{"id":37868,"date":"2017-08-31T06:00:46","date_gmt":"2017-08-31T10:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=37868"},"modified":"2017-08-31T13:54:57","modified_gmt":"2017-08-31T17:54:57","slug":"borderlands-part-7-the-new-vault-hunters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=37868","title":{"rendered":"Borderlands Part 7: The New Vault Hunters"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the comments of the previous installment, a lot of people were surprised that I was moving on from the first game so quickly. The series actually evolved quite a bit in the DLC that took place between the games, and to make any sense of the massive change in tone you kind of need to look at the DLC. Specifically, people wanted to know if I was going to talk about The Secret Armory of General Knoxx<\/em> DLC.<\/p>\n

Yes, I’m going to mention the DLC, although that won’t happen until next week. On the other hand, I’m not going to talk about General Knoxx.<\/p>\n

Here’s the thing: I own the General Knoxx DLC. According to Steam achievements I’ve played some of it, but I have not completed it. However, I have no memory of it<\/em>. I don’t even remember what character I was using when I played it. I kinda forgot that it existed until it came up in the comments. I’ve played Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot<\/a> and I’ve been through The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned<\/a> multiple times, but I’ve somehow managed to overlook the most popular DLC. <\/p>\n

I’ve moved on to other games since writing this, so this series will need to continue on without covering General Knoxx. It’s fine. I think the other DLC gives us what we need in terms of bridging the gap between the two games. Yes, Knoxx introduces Athena and she’s important later. I’m sure we’ll manage somehow.<\/p>\n

Anyway, with the slog of Borderlands 1 behind us it’s time to talk about Borderlands 2. Since this game is so much more character and story focused, let’s start with talking about our new heroes.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The New Team<\/h3>\n

So the first game started with our characters riding a bus. How can we spice that up in the sequel? Oh! I've got it: TRAIN.<\/div><\/a>
So the first game started with our characters riding a bus. How can we spice that up in the sequel? Oh! I've got it: TRAIN.<\/div><\/p>\n

Rather than chain the series to the original four characters, Gearbox wisely came up with new classes for people to play in the sequel. <\/p>\n

They were even bold enough to break out of the particular character roles they had in the first game. Sure, Axton is a bit like Roland, but the rest of them don’t map neatly to characters from Borderlands 1. Maya is a siren like Lilith, but their powers do totally different things and they have different personalities. The new group of four doesn’t have a pet-based class like Mordecai, or a melee-based class like Brick. <\/p>\n

I suppose they do kind of re-use the body types: You’ve got a shapely woman, a ridiculously skinny guy, a normal guy, and a thick guyAlthough the thick guy is super short this time around.<\/span>. This is done so that each character has a distinctive outline. I can’t fault them for that. <\/p>\n

The point is, they had the confidence to do something new rather than getting themselves in a rut, and I really appreciate this. The first game is where you define what properties the new genre can<\/b> have, but the second game is where you define what properties it must<\/b> have. If they stuck with the Siren+Soldier+Hunter+Brawler paradigm for the second game, then fans would expect (and possibly demand) they stuck to that pattern forever. <\/p>\n

Also, the new game adds a couple of extra DLC characters for people who like to buy their videogames piecemeal. Here’s the new lineup:<\/p>\n

Axton<\/h3>\n

You know, after playing for hundreds of hours I don't think I've ever seen a rocket launcher that looked like this.<\/div>
You know, after playing for hundreds of hours I don't think I've ever seen a rocket launcher that looked like this.<\/div><\/p>\n

Generally when I hit the special action button it’s because I have one of two problems. Either I’m low on health and about to die, or I’ve just run into something really dangerous (like a big crowd of mooks, a badass, or even a boss) and I want to do a ton of damage to it in a hurry.<\/p>\n

Axton’s power does both. Like Roland from the last game, Axton’s power causes a turret to materialize on the fieldThis is called “digi-structing” in the fiction of the world. (No relation to digimon.)<\/span>. Unlike Roland, this turret isn’t a dinky thing with a pointless little wall. Axton’s turret deals respectable damage and can mop up the mooks while you run off to loot the room or whatever it is that you’d rather be doing.<\/p>\n

The turret also grabs all aggro, meaning foes will lose interest in attacking Axton and instead pound on his turret. Axton can then shoot them in the back, or if he’s low on health he can go hide and suck his thumb until his shields recharge. The one downside is that while the turret is durable, it’s not invincible and it can be destroyed by foes. <\/p>\n

Axton’s got this handsome, devil-may-care kinda thing going that makes me think of Nathan Drake. He’s a good character to play if you’re patient and you hate dying.<\/p>\n

