Hi

OOOOOOHHH

I KNOW ITS NOT THE RIGHT TIME TONIGHT

which is the best episode opener, and why is it ep.4?

This is barely related to the thread, but I just bought and beat Borderlands 1 this last weekend and the game is almost totally shit. All of the boss fights are horrendous (they're either easy as shit or stupid hard because the boss does a million damage and has a billion health) the setting is boring and driving back and forth across it doing fetch quests is not fun, there's only like 10 different enemy types in the whole game, and I got the best weapons I had in the whole game from the second.

I actually got interested in the series because of Tales; are the other games in the series worth playing at all to get a better feel for the universe?

If they ever do a second season of TFTBL Rhys and Sasha better have a kid named Loader Bot.

it was the most fun with friends
jump on and run around farming bosses for unique guns and stuff
like this big bastard
borderlands.wikia.com/wiki/The_Chopper
completely inefficient but cool to use

The game was fun at its time when everything was so Cod dominated and the only alternatives was..well nothing. Borderlands RPG system wasnt really around in fps form at that time

That opening was classic.

All of the intros were awesome, but that was the point where the series became a favorite for me.

From a story standpoint, give up. Tales is the best portrayal of the setting you're likely to ever get [although 2 and Pre-Sequel, whatever you might say of their quality as actual games, have certainly more beautiful settings than Post Apocalyptic Desert #593 from Borderlands 1's intro].

The games simply paint the planet as too bleak and hopeless for you to actually have any stake in protecting it or keeping the people in it alive. It's not like Tales, where there is an actual semblance of a working long-term civilization with relatively believable characters that go to work and have relationships with one another.

In Gearbox's Borderlands, there are about half a dozen civilized characters, with everyone else being some combination of insane, murderous, or a bandit, the most common being all three at once. Every village you safe is probably 30 minutes away from being devoured by wildlife anyway, and the corporations are made of cartoonishly evil executives attended to by funny robots.

Handsome Jack actually comes off Borderlands 2 as REASONABLE in his plan to drown the world in fire, with how terrible the world is.

I see, thanks

Rhy's romantic pairing felt so goddamn forced, I could barely stand it.

Good thing it was kept relatively low-key.

It was kind of forced, but it didn't matter to me because if I were Rhys I would have been all over that too.

MEAT

BICYCLE

>forced

Biggest buzzword out there, next to fun and cuck.

>implying buzzword hasn't become a buzzword unto itself
user pls

fuck off

game is meant t be played with friends and like any borderlands game first few hours suck dick. It gets better once you leave firestone

Sasha could force herself on me any day of the week

i agree yet also think thats part of Pandoras charm
Its a batshit crazy place completely removed from our reality
what would be a typical bandit in any other videogame is now a psycho that screams he wants to wear your face or use you as a puppet, and thats somewhat normal for the setting as absurd of a statement it is.
Everyone is crazy so crazy is the norm.
I really liked how Tales formed a bit of civilized structure to the kookoo world

It is canon though. The voice actor developed a throat condition and couldn't play him anymore. Scooter is dead and gone user. He is still working at gearbox though.

no

QUICK

Claim your gun-fu

Fun fact: he (Mikey Neumann) does a shit ton of podcasts, has a really fun YouTube series where he tries to give exclusively positive reviews to underrated movies, and is best friends with the dude that wrote candle cove.

He's talked on their old podcast a bit about how much he disliked the scooter voice, and I have no doubt he was the first to volunteer killing off his own character as a result.
He also was the lead writer on the first borderlands.

Mikey also wrote the Borderlands comics.
They're pretty good. I liked how T.K. Baha's story became a lot more dramatic and emotional.

I get the sense that he had a lot of ideas in the borderlands world he was excited to explore, specifically in the heavily-contrasted bleakness of the setting and the over-the-top, cartoonish absurdity of the people in it, but the general trend when the series got in heavy development was that people were pushing for the cheap humor of calling everything badass, and making "likeable characters" just be obnoxious children who shout "pew pew" when they fire guns. Like-- and I remember Mikey briefly talking about this before on a podcast-- the entire concept of the "New-U stations" is INCREDIBLY bleak, knowing that death is now irrelevant, but only if you have enough cash; and even then, corporations are happy to charge you a lesser fee if it means farming you for more cash in the long term as you plunder and purge Pandora for them. He put a lot of thought into even how simple game elements like that would shape, warp, and pervert the world.

