{"id":37871,"date":"2017-09-07T06:00:21","date_gmt":"2017-09-07T10:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=37871"},"modified":"2017-09-07T15:35:57","modified_gmt":"2017-09-07T19:35:57","slug":"borderlands-part-8-welcome-back-to-pandora","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=37871","title":{"rendered":"Borderlands Part 8: Welcome Back to Pandora"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gearbox had a hit on their hands with Borderlands 1. The problem with making lightning in a bottle like this is that the publisher will immediately turn around and ask you to do it again. Gearbox needed to figure out what worked so they could improve it, and what didn’t work so they could fix it. This sounds easy, but you can envision a lot of ways that could have gone wrong. <\/p>\n

We Have a Hit. Now What?<\/h3>\n

Do the fans want more of this guy, and is that even possible?<\/div>
Do the fans want more of this guy, and is that even possible?<\/div><\/p>\n

We know fans love those four original vault hunters, but how do we build on that? Do we have those same four characters go on another adventure? Or maybe we come up with four new characters with the exact same powers and skill trees? Or maybe keep the original four playable charactersAnd reset them to level 1 and hope players don’t mind.<\/span> and add a few of new ones? Or maybe ignore the old characters and just make four new ones? <\/p>\n

Fans like the humor, but how do we use that? Do we make a whole game of Crazy Earl style characters and quests? More Claptrap? Do we pester the player with constant communications from the characters, quipping and mugging all the time? Or do fans really just want the humor to take place when they’re in town, and otherwise leave them alone to enjoy the face-shooting?<\/p>\n

Fans didn’t really care for the story. Do they even want one? Assuming they do, what should it be like and what should it be about? Opening another vault? Chasing another vault key? Fighting a different corporation? Or do we flip the script and have them work for one of these amoral corporations? The first game established that the vault can open once every 200 years, so do we set the second game 200 years after the first? <\/p>\n

Focus groups are saying they would like Claptrap to spend another 10 or even 15 minutes explaining what respawning is.<\/div>
Focus groups are saying they would like Claptrap to spend another 10 or even 15 minutes explaining what respawning is.<\/div><\/p>\n

Do we go to a new planet or stay on Pandora? Do we visit new locations or revisit the old ones? How much do we need to acknowledge the events of the first game? Did the vault close and vanish into legend again, thus preserving the status quo of adventurers searching for a supposed myth? Or did the opening of the vault have far-reaching consequences?<\/p>\n

Fans like the looting, but how do we improve on that? Do we give them crappy loot more often? Maybe give them good loot more often? Do we create even more exotic tiers of loot for them to chase? Do we amplify the differential between good gear and fantastic gear? If a player finds an ultra-rare shotgun that trivializes combat, will that make them happy or ruin the gameplayTo be fair, I don’t think ANYONE has a good answer to this question.<\/span>? <\/p>\n

Players liked the setting, but where do we go from here? New planet? Do we keep the desert vibe and give them another game set in arid wastelands full of trash? Would players be able to accept (say) swamp or tundra, or do we need to stick with the climate and color palette we’ve got? <\/p>\n

And so on. I’m not saying Gearbox had these exact debates, I’m just trying to show that it’s not always obvious where the second game in a series should go, particularly when the first one was kind of a patchwork. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The Expanded Borderlands<\/h3>\n

Are players open to having TREES in a Borderlands game? I dunno. Let's stick it in a DLC and if they don't like it we can pretend it didn't happen.<\/div>
Are players open to having TREES in a Borderlands game? I dunno. Let's stick it in a DLC and if they don't like it we can pretend it didn't happen.<\/div><\/p>\n

The original offered a few pieces of DLC, and it deliberately set itself apart from the core game. In particular, the Zombie Island of Dr. Ned<\/i> took us to a greener part of Pandora and went all-in on the silliness. Maybe this was the colorful brand of comedy they’d wanted to embrace in Borderlands 1, but they didn’t have time to make it happen during the 11th hour art overhaul. Or maybe they weren’t sure what the fans wanted and they were experimenting to see what worked. <\/p>\n

Evidence in favor of the “experiment” theory is that the games have a one-way relationship with the DLC, similar to the way the Star Wars movies treated the expanded universe. Lore would flow from the movies to the books, but the books generally weren’t acknowledged or respected by the movies. Similarly, the Borderlands DLC adventures built on the premise of the core game (you’re a vault hunter who recently opened a vault) but the core titles don’t seem to reference any events in the DLC. Certainly I never heard anyone in Borderlands 2 talk about Dr. Zed’s brother or the zombies he created.<\/p>\n

However, I wonder if this one-way flow of lore is going to change. Borderlands 2 has some DLC that – rather than being a disposable one-off adventure – has some honest character growth in it, and would be very awkward to ignore. <\/p>\n

I’ll talk more about the DLC later. For now let’s just dig into Borderlands 2…<\/p>\n

Hire a Writer<\/h3>\n

Left: Ashley Burch. Right: Mirror universe Ashley Burch.<\/div>
Left: Ashley Burch. Right: Mirror universe Ashley Burch.<\/div><\/p>\n