Maya<\/h3>\n

I CAN BEND THE VERY LAWS OF SPACE-TIME TO INCONVENIENCE YOU!<\/div>
I CAN BEND THE VERY LAWS OF SPACE-TIME TO INCONVENIENCE YOU!<\/div><\/p>\n

Like I said, when I hit the action button I either want my power to save me from dying or do a bunch of murder. Maya doesn’t solve either of these problems for me. She’s a siren like Lilith in the first game, and her power is that she can phaselock one<\/i> foe and make them float up in the air where they will be harmless for a few seconds. This doesn’t hurt them, and when phaselock ends the foe floats gently back to the ground and resumes trying to kill you. <\/p>\n

So you’ve got six guys running at you, and your power gives you the ability to make one of them slightly late to the murder party. I never found that particularly satisfying to use. The one time where this power might be useful is against bosses, but phaselock doesn’t work on bosses. It just takes off a tiny chunk of their health without impeding their actions in any way. <\/p>\n

About halfway through the game you’ll gain access to an ability to have the phaselocked guy act like a mook magnet, drawing all of the nearby mooks into a giant ball. That helps, but it still doesn’t hurt them or heal you. You can fix this by using the right weapon loadout to take advantage of the way guys bunch up, but the point stands that her power is a little less immediately useful compared to the others. You’ll need to wait a little longer and work a little harder before her power can really solve your problems. (Or if you’re playing with friends, invest in the skills to make her a healer instead. They’re actually kind of overpowered if you like playing in support roles.)<\/p>\n

Maya was raised by a bunch of crazy monks that wanted to control her power. She got wise to their manipulation and killed the lot of them. Being raised by monks, she’s got this cool stoic vibe to her personality.<\/p>\n

Salvador<\/h3>\n

ONE LINER!<\/div>
ONE LINER!<\/div><\/p>\n

I don’t have much to say on this character, since I haven’t really played a lot of him. Sal is called the “Gunzerker”, and his special ability is that he uses two weapons at the same time – regardless of size. If one of the guns runs out of bullets, that arm just lowers the gun out of frame until it’s reloaded<\/a>. If you’re the kind of person who needs an explanation for how someone can reload a sniper rifle with one hand while shooting a rocket launcher in the other hand, then you are probably not the sort of person who will enjoy Gunzerking. <\/p>\n

If you spend your points right and can kill dudes fast enough, then your power will come off of cooldown just as the duration of gunzerking runs out, meaning you can almost gunzerk forever.<\/p>\n

In terms of personality, he fits neatly into the “enthusiastic hedonistic berzerker” archetype. <\/p>\n

Based on what other players have told me, he’s the most broken of the classes and the easiest to play at high levelsNot that anything at high levels is particularly “easy”.<\/span>. <\/p>\n

Zer0<\/h3>\n

This guy is trying so hard to be cool that he becomes a massive dork but the dorkiness wraps around and makes him cool again.<\/div>
This guy is trying so hard to be cool that he becomes a massive dork but the dorkiness wraps around and makes him cool again.<\/div><\/p>\n

Imagine if you asked a 12 year old kid to design the “coolest mercenary” character they could think of. And then imagine you implemented that design without a hint of irony. You’d probably get Zer0. He’s kind of like another riff on the Ax Cop<\/a> joke.<\/p>\n

He’s an alienHe’s only got 4 fingers on each hand.<\/span> ninja in black armor, with a glowing sword, who can turn invisible and then backstab dudes for huge damage. He’s got this super-serious delivery he uses to say things like, “You just activated my trap card!” as he turns invisible. <\/p>\n

Gaige<\/h3>\n

Gaige, and Deathtrap her pet robot.<\/div>
Gaige, and Deathtrap her pet robot.<\/div><\/p>\n

Gaige is a character designed to make the game accessible to people who aren’t into shooters. I think that’s really important for this series. Anecdotally, there seem to be a lot of people from the Sims \/ Adventure Games \/ Animal Crossing area of gaming who will look at the macho blood-soaked screaming of your typical shooter and have no desire to play. But then they see the madcap, colorful, joke-y world of Borderlands and think it looks kind of interesting. Then they see their shooter-oriented friends playing it and think it might be fun to join them. Those of us who have played shooters for years often underestimate just how steep and frustrating the learning curve can be<\/a> for adults coming to the genre late in life.<\/p>\n

The trick is: How do you make a character “accessible” for a newbie to play and feel useful that isn’t ridiculously overpowered and broken in the hands of a typical player?<\/em> I can’t say for sure how well this solution worked for a newbie, but I thought it was a really interesting attempt.<\/p>\n