Then Randy "Bobandy" Pitchford stuck his manchild nose in everything and wanted 200% more BADASS, 200% more ponies, and absolutely 0% subtlety.
Hence why he onboarded Cuckthony Burch and immediately made him lead writer for BL 2.

Randy had a hand in memeifying Borderlands? I thought that was all Anthony's doing.
Well shit, now my hopes for BL3 being a gritty space western again just became a little bleaker.

I got Battleborn out of a humble bundle like a month or two ago, and have been 2manning a level every week or two with a pal, and it's bleak, man. I know that apparently Randy was the most hands on with this game, and it shows. It's far more playable than Cred Forums will claim, but it is undeniably a decent game buried under a TON of unnecessary, off-putting shit; especially the "YOU'RE A BADASS" elements. I think borderlands' setting and the initial struggle of starting out as a nobody-vault-hunter helped you feel like you earned it when the game repeatedly called you a badass, but in Battleborn it's like you're just playing as a clunky superhero who gets constant praise for nothing.

The one saving grace, though, is the absence of genuine memes. They finally put the referential humor to rest when cucko McWifeFucko left the company, and the humor that does exist can actually be pleasant.
It's like gearbox keeps trying to make good games, and then Pitchford decides that his"wisdom" is infallible, and should be applied liberally to everything. I think there's hope yet for the company, if they didn't lose everything to Battleborn, but I believe they need to focus more on subtlety and a fresh tone, while respecting a core, niche audience, rather than trying to draw in every ADHD gamer with loud guns, bright colours, and colourful language.

Gearbox is too valuable to 2k to just let them die. Borderlands 2 was the most successful game they ever published.
2k also wants more Battleborn for some ungodly reason but I really don't give a shit about that dumpster fire anymore.
So long as I get more Borderlands, I'll be fine.

Here's hoping they at least have the foresight to restrain or remove Pitchford from their next effort, then. After everything, im still looking forward to whatever borderlands 3 ends up as. I had a fucking blast with 2 and TPS, regardless of terrible joke quality.

I really like the concept of borderlands. If the gameplay wasn't so shallow, it could be really great. Personally the humor doesn't bother me.

Catch a riiiiiide~

They really need to put Mikey back as lead. The story and feel of Pandora in the first game was perfect. It is basically a Grindhouse video game. It's a bleak world, it has a humor that will poke fun at itself, it wallows in the decadence of the violence you engage in. The over the top nature all being there to distract you from just how terrible life in this world would be. Everyone is insane on Pandora, in one way or another. It's the only way one can survive and that is a horrible thing to think about.

Then the sequel comes along and decides that the little bits of bleakness that poke through the veil of ultra violence should be accomanied by a quipping bad guy that will contact you to make quips, and completely undercuts any kind of drama it could generate, then has the gall to try and tug at your heartstrings later.

>western mecha design

Did you ever play the presequel? I think the aerobatics, cryo energy, and greater focus on verticality was a HUGE boon to the game play that really injected a fresh element, and made going back to bl2 hard. I wish the characters were more fun (Athena 10/10 but everyone else underwhelming), and the quest design was fucking unforgivable, but there were glimpses of proof that the series still has room to really grow into a great direction, if they're diligent.
Definitely a game worth $15, id even say $25 if you have a reliable co-op partner.

Honestly the humor wouldn't bother me if the characters would just shut up for a bit. Can't focus on what they're saying when I'm trying to genocide everything, and can't genocide much if I had to sit still every time they started yapping.

One of the promises made was Mikey being the lead writer. The other is being made for current gen consoles so there won't be the same memory limitations.
Better writing and more guns, what more can one ask for?

I also wonder what could've happened if Mikey didn't have a stroke and went on to write Borderlands 2.

I want to fuck her, SO HARD

>Thick as fuck legs from the nothing

>No dirty, drunk shela with the foulest mouth this side of the equator IRL

This shotgun is a treasure to me.

>was a macfag until just recently.
>for like 3 years only thing that wasn't valve games to play was borderlands 2
>have around 600 hours just because I was so fucking bored.
>cannot boot the game up without wanting to vomit

I think Borderlands has progressed in it's gameplay in a rather nice way. The first game introduced us to the world and the guns and it was okay for what it was.

