{"id":37863,"date":"2017-08-17T06:00:52","date_gmt":"2017-08-17T10:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=37863"},"modified":"2017-08-17T04:46:51","modified_gmt":"2017-08-17T08:46:51","slug":"borderlands-part-6-destroy-the-destroyer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=37863","title":{"rendered":"Borderlands Part 6: Destroy the Destroyer"},"content":{"rendered":"

In copying the Diablo II style gameplay, it seems pretty clear the Borderlands team wanted to use the idea of the player moving from one town to the next on their journey. This idea didn’t really come together, and most of the towns feel empty.<\/p>\n

Dr. Zed and Claptrap are the only inhabitants of Fyrestone, although Shep Sanders and T.K. Baha are stationed nearby. I guess you could argue that they’re still part of this “town”, even though they’re pretty far outside the walls. There are several buildings in here and I think it’s pretty clear that this was supposed to be a village with some NPCs hanging around. There’s a gun shop where Marcus could conceivably hang out, but he never shows up. Some of the homes have places where NPC types could sit on their porch. <\/p>\n

The town of Fyrestone. Visible population: 1<\/div>
The town of Fyrestone. Visible population: 1<\/div><\/p>\n

I have no idea why the Shep Sanders character is so far out of town. Having him in Fyrestone would make more sense, and it would make the place feel a little more alive. At any rate, this feels like a town that was supposed to be much more populated, but they just ran out of time.<\/p>\n

The next “town” is Lucky’s Last Chance Watering Hole. Lucky is the only person who lives there. I’m not sure if this is a town they never finished or if it was just supposed to be a pitstop along the way.<\/p>\n

After that is New Haven, the only real town in the game. Marcus the arms dealer is here. Scooter is here. A couple of Claptraps are here. Helena Pierce – the disfigured woman from the original grim-n-gritty trailer – is apparently the mayor or whatever. There are a bunch of silent NPCs hanging around town to make the place feel lived-in. <\/p>\n

Later on you get to a bounty board out in the wilderness. It’s got some vending machines and a Catch-A-Ride nearby. It serves as a town in terms of taking quests, getting vehicles, and selling items, but there aren’t any people at all.<\/p>\n

So Borderlands only had one “real” town, but they kind of tried to give us a series of them.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Comic Relief Antagonist<\/h3>\n

A trash fire in front of a crescent moon over the town of New Haven.<\/div>
A trash fire in front of a crescent moon over the town of New Haven.<\/div><\/p>\n

The only moments where the story shines – or indeed, works at all – is when it’s operating in comedy mode, and it’s an interesting illustration of just how much a writer can get away with if they can make you smile. <\/p>\n

Imagine a Dragon Age game where you’re trying to find the key to control some demon gate thing. The mages explain that a peasant borrowed the key and they send you to talk to him. When you get there the peasant makes all kinds of unreasonable demands and forces you to do a bunch of menial yet dangerous tasks. He sends you out to kill N bandits. When you’re done with that he announces he wants some booze. But rather than allowing you to just buy<\/strong> him some, he has you march halfway across the kingdom and murder a bunch of bandits and steal their booze. Meanwhile, every word out of his mouth is bristling with insults and hostility. He seems to be aware you’re incapable of attacking him.<\/p>\n

He keeps giving you jobs like this. Just when you’re at the end of your patience and starting to ask yourself, “Why can’t I just murder this little shit and take the demon key?” the peasant announces that he doesn’t actually have the key. The bad guy showed up and stole it ages ago, and the peasant has just been jerking you around in the meantime. And then he asks you to do more jobs for him.<\/b> He asks you to go fight a hundred or so bandits because he wants you to find his dog<\/b>.<\/p>\n

The BioWare forums would melt with the white-hot rage as a thousand players demanded to know why their character had to behave like a dumbass. Why can’t I get revenge on this peasant? Why can’t I even call him out on his villainy, or even threaten him? Why am I forced to roleplay as a clueless doormat?<\/em><\/p>\n

But Borderlands does exactly this, and it works because it’s an amusing questline in a quasi-comedy game and the peasant in question is a vibrant character. Not only is it fine, it’s actually one of the best sections of the game. (Monotonous environment design notwithstanding.) Tannis sends you to get a piece of the vault key from Crazy Earl, and he has you do stupid nonsense jobs like killing bandits for booze. <\/p>\n

Crazy Earl<\/h3>\n

WHATCHU WANT?<\/div>
WHATCHU WANT?<\/div><\/p>\n

I strongly suspect this character was added very late in development, which is why he’s voiced by Gearbox founder and CEO Randy Pitchford and not a professional voice actor. (To be fair, Pitchford’s performance is brilliant. Earl is actually one of the most endearing characters in the series.) Crazy Earl is probably is most explicitly comedic character in the game, and his questline works because it’s absurd and amusing. We’re here to murder dudes and find cool loot, and having someone say something funny every 20 minutes or so is a nice bonus.<\/p>\n

We only see him through a slot in the door, which means he doesn’t need a body. (And if he has one, it doesn’t need to be animated.) These are exactly the kinds of shortcuts you’d expect for a character made at the last minute. Also, he’s the more stylized than a lot of the other characters. Scooter the mechanic, Zed the ex-Doctor, Patricia Tannis, and Administrator Pierce are all much more realistically proportioned. It’s possible their character models are leftover from the early stages of Borderlands development. Meanwhile guys like Crazy Earl, Marcus the merchant, and T.K. Baha have far more exaggerated proportions and feel like they were added or redesigned after the big art change.<\/p>\n