Her gimmickTo be clear, what I’m talking about here is the suggested \/ advertised \/ expected character build. It’s possible to do a few different things with the character that don’t involve Anarchy.<\/span> is that every time she kills a guy, she gains a unit of this stuff called “Anarchy”. The higher this number gets, the more damage she does. At the same time, her accuracy will degrade. After she gets 400 units of Anarchy (the maximum) every bullet will do 7× as much damage, but guns will be so inaccurate that the weapon will have approximately the same output distribution as a lawn sprinklerAfter some experimenting, it seems like bullets are constrained so that, at maximum anarchy, they just have to land somewhere in your field of view. So you’ll never get so inaccurate that you shoot sideways or backwards. This does mean that looking down sights or through a scope will help your accuracy.<\/span>. <\/p>\n

The twist: If you reload before your weapon goes dry, you lose all Anarchy. In a strange way, this actually makes her kind of challenging for experienced players, since you’re likely used to reflexively reloading at opportune moments. For the first few hours of playing Gaige I seriously considered re-binding my reload key because I kept throwing away my stacks of Anarchy just as things were getting interesting.<\/p>\n

That's an awful lot of fine print for an ability designed for newbies. I'd love to hear from someone new to shooters who tried this. Was it playable? Was it overwhelming? Was it fun?<\/div>
That's an awful lot of fine print for an ability designed for newbies. I'd love to hear from someone new to shooters who tried this. Was it playable? Was it overwhelming? Was it fun?<\/div><\/p>\n

Alone, Anarchy is already pretty powerful. But then you can put points into another skill called “Close Enough”, which gives bullets a random chance to ricochet off walls and hit bad guys. Ricochet shots do half damage, but still. Once Close Enough is maxed out, half of all missed shots can still find a targetAlthough bullets won’t bend or anything. If a bullet strikes a spot where it doesn’t have a straight line to a bad guy, it’ll just hit another wall and die.<\/span>.<\/p>\n

You can run the numbers to see how overpowered this is. Even if you aim at a wall, half of your bullets will still hit the bad guys, and every one of them will do 3.5× damage. I guess the downside is that you don’t get to choose who gets hit, so you can’t focus guys down. Still, if you use an SMG or a shotgunEvery pellet from the shotgun counts as a bullet.<\/span> then you can spray a lot of damage in a big hurry. And hey, if you need to take down one particular guy you could always AIM AT HIM to encourage the bullets to hit home. A lot of them will miss, sure. But the ones that do land will be doing 7× damage.<\/p>\n

I played this way for a while. It’s actually kind of amusing and more interesting than I expected. Instead of aiming, I found myself thinking about reflection angles all the time so I could shoot around corners or put bullets into places where they could ONLY hit the one guy I was trying to take down. I also found myself drawn to a really suicidal playstyle where I’d run up and engage tough foes at point-blank range so I could take advantage of the full 7x damage bonus.<\/p>\n

Half the bullets that miss come back to do half damage? Even without Anarchy, that's really powerful.<\/div>
Half the bullets that miss come back to do half damage? Even without Anarchy, that's really powerful.<\/div><\/p>\n

Oh, and if all of that isn’t overpowered enough, none of that is her action skill. That’s just her passive abilities. Her action skill lets her summon Deathtrap, her robot sidekick. Deathtrap is kind of like Axton’s turret in that it can damage enemies while also getting everyone’s attention so you can recover. Unlike Axton’s turret, Deathtrap can fly around, refill your shields, he lasts way longer, and he’s almost indestructible.<\/p>\n

So yeah. A little overpowered. <\/p>\n

I guess she’s supposed to be a schoolgirl, and she’s got this over-the-top mad engineer thing going with her personality. I really applaud attempts to bring new people into a tough genre like this. With Gaige, someone can be new to shooters and still meaningfully contribute to the fight. <\/p>\n

My one gripe with Gaige is that she was a DLC character and she costs ten bucks. I know this is just how things work these days, but I still hate it.<\/p>\n

Krieg<\/h3>\n

*incoherent screaming about blood and fire*<\/div>
*incoherent screaming about blood and fire*<\/div><\/p>\n

I like Krieg. His introduction movie \/ trailer<\/a> is pretty good. His thing is that he’s a high-functioning psycho. He’s the product of some evil experiment gone horribly wrong, which made him strong, savage, and completely mad. A lot of his powers are built around the idea of enduring pain. He deals more damage when his shield is down, or he’s on fire, or his health is low. <\/p>\n

I know above I said the new characters weren’t just recycled versions of their predecessors, but Krieg’s special ability is a melee-based rampage, very much like Brick from the first game. <\/p>\n

He’s a psycho, so his personality is pretty one-note. While his trailer makes for good cinema, none of that particular humor appears in the game. He just shouts psycho-ish stuff.<\/p>\n

Again, Krieg is a DLC character, and even five years after release he’s still $10. That seems like a lot for a single character.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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