The largest and most visible change going from the first game to the second is that they decided to have a story this time around, and they made the story a huge focus of the game.<\/p>\n

Gearbox hired Anthony Burch, of Hey Ash, Whatcha Playin?<\/a> fame. This seems like a really good fit. HAWP is basically a straight man vs. clown type comedy act where Anthony plays off of the unhinged antics of Ashley. Ash is just the right kind of “nutty” for the Borderlands series. Anthony’s comedy isn’t going to be mistaken for highbrow entertainment, but it’s fast paced, snappy, and based on characters. The writing in the game itself would finally match the over-the-top tone of those crazy music video trailers.<\/p>\n

I know I skipped most of the story in Borderlands 1, but since Borderlands 2 puts such a huge focus on the story I’m going to spend a little more time on it. I’m not going to cover every quest or anything, but we are going to skim over the main plot and poke at a couple of the quests. This isn’t because the story is bad. I think it does exactly what it needs to do. But it makes an interesting contrast with Borderlands 1 and it will serve as a convenient jumping-off point for talking about the other bits of the game.<\/p>\n

So You Want to Hear Another Story?<\/h3>\n

Our four new heroes, plus Handsome Jack.<\/div>
Our four new heroes, plus Handsome Jack.<\/div><\/p>\n

This game starts off with a similar style of intro to the previous game. First Marcus tells us a bunch of exposition in the form of a “story” told over a series of fun hand-drawn images. He explains that the previous vault hunters left in disappointment when the vault was just filled with a space monster. Once the vault opened, the rare purple element eridium appeared. The Hyperion Corporation showed up with their Death Star sized space station, which is in the shape of a giant H. <\/p>\n

Then we get the music video intro. We meet the four new vault huntersDLC vault hunters don’t get to be part of the story, and the game sort of treats them as non-canon.<\/span> as they ride a train. Handsome Jack throws a bunch of killer robots at them, announces he’s the REAL hero of the story, and then blows up the train.<\/p>\n

The game begins in the wreckage of the train crash, with the player character just having barely survived. Claptrap is here, digging in the snow for salvage. He discovers the player(s) and the tutorial begins.<\/p>\n

The first Borderlands made you sit through three ridiculous minutes of non-skippable Claptrap chatter before it let you play the game. Obviously that’s totally unreasonable, so in the sequel they fixed it<\/del> made it even longer<\/b>. It’s five minutes of walking beside Claptrap and listening to him talk before this shooter shuts up and lets you shoot something. <\/p>\n

To be fair, these five minutes are spent far better than the first three minutes of Borderlands 1. In Borderlands 1 the game explained things to you that you probably already knewI know what a HUD is, thanks game.<\/span>, or could easily intuitI can probably work out that this little device lets me re-color my character.<\/span>, or could figure out laterI think the mechanics of respawning are pretty self-evident once you die.<\/span>, which is why those three minutes felt so long.<\/p>\n

The intro has fun moments, like when Knuckledragger grabs Claptrap and pulls out his eye.<\/div>
The intro has fun moments, like when Knuckledragger grabs Claptrap and pulls out his eye.<\/div><\/p>\n

Here in Borderlands 2, the pre-gameplay moments are spent on exposition. Claptrap explains that this frozen wasteland is where Handsome Jack dumps the vault hunters that show up on Pandora. He explains that Jack is mining for eridium, a process which seems to be causing planet-wideOr perhaps just continent-wide? It’s sometimes hard to get a sense of scale.<\/span> tremors. Claptrap is trapped here. He wants to go to someplace called Sanctuary. That place is safe, but the journey to get there is dangerous and he’s been waiting for someone to come along to escort him. <\/p>\n

Angel also appears in this section. Like in the first game, she’s here to be your mysterious guide character. Unlike the first game, she has useful things to tell you and is able to give you exposition that Claptrap can’t. <\/p>\n

The story is already laying the groundwork. We know who the villain is. (Handsome Jack.) We already have a reason to dislike him. (He tried to kill us and also he’s a massive douche.) We have a little bit of information on his plan. (He’s mining plot crystals.) We have our first short-term goal. (Reach Sanctuary.) We’re also getting a steady feed of jokes to endear us to Claptrap (your mileage may vary) which is good because he’s going to be far more integral to the plot this time around. <\/p>\n

A Game of Doors<\/h3>\n

Here is a locked door like the ones in Borderlands 1. This one is mercifully brief, and is used to illustrate that Angel is able to help you. Also, Angel is depicted as being useful now. Yay!<\/div>
Here is a locked door like the ones in Borderlands 1. This one is mercifully brief, and is used to illustrate that Angel is able to help you. Also, Angel is depicted as being useful now. Yay!<\/div><\/p>\n

Like the game before it – and like a lot of RPGs – this is still a story with a lot of locked doors blocking your way. The difference is one of perception. In Borderlands 1 you had to open doors because once you opened enough of them the local NPC would allow you to move on. The doors and the stuff behind them aren’t central to your goals. Here in the second game, your immediate goal is on the other side of whatever door you’re trying to open, so you’re never stuck outside thinking, “Why do I care if this door is opened or not? I don’t need to go in here.”<\/p>\n