The second game made the different companies more unique, and you can really work what you like with the guns you get, more so than the previous game, and gives you some additional tactics. I never played the presequel, but it makes sense that a greater exploration of play space would be the next logical step.

So here's a question: What would you like to see in the next one? What would be the next addition to the game's mechanics? I personally would like to see a greater emphasis on combining skills between characters. I'd like that if I'm playing with my friends that us really co-ordinating our abilities could lead to some really cool outcomes.

God, sclerosis is a bitch.

same

On the topic of characters, I went in expecting to despise Pickle given the responses I had seen but he ended up being my favorite side character. Whether that's because he was actually endearing or a matter of him being the least obnoxious to me, I don't know. Little sod's got it rough though.

>Sister's fucked off somewhere
>Two of the five friends he had were killed
>Two more fucked off to make a life together
>Ends up moving in with the very people who helped kill them in the first place and would have killed a third if not for intervention from a Guardian, of all things
>Claptrap is probably the only one of the five still around

I enjoyed a lot in presequel that skill trees were smaller by a slight amount, but you still got the same amount of points, so your later builds felt more powerful when you could potentially reach the final skills in 2 trees. I think if they explore in a direction like that, letting the characters themselves hold a little more power, and not just being slight variations of the same mechanics, except for a decent damage buff every minute, such a change would absolutely pay off. Like, just even to give each character 2 action skills I think would go a long way in this direction.

Further, I think the focus on verticality would be great, because it brings in a fresh element that I think a lot of note "traditional" shooters lack, and is simultaneously fun, wacky, and appropriate to the setting. Like, don't you want a rocket-jumping vault hunter?

Would love to see creative level design that takes advantage of increased platforming ability, as well; more vantage points to jump through, jump pads and exploration puzzles. There was a modest amount in TPS, and those parts absolutely shone through.
Honestly, when I think about it, really id just love more of the gameplay elements of tps. When i try to imagine worthy innovations, I realize that game actually did them; even the final boss requires you to be somewhat adept in your mobility, vertically and otherwise.
I would also really like it if they pursued the rumored/predicted "borderworlds" aspect, and saw players tracking down vaults across multiple planets; then, they could really explore some wild gimmicks and environments, while keeping gameplay stitched consistently together on the spine of the shooting and RPG elements. But each planet could have a gimmick like zero gravity, vehicles only, horde mode, stealth planet, to give those core elements varied context, and add more depth than "make your numbers big!"

>What would you like to see in the next one?
For the sake of my will to live, I view Battleborn as a tech demo for what could be implemented in Borderlands.

>more characters
>multiple skills
>dynamic and game-changing leveling perks
>bosses that have phases and aren't massive bullet sponges

Post your favourite opening.

youtube.com/watch?v=ylYs6JSOjI0

Best side character, I can't even remember his name-- but it was the fucker you had to race after his bratty soon threw a shit fit.
I just loved that every time you entered that zone (which was super frequently, given that it was basically the Hyrule Field of the game), he would spawn and call you out, and you could blow him up repeatedly to hear his son's wimp-bitch cry of "DADDY GO SLEEPY-BY-BOBOS"

That sound byte has stuck with me indefinitely, and it's been almost two years now or something

Yeah but they really need to cool it with stacks I'm so tired of stacking mechanics

...

wub wub wub.

I wish games like Borderlands and TF2 would just drop the gag that "ooh we'll never know what they look like because that's their shtick and we don't know how to write anything else". Just give us a face reveal, work it into the plot somehow, I dunno. I want Zero to be plot relevant, and I want Valve to buff the Pyro.

Not to mention most of the abilities are passive bonuses.

>Athena: doesn't take damage from the front
>Wilhelm: Wolf flies around while Saint restores your shield
>Nisha: literal aimbot
>Fake Jack: spawn two turrets
>Clarptrap: LOL SOOO RANDUMB XDDD

...

How could you write in Zer0's backstory in without it taking the spotlight from hunting vaults?
Is it really that important?

Yeah, very true. Athena's ability really only becomes fun when you specialize in captain-America-style chain throws that bounce off 5 targets AND revive downed allies.

