{"id":37966,"date":"2017-09-14T06:00:13","date_gmt":"2017-09-14T10:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=37966"},"modified":"2017-09-14T09:30:23","modified_gmt":"2017-09-14T13:30:23","slug":"borderlands-part-9-the-road-to-sanctuary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=37966","title":{"rendered":"Borderlands Part 9: The Road to Sanctuary"},"content":{"rendered":"

The first chapter or so of the game isn’t important in terms of story, but I want to talk about it because it shows off the strange way this game is torn between its story-focused aspirations and its Diablo II gameplay loop. <\/p>\n

The Loop<\/h3>\n

Pretty random: When doing my play-through for this series, tutorial boss Knuckledragger dropped an orange gun. That's never happened to me before.<\/div>
Pretty random: When doing my play-through for this series, tutorial boss Knuckledragger dropped an orange gun. That's never happened to me before.<\/div><\/p>\n

Like Diablo and some of the other games built around looting and leveling, there’s a very distinct rhythm to Borderlands 2. You kill some dudes, open some chests, gather some loot. Pretty soon you’ve completed a quest and your inventory is full. So you go back to town, sell off the unwanted loot, stash the stuff you want to keep, and maybe buy some upgrades with the income from the last trip. You turn in quests and get new ones. Once you’ve got fresh gear and a new mandate, it’s time to head back out and repeat the cycle.<\/p>\n

It’s a good gameplay loop because it’s giving the player new goals before they’ve exhausted the old ones. I don’t want to quit without turning in this quest. Since I’m turning in a quest, I might as well grab the next one. Oh! I don’t want to quit without cashing in this loot. Once I’ve done that, I might as well check the vending machines to see if I can get an upgrade. Once I’ve got an upgrade it seems ridiculous to quit the game without trying it out in the field. Heck, I’m halfway done with my new quest at this point so I might as well finish it…<\/em><\/p>\n

It’s a lot like the “one more turn” effect you get in a turn-based strategy game. You’re always looking to your next goal and there never seems to be an obvious window where you could exit the loop and go do something else. You’re always “in the middle of something”. <\/p>\n

MrBtongue talked about this loop in his video on Diablo III<\/a>. It’s a big part of what makes these games “addictive” for some. If the Skinner Box aspect of the game doesn’t hook you, the desire to “finish” things before you exit the game might still trap you in the gameplay loop.<\/p>\n

The thing is, you can’t really take part in this loop until you’ve got a town to work from, and it takes a long time to get there.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The Road to Sanctuary<\/h3>\n

Why IS this town called Liar's Berg, anyway?<\/div>
Why IS this town called Liar's Berg, anyway?<\/div><\/p>\n

For reasons I’ll never understand, the game repeats the thing in Borderlands 1 where you don’t get any skill points (and thus can’t use your special ability) until level 5. Mercifully, the process of hitting level 5 is a little faster this time around, but I still don’t see any reason to make the player wait like this. I think the player could safely start the game with their special ability enabled. It’s only one button to learn, and it’s usually the most fun button they have. <\/p>\n

If the developers are worried about giving you too many things at once, I suppose the player could wait until level 2. But making them wait for level 5 makes no sense to me and it makes repeated playthroughs with alternate characters a chore. Sometimes you find yourself looking at the character selection screen and thinking, “Would I enjoy playing this character? I should take them for a test drive and see if they’re fun.” And then to try it out the player has to shoot dudes and listen to exposition for forty minutes. It’s senseless.<\/p>\n

