cast of the first game get together and talk about “that one time” Bloodwing flew around in circles.<\/p>\n

Bloodwing was a cool action skill, although she sort of ruined player vs. player duels. A Mordecai player could always hit their action skill to one-shot their opponent. Lilith could avoid getting pecked if she phasewalked at the same time, which means Lilith and Mordecai could sort of have a normal duel once her action skill canceled out his, but it doesn’t change the fact that he could one-shot any other player without even needing to aim. This isn’t a big deal. Duels weren’t a core part of the game. They were mostly a way for bored players to goof around and waste time while their teammates turned in quests or visited the vendors.<\/p>\n

Lilith<\/h3>\n

For some reason we can't see her tattoos in this shot. Her chest and left arm both have tattoos that should be visible from this angle. But they're pale, so maybe the sepia tone washed them out?<\/div>
For some reason we can't see her tattoos in this shot. Her chest and left arm both have tattoos that should be visible from this angle. But they're pale, so maybe the sepia tone washed them out?<\/div><\/p>\n

Lilith is a Siren. In this universe, Sirens are woman with strange supernatural powers and body-covering blue tattoos. They’re allegedly ultra-rare. In Borderlands 2 Handsome Jack believes that only 6 can exist in the universe at any time. Not sure where he got that or if we’re supposed to believe it. In any case, they don’t seem particularly rare here on Pandora. <\/p>\n

Let’s count up the Sirens so far: This game has Lilith. The next game has the playable Siren Maya, plus Jack’s daughter. There’s also Commandant Steele in this game (the closest thing we have to a bad guy) who has Siren tattoos but is never depicted using any powers. It’s not clear if she’s supposed to be a Siren or if Steele is just using Lilith’s art assets with a head swap. If authorial intent is your jam, then Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford “considers<\/a>” her a Siren. Of the Sirens depicted in the Borderlands series so far, no two have the same powers. If the universe really is limited to 6 Sirens, that means 2\/3 of all Sirens have come to this one planet.<\/p>\n

Lilith’s action ability lets her phase “into another dimension” (she turns transparent and glowy) where she can’t attack or be attacked. It gives her a chance to escape, move to a more advantageous position, or just wait for her shields to recharge. Her powers are mostly based around elemental damage. <\/p>\n

The guns in Borderlands can shoot electricity, fire, acid, or explosionsIn Borderlands 2 they added “slag”, which makes the target take extra damage from other sources, and in the Pre-Sequel they had ice as an elemental attack.<\/span>. In Borderlands 1 Lilith was all about boosting these elemental damage types, which means Lilith players would need to hunt specifically for elemental weapons. Elemental damage has a random chance to happen with each bullet, so Lilith’s best bet was usuallyThe random nature of the guns means there are exceptions to everything.<\/span> to favor to fast-firing guns like SMGs that would give you lots of chances for the bonus elemental damage to kick in.<\/p>\n

I like that they allowed anyone to use any weapons they like, but each character has a couple they specialize in. This helps mitigate situations where everyone in the party wants the same rare gun. <\/p>\n

Roland<\/h3>\n

Roland used to belong to the Crimson Lance, who are a private military force. We'll run into them as baddies in the third act.<\/div>
Roland used to belong to the Crimson Lance, who are a private military force. We'll run into them as baddies in the third act.<\/div><\/p>\n

Roland the Soldier was paradoxically criticized for being the “most boring” class, while at the same time being the most popular. My friends told me stories about starting the game as Roland, then going online to join a random game and finding themselves in a party with 3 other Rolands. His skill tree lets him focus on shotguns and assault rifles.<\/p>\n

His action skill is that he summons a turret with a shield shaped like a low wall. If you’re a new player you’ll look at that wall and assume you’re supposed to crouch behind it. Indeed, a few of Roland’s skills seem to be designed around the idea that players will do this, since the turret can emit a healing aura and spew out ammo. The problem is that this doesn’t actually work very well in practice. Melee foes will run around the turret to engage you, and the turret can’t swivel around to hit people standing behind the shield. <\/p>\n

The player’s first experience with the turret will probably be something like this: They throw down the turret and crouch behind the shield, thinking the turret will mow down their foes while their personal shields recharge. Instead the melee attackers swarm around the turret and begin beating the crap out of them. At this point the player is pinned between their enemies and the shield that was supposed to be protecting them. After some panicked hopping they’ll get over the low wall and find themselves standing in front of their own turret. Meanwhile, all of their foes are nice and safe behind the shield, which is now giving them a little cover. The shield was slightly curved and the AI was pretty wonky, which means foes would sometimes get stuck in this position, unable to untangle themselves and run out in front of the turret.<\/p>\n

Since the vast majority of fights are against a mix of melee and ranged attackers, hiding behind the turret wall was never really all that useful. Eventually players would learn to run around in front<\/i> of the turret. It felt kind of goofy, but it worked.<\/p>\n

Roland is also a good example of how the move to a more cartoonish and outlandish style led to lots of absurd but fun abilities. If you spend points in his medic skills you can heal your teammates by shooting them. The healing is based on the damage output of the gun you’re using, so a good medic would get a powerful shotgun and blast his friends at point-blank range to refill their health. It’s silly, but amazingly fun and satisfying. It’s also something that wouldn’t really have worked if the team had stuck with the original “grit and realism” design style.<\/p>\n

Brick<\/h3>\n

and BRICK as HIMSELF<\/div>
and BRICK as HIMSELF<\/div><\/p>\n

Brick’s action skill is that he puts up his dukes and goes all-melee, dealing massive damage and somehow healing himself in the process. It’s great fun, although it’s also a little situational. It’s actually useless if you’re getting shot at from medium range, since you have to run face-first into the bullets before you can go to work. Also, a lot of the bosses in the game hit really hard if you get too close, and can even obliterate sturdy Brick if he decides to fight them Marquess of Queensberry style.<\/p>\n

His skill tree lets him focus on shotguns or rocket launchers, and the latter was mostly a massive waste of points. When the game launched, rockets would only connect with scenery, not foes. They would fly right through your enemies and detonate in the distance behind them. You could kill them with splash damage, but that was completely line-of-sight based between the impact point and the target. That means that a guy standing behind a shin-high wall was effectively immune to rocket damage. The wall would shield him from the ground blast while he shot you in the face with impunity. It was silly, but it was fixed at some point in a later patchI don’t know how long it took, but it was fixed when I returned to the game to do this write-up.<\/span>.<\/p>\n

Anyway…<\/h3>\n

The characters might not have been balanced and there were certainly a few bugs. They weren’t really fleshed out and while their personalities were vibrant, not enough of that vibrancy showed up during gameplay. But they had it where it counts. Their powers were fun, varied, and easy to understand. Their designs were striking, memorable, and easy to tell apart from each other and your foes on the battlefield. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When development on Borderlands began, there was a “religious war” among the team as to whether the game would be an RPG or an FPS at heartAgain, my source for this is the Gearbox talk at GDC 2010.. Sure, this was supposed to be a fusion of the two gameplay styles, but you can imagine […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[609],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-borderlands"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37850\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}