They still have yet to make a character more perfect, fun, and unique then Krieg (in terms of mechanics, anyway)

Gaige with one of them explodey pellet shotguns

>Stacking all those melee bonuses and chimping out in badass form
>Drill a buzzaxe across the wastes and one shot whatever it struck

Krieg really was satisfying.

The world of Borderlands fascinated me. it was a world of contradictions. a world that was a bleak depressing hellscape that has people like Scooter and Claptrap. A world that makes us laugh at and crave over the top violence, but a simple hanging can strike a cord. Where the only thing keeping so many of its people sane are some of the most insane actions one can think of. Where anarchy is an evil that threatens your characters lives, yet you fight against order since it is a bigger threat.

It is a mess, but when it all balances out, it works. It makes the world compelling and interesting and worthy of exploration.

I loved that his rage fully healed him on use, but came back quicker as you took damage outside of it; I started faceplanting barrels and drawing in groups of enemies in super-reckless, high risk/reward moments, and was in Fight For Your Life probably 90% of the time that I wasn't berserking. It was great. Also, major props to the design team for the FFYL skill he had that let him become a suicide psycho, effectively. I love that they managed to so effectively design and include an incentive for players to behave like one of the most iconic and idiotic NPC types of the series.
It was outright fun.

Absolutely. It was a dark world that used absurdity and humor as a flashlight; it could so easily have been an obnoxious, sickdark setting like unironic 40k, or the souls games, but the contrast of cartoon/humor/insanity alongside the bleakness, violence, helplessness, and widespread loss really helped to keep it palatable, without invalidating those darker elements.

It honestly can raise a lot of interesting questions about corporate control, unnecessary violence begetting even more insane violence, the razor thin line between sanity and madness, the nature of heroes, anti-heroes, and fallen heroes in a morally gray setting where people can't really even afford be moral at all,the futility of life-- especially when it becomes commodified-- and exploring what "respawning" would do in a setting.

Man, it still has a lot going for it, so I do hope the series continues and grows into its own, and explores its full potential.

Tannis summed it up perfectly when she was talking about Dahl abandoning the planet; "we're all broken"

Borderlands a good. Nice thread, everyone.

It's pretty nice how no one is showcasing their butt hurt, bitching about memes, and shitting on Battleborn.
These threads are so fucking rare, it hurts.

We had a real nice Bioshock 2 thread like a week ago, and then people kept repeating them daily and they filled quickly with shitposting. Glad we could discuss gameplay, story, writing, characters, setting, devs, and sequels with genuinely good input and points, and no false flagging, shit flinging, etc.

Oh don't get me wrong I'm still asshurt of farming the Bunker for about 2 weeks before the shittiest Sham that was ever birthed into existence dropped.

Which is sad considering how garbage telltale games are, but Gearbox still manages to be worse.

Yes, yes. Exactly.
The writers of Borderlands really seemed to know what they wanted. A world so stuck in darkness that it needed to turn to the absurd to survive. In Tannis we see how Pandora changes people, how it forces you to find a way to cope. Once we'd seen that we really don't need to see it for anyone else. We already understand.

To add on to that, I like that a big theme in the games is that, in a way, sins have virtues. The vault hunters come to Pandora for selfish reason, kill people for selfish reasons, and through that selfishness, selflessly put themselves in danger to save the planet. One of the bleakest things in the game, the constant corporate strangle hold on life itself, the sin of greed, is the planets saving grace.

I hope that Mikey and the rest are able to build on that, though I'm not sure as to where you go from there. How do you build off of the concept without negating the original idea? Mad Max has Max constantly reaffirming his humanity. Can Borderlands do something similar with the idea of "the road to heaven is paved with bad intentions"?

>Make Pointless Decisions: The Game
>Dialogue: The Game
>Occasionally Cameo: The Game
>Best

Oye vey i am laffin

>inb4 madfags claim dumb frogposter

Pour one out for that ceiling chair, RIP

It will be hard to find a new topic with the same bleakness.

Let's start from the beginning. Atlas found a small vault on Promethia that contained technology. That was enough to set themselvses up as megacorporation super power and initiate an arms race with the other mega corps. So now we're on Pandora thinking the vault has treasure. Turns out it has a giant tentacle monster in it. In the end, we still don't know shit about Eridians. Vaults could contain literally anything. The second vault on Pandora contained a super weapon and the vault on Elpis contained its instruction manual. We don't know what Rhyss and Fiona found in the Traveler's vault.