On one hand I really don’t want to transcribe every incidental little event on the road to Sanctuary. On the other hand, I want to talk about the pacing. So here’s a bullet list of the major points between the opening of the game and the point where you can actually engage with the gameplay loop I mentioned above:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The game starts. Claptrap digs you out of the snow and explains that the two of you must reach the town of Sanctuary.\n
  2. You pass through Claptrap’s home and have a short-ish combat section. Angel demonstrates her usefulness by opening a door for you.\n
  3. There’s another brief combat section as you enter the town of Liar’s Berg.\n
  4. You meet Sir Hammerlock and kill some bandits and Bullymongs for him. There are some optional sidequests you can take here. Captain Flynt calls you up and begins telegraphing the fight you’ll have with him in about an hour or so.\n
  5. Moving on from Liar’s Berg, you push through a bandit camp, then another.\n
  6. You have your first major boss fight with Boom Boom.\n
  7. You begin a long, winding ascent through Captain Flynt’s sprawling ramshackle bandit fortress. The path cuts back and forth as you climb the glacier, murdering your way through waves and waves of goons.\n
  8. At the top you reach Flynt’s fortress and have your showdown with him.\n
  9. Once Flynt is dead, you reach Claptrap’s boat and sail to the region called Three Horns, which is the “mainland” for the purposes of this analysis.\n
  10. In Three Horns you have to assault a bandit camp to obtain a part to get the Catch-A-Ride system working. Also, Angel helps you a second time, further building her up as a useful ally.\n
  11. You drive a car through some wasteland while Jack works his jackass schtick.\n
  12. On the road, Roland calls. It turns out the heroes from the last game are now the quest-givers that drive the plot. Roland is the first one we hear from. He sends you to rescue one of his buddies.\n
  13. You recover a McGuffin, shoot up one last bandit camp, and then finally you reach the city of Sanctuary.<\/ol>\n

    Note that Jack checks in with you regularly during this entire journey. He’s not actively doing anything to oppose you yet story-wise, and his dialog is just here to crack jokes and make sure you don’t forget he’s the real goal.<\/p>\n

    The Story Trap<\/h3>\n

    One of the early quests sends you to buy a shield as a way of teaching you about the vending machines. You must buy a new shield to complete the quest, even if you already have one better than what the vending machine offers. So to complete the quest you buy a shield and sell it right back for a loss. It's... awkward.<\/div>
    One of the early quests sends you to buy a shield as a way of teaching you about the vending machines. You must buy a new shield to complete the quest, even if you already have one better than what the vending machine offers. So to complete the quest you buy a shield and sell it right back for a loss. It's... awkward.<\/div><\/p>\n

    The problem I have here is that the game feels incomplete for me until we reach the city, because the city has a bunch of stuff you need for the “full” gameplay experience. You’ve got vending machines to unload gear. You’ve got your vault to store gear for later. You’ve got the stash where you can swap items between charactersI have a “starter kit” of good gear that I leave for new characters to get them to level 10 or so. Once the character hits 10, the gear goes back in the stash for the next one.<\/span>. You’ve got Crazy Earl’s black market for buying upgrades. You’ve got the slot machines for turning excess cash into the occasional bit of loot. You’ve got a fast travel point. You’ve got the bounty board for taking side jobs.<\/p>\n

    That’s a lot of important stuff that you just don’t have access to before you reach the city. So when I’m blasting my way up through Captain Flynt’s city of murder it feels like the game hasn’t really “started” yet because I’m still not taking part in The Loop.<\/p>\n

    Diablo II has a lot of these same features in its towns. Your starting town has your stash, some vendors, a waypoint, and some quest givers. While he’s not a slot machine, shady merchant Gheed<\/a> serves roughly the same gameplay purpose. The difference is that in Diablo II you begin inside the starting town. You don’t spend two hours hacking through monsters before you can shop for upgrades or do repairs.<\/p>\n

    Those two hours spent traveling to SanctuaryTo be fair, once you’re familiar with the game you can cut the travel time down quite a bit.<\/span> feel overlong and unimportant. <\/p>\n

    Put Me in Coach, I’m Ready!<\/h3>\n

    Hammerlock is here so we can see how much everyone hates Claptrap. Now we understand he's annoying on purpose, not a botched "endearing" character. (Although it's okay if you like him. I kinda do.)<\/div>
    Hammerlock is here so we can see how much everyone hates Claptrap. Now we understand he's annoying on purpose, not a botched "endearing" character. (Although it's okay if you like him. I kinda do.)<\/div><\/p>\n

    Here, let me fix this introduction. Let’s shove Anthony Burch out of the way and I’ll write this myself. Here’s the plan: I’ll start by dropping the player just outside Sanctuary. Claptrap can give them the exposition dump while they hike to town, and off we go!<\/p>\n

    Actually Shamus, we need the tutorials, too.<\/b><\/p>\n

    Oh, right. To be honest, I think this game is a little to heavy on tutorials. But I admit some of these are 100% necessary. So I guess we need to mix some tutorials in with the exposition. We’ll just make that walking segment a little<\/em> longer, put up the tutorial hurdles along the route, and space them out with exposition. Boom. Done!<\/p>\n