Earl is also the right kind of “crazy” for this series. Tannis is crazy, but her problems seem to stem from PTSD. Earl is just wacky. He’s not crazy in the sense of mental health, but more in the sense of outlandish behavior. He’s less Travis Bickle and more Cosmo Kramer.<\/p>\n

We can compare how well Earl works to how much our main villain doesn’t…<\/p>\n

The Bad Guy<\/h3>\n

The villain introduces herself by literally phoning it in. We won't hear from her again until the third act.<\/div>
The villain introduces herself by literally phoning it in. We won't hear from her again until the third act.<\/div><\/p>\n

When the player accidentally acquires the first fragment of the vault key from bandit boss Sledge, they’re randomly called up by the closest thing we have to a villain. Commandant Steele represents the Atlas corporation, and she announces that Atlas owns all of the artifacts on this planet. She tells you to hand it over and get out. <\/p>\n

As the game goes on, you continue to gather up vault keys. Patricia Tannis tells you where to look for them, and then you go fetch them. At the end of the quest, you hand these pieces over. This never made any sense to me, since why would my vault hunter hand their supposed vault key to someone else? It’s a vault key. I’m trying to open a vault. I did all the work to obtain it. So why don’t I keep it? <\/p>\n

You could make the excuse that Tannis needs to study the pieces, but the game doesn’t really sell this idea. <\/p>\n

But the reason you give the keys to Tannis is so that Commandant Steele can steal them while you’re off killing more bandit bosses. Then Steele shuts down the ECHOnet, which is the planet’s global internet \/ telephone service. Angel is dismayed by this and I think you’re supposed to be worried that you’re cut off from your “friend”, but Angel was so repetitive and her information was so frustratingly vapid that I was kind of relieved she was going to stop calling me up and wasting my time.<\/p>\n

This is the closest the game comes to having a story. Crazy Tannis sort of betrays you by giving the vault key to Steele. But then later it acts like she did this under duress. But if you go back and read the earlier quests it’s clear she had been lying to you all alongOnce you bring her the third and final piece of the key, she acts like there’s still one left. She’s obviously not under duress at this point.<\/span>. But then the story makes it sound like she betrayed you by accident because she didn’t realize what Steele was up to, and she didn’t think you’d mind. She has a very plot-driven form of insanity and I’d turn to authorial intent to figure out if she actually betrayed you or not, but I don’t think the text agrees with itself on this matter.<\/p>\n

At last, our big confrontation with our semi-adversary! Spoiler: She will be dead before the cutscene is over.<\/div>
At last, our big confrontation with our semi-adversary! Spoiler: She will be dead before the cutscene is over.<\/div><\/p>\n

Regardless of whether she’s crazy or cunning, it sort of drove home the idea that the player character was a dumbass for entrusting her with the vault key. <\/p>\n

But whatever. What follows is several hours of face-blasting combat. You rescue Tannis, get the ECHOnet back on line, reconnect with Angel, and then descend into an endless corridor filled with alien creatures and soldiers. It’s a huge slog.<\/p>\n

When you get to the vault entrance, Steele is waiting for you. This kind of surprised me, since I’d forgotten all about her. Sure, she’s the closest thing the game has to an ongoing antagonist. But this is only the third time we’ve heard from her. She’s had maybe three minutes of screen time in the last 20 hours of leveling and looting, so it was kind of hard for her to leave much of an impression. She has fewer lines of dialog than Crazy Earl, and they’re far less memorable. <\/p>\n

By this point in the game you’ve plowed through a dozen or so bandit kings and fantastic monsters on the way to the vault, and Steele’s cranky phone calls just don’t register as a serious problem amidst the chaos. As she gave her big speech I found myself thinking, “Oh. I guess this is supposed to be the main bad guy? Okay. I guess we’ll fight now?”<\/p>\n

And just about the time I’d adjusted to the idea that Steele was supposed to be the target of my long-exhausted wrath, the vault opened and she was killed by the tentacle monster that lives inside. <\/p>\n

So you fight the monster. You win. It drops a little pile of loot. Roll credits.<\/p>\n

Wait. Is That It?<\/h3>\n

I'm level 69 here because the game was turning into a huge slog at the end and I didn't want to burn four hours just to get these screenshots. I'm not incompetent. I'm just lazy.<\/div>
I'm level 69 here because the game was turning into a huge slog at the end and I didn't want to burn four hours just to get these screenshots. I'm not incompetent. I'm just lazy.<\/div><\/p>\n

It’s not that the writer was bad. I honestly can’t appraise the writer’s skill at all. This story must have been hacked to pieces and re-written as the game took shape, and the result is that the story feels like it’s missing most of the time, and when it does show up it’s barebones and wildly inconsistent in terms of tone. <\/p>\n

I know I left out a lot of details. The journey from Fyrestone to the Vault is long and meandering. There are a few good bits on the way and a lot of forgettable sections, but I don’t think it’s worth spending three months dissecting the game quest by quest, picking apart characters, motivations, and player action. It’s a story that spins its wheels for the majority of its running time, then tries to establish a villain near the end, then just gives up and has you fight a tentacle monster. <\/p>\n

So that was the first Borderlands game. It was a bit of a mess around the edges, but it was also a breath of fresh air in terms of art style and gameplay. It was fun, it was new, and it was occasionally funny. <\/p>\n

Next time we’ll move on to the sequel. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In copying the Diablo II style gameplay, it seems pretty clear the Borderlands team wanted to use the idea of the player moving from one town to the next on their journey. This idea didn’t really come together, and most of the towns feel empty. Dr. Zed and Claptrap are the only inhabitants of Fyrestone, […]<\/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-37863","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\/37863","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=37863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37863\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}