It sounds like semantics, but this is at the heart of how you make a good “quest”. You need buy-in from the player. They need them to want<\/i> to overcome the obstacle in front of them. The further they are from their goal, the less interesting it will be to them. You can spice things up with character beats and story (Witcher 3 did this) but that tends to get expensive very quickly. (Personally I’m a fan of the episodic structure of Mass Effect 1 as a way to avoid excessive nesting of quests, but that still hasn’t caught on.)<\/p>\n

The rule I use for doors is, “Whatever quest you want me to do to open this door needs to be less hassle than the brute-force alternatives.” Sure, chipping through this stone door with a pickaxe would be a pain in the ass, but if that’s easier and faster than hiking to the top of Mount Death and punching the gold tooth out of the Anger Dragon, then my character would choose the pickaxe. I don’t mind wiping out a bandit camp to get through a door, unless it’s a stupid wood door in the middle of a 2 meter fence that I could easily climb over. I don’t mind doing the quest, I just don’t want to feel like doing the quest is the idiot’s way of opening the door<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It’s true that the sequel does the same bait-and-switch as the first game. It sells you on the idea of being a vault hunter, and then as soon as you’re playing that goal is swapped for another one. But Borderlands 1 sort of did this every chapter: Kill Nine Toes. Kill Sledge. Kill Mad Mel. Kill Baron Flynt. You were always being shoved off-mission. Here in the sequel this only happens once: The vault-hunting goal is replaced with “Stop Handsome Jack”. And since he tried to kill you in the opening cutscene and spends the entire game giving you more reasons to hate him, the player isn’t going to be running into those moments where they go, “Why am I doing this again? And why am I supposed to care?”<\/p>\n

Tutorial<\/h3>\n

Claptrap's place has a bunch of cool little worldbuilding details to gawk at while he's exposition dumping. This place is interesting in a way that the empty parking lot at the start of BL1 was not.<\/div>
Claptrap's place has a bunch of cool little worldbuilding details to gawk at while he's exposition dumping. This place is interesting in a way that the empty parking lot at the start of BL1 was not.<\/div><\/p>\n

This chapter with Claptrap is also a tutorial, but the game doesn’t explain every little thing to you. You start the game with a tiny sliver of health, and as you walk with Claptrap you pick up several red vials and observe that they replenish your health. That’s the entire health vial tutorial. It’s done silently, without popups, without interrupting Claptrap’s exposition, and without breaking the flow of gameplay. It gives you all of the basics like this: Opening boxes, following waypoints, turning in quests, and picking up weapons and ammo. The first game wasted a lot of time explaining this stuff to you, but here the game manages to do it faster, smarter, and without insulting your intelligence.<\/p>\n

Also, this section generally keeps the player moving. Claptrap escorts you through his house, and there’s lots of fun stuff to look at while he yatters exposition at the story nerds. In Borderlands 1, you were stuck in the same little area with nothing to do but listen to him talkThere were some buildings with lootable containers nearby, but it wasn’t nearly as interesting as Claptrap’s house. Also, going over there would stall Claptrap’s script until you returned.<\/span>.<\/p>\n

It really makes me wonder at how much better the first game could have been if the team had a little more time to polish it. But deadlines are a cruel mistress, and sometimes they hurt the games we love. (Or don’t love, if the deadline was particularly damaging.)<\/p>\n

I love 50% of Handsome Jack's dialog. Sadly, you gotta listen to 100% of it.<\/div>
I love 50% of Handsome Jack's dialog. Sadly, you gotta listen to 100% of it.<\/div><\/p>\n

Once you’ve shot some monsters, Handsome Jack himself phones you up. Like Borderlands 1, everyone can kind of talk to you whenever they like. Sometimes they can see what you’re doingThere’s a sidequest for Scooter later in the game that lampshades this.<\/span> and sometimes they can’t. Sometimes they can see and even talk to each other and sometimes they can’t. It’s all driven by the need to do exposition and character beats without stopping the action.<\/p>\n

Borderlands 1 made us wait something like 4 or 5 hours before we heard from the main villain, and at the time we weren’t even sure if she was supposed to be THE villain, or just the next bossfight in a long series of them. But this time the story is characterizing him and building up our adversary right from the start. I love Jack’s dialog. He’s a massive jerk and you want to punch him in his smug face pretty much as soon as he starts talking.<\/p>\n

Having said that, this might have been an over-correction. Jack spends a lot of time talking to you. It’s funny the first time, but there are six character classes in this game so it’s likely you’ll hear his shtick more than once. If nothing else, I wish I had a way to hang up on him. I realize that allowing the player to cut off exposition might create game-breaking problems, but sometimes you just want the NPCs to shut up for a minute and let you shoot some snow monsters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gearbox had a hit on their hands with Borderlands 1. The problem with making lightning in a bottle like this is that the publisher will immediately turn around and ask you to do it again. Gearbox needed to figure out what worked so they could improve it, and what didn’t work so they could fix […]<\/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-37871","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\/37871","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=37871"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37871\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}