    Uh, Shamus? there’s a lot of exposition here. Claptrap, Angel, Jack, and Roland all need to be introduced. Plus we need to explain how Sanctuary works because that’s important later. We need to establish what’s happened since the last game, what the stakes are, and what sort of threat Jack poses. We need to allude to the Hyperion mining operations and explain that Jack is digging to reach a new vault. Assuming we want that to feel at all natural, we’re going to need to work all of that into a running conversation with some jokes.<\/b><\/p>\n

    Yeah, so?<\/p>\n

    So now you’ve got like 15 solid minutes of talking with no action. That’s way longer than the opening of Borderlands 1, which you already<\/em> said was way too long.<\/b><\/p>\n

    Shit. Okay, I guess we need to add some shooty bits so the player can engage with the mechanics and so the exposition has some room to breathe.<\/p>\n

    Shamus? I know you don’t want to hear this, but now we’ve got like an hour of nothing but shooting and exposition. That’s a lot. Claptrap can’t carry the entire introduction himself. His humor works best when he has someone to play straight man to his antics. Also, we’re asking the player to care about this planet, but so far the only people they’ve met are 100% psycho bandits. We need to give them a friendly face so they can empathize with the good guys.<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Okay, we’ll add this Hammerlock dude at the halfway point.<\/p>\n

    If you’re going to add a named, voiced character then…<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Right, right. I know. We need to properly introduce him, and explain why he’s out here all by himself. Which means even more exposition, which means another couple of shooting sections.<\/p>\n

    Now you’ve got over an hour of one-note gameplay. It’s just clusters of bandits. That will get monotonous. We need some moments of intensity.<\/strong><\/p>\n

    You’re talking about boss fights, aren’t you?<\/p>\n

    I’m talking about boss fights, yes. And if we’re going to have bosses, then we need to introduce them.<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Oh, I dunno. They’re just tutorial bosses. Who cares?<\/p>\n

    Remember the odd bosses in Borderlands 1 that had no build-up and seemed to come out of nowhere? Didn’t you say those were dumb and boring?<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Okay. I admit we need to telegraph our bosses and give the player some kind of motivation for killing them that’s more interesting than “They’re in the way.” This means adding more exposition, doesn’t it?<\/p>\n

    It means adding more exposition.<\/strong><\/p>\n

    This is really hard.<\/p>\n

    Also this section needs to introduce the car.<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Oh come on!<\/em><\/p>\n

    And so Here We Are<\/h3>\n

    A lot of the first chapter looks like this: Someone talking to us over a chorus of screaming and gunfire as we plow through the successive bandit camps.<\/div>
    A lot of the first chapter looks like this: Someone talking to us over a chorus of screaming and gunfire as we plow through the successive bandit camps.<\/div><\/p>\n

    I’m not saying you can’t<\/em> make a short intro, but this is one of those situations where I find myself wanting to complain about something a game does while not being able to offer any real alternatives. The writer is kind of trapped by the expectations of the audience. We need to keep the action high, we need to keep the jokes coming, and we need to deliver all this exposition. <\/p>\n

    We could do a short intro if the plot of this game was “There’s a vault. You need to search for clues. There will be bandits in the way. Off you go!” But once we’re committed to this idea of having a vibrant antagonist and this large (for an action shooter) cast of characters, we’re trapped in this position where we have to decide if story should trump gameplay or not. Because both of them need to go first.<\/p>\n

    I’ll admit this long-ish intro isn’t as big a problem if you’re the sort of player who only runs through the game once. But this is a game designed to be replayed. There are six character classes to try out, and making it to the “endgame” of boss-grinding means playing through the story three times with the same character. <\/p>\n

    So while I like the story in Borderlands 2, I admit the opening can drag. Every time I do the road to Sanctuary it feels a little longer and a little more pointless than the previous trip. I’d much prefer if the game found a way to get the player to Sanctuary as quickly as possible and deferred some of the exposition. <\/p>\n

    On the other hand, I know I’m in the minority. On Steam, less than a third of all players have the “Cool Story, Bro” achievement<\/a>, which is awarded for beating the game. Should the game be designed to favor the masses (who play through only once and probably don’t mind the drawn-out intro) or the hardcore who play through many times? <\/p>\n

    I honestly don’t know.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The first chapter or so of the game isn’t important in terms of story, but I want to talk about it because it shows off the strange way this game is torn between its story-focused aspirations and its Diablo II gameplay loop. The Loop Like Diablo and some of the other games built around looting […]<\/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-37966","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\/37966","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=37966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37966\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}