Where can we go from here?

...

I guess the most basic question: what would you put in a box?

Mad Moxxi's Bad Touch, or the Teapot

I love Corrosive

Even after the three main series games and Tales, we still know exactly jack shit about the Vaults except that they're generally bad news.

Honestly though, they probably don't even HAVE to have a vault to make a good story, by the time Tales was over I had almost completely forgotten that there was a vault to be opened. The Jack and Masked Stranger plots were a lot more interesting.

This is gonna sound corny as hell but it's not about the destination, it's the journy.
We can have whatever adventures we can have so long as there's a Vault in the end with a giant monster guarding it.

In summary, the Vaults have contained: technology which you'd want to seal away, Lovecraft horror which you'd want to seal away, a superweapon which you'd want to seal away, and manual for said superweapon which you'd want to seal away. I'm seeing a trend here. The Eridians don't exist anymore, but they've got hundreds of these Vaults sealing away shit which could end planets.

The simple next step is obvious: Vault Hunters make a business of going to planets with Vaults, finding the Vaults, and destroying what's inside for the good of the universe. Maybe corps fund them for the chance to control the Vault planets after the Hunters are done there, maybe corps keep tying to beat the Hunters to the Vaults and the Hunters keep fighting them, maybe both.

1 was total fucking shit, you could literally hide and shot at the fucking same spot with autofire and win as long as you got ammo, too many blind spots and the tentacles being a hitzone was kinda dumb, and the final boss totally out of place

2 was fucking comfy, I liked the penetration effects because of his chest If you could make them shut the fuck up it would be amazing THE LAVA IS RAISING

3 was too easy IMO

Fiona was a better choice.

Is Tales worth the buy?
>buy
Is it longer than 2 hours?

its longer than 2 hours
these games are priced too high imo
ahh i guess 25 isnt too bad or whatever it is

>In Gearbox's Borderlands, there are about half a dozen civilized characters, with everyone else being some combination of insane, murderous, or a bandit, the most common being all three at once

So... Just like both Americas during their colonization period?

I like the Borderlands series - and I don't even hate the wacky memes that much even though they are the weakest part of the game.

What sells Borderlands for me is the feeling that humanity and whatever planet you're on (Pandora, in this case) are fundamentally incompatible; frontier towns getting overrun by wildlife, people going insane, finding out all about that abandoned Dahl tech and what happened to Dahl's colonization effort.

Those bits are usually the best part, and the shoot 'n loot gameplay is a nice bonus.

Glad to see the thread going well.

I have good hopes for Borderlands 3. A combination of the BL1 writer coming back, and the Battleborn flop potentially giving Randy a reason to step back tonally.

Gameplay-wise, Pre Sequel had really, really good enemy design and really really bad level design. I hope they keep up the complex boss fights, as they were all a blast.

I'd really like more active skills, which is difficult on a controller. They could have skills activate when holding the melee or grenade buttons, for example. I had an idea where Salvador would smack the enemy with his gun if the melee button was held, knocking them back, while Maya would do the same but it would cause the elemental effect on the gun to trigger immediately.

Quest rewards need tweaking. It was great getting guns with unique effects, but only getting them from quests seems a waste. I'd like if completing the quest guarantees you a weapon with the unique effect, and a few levels later it becomes possible for those weapons to drop naturally.

On a similar note, I didn't like how every gun from a particular manufacturer felt exactly the same. Stuff as drastic as the manufacturer bonus should be a random modifier, more common for the particular corp but not guaranteed.

Yeah, everyone getting eaten by animals was my favorite part.

>and really really bad level design.

Shit yeah, I'm playing it now and everything up to the assault on the Hyperion base is a real slog - fun bossfights aside.

I guess the game started picking up after you've... handled Felicity, so to speak. That was a great segment.

>the BL1 writer coming back
Helquist never left. As much as Burch was held out as a personality for the writing team, he was just an Internet celebrity turned junior writer. Check what Burch had to say about BL2's story, and it's Helquist who was the lead writer, and Helquist that wanted the zany parts.

>more active skills
More actives would go against the series' one-active policy. Like it or not, it works.

Tried it on PS3.
I thought console games were supposed to run smoothly.

Gaige is best girl and best Vault Hunter
youtube.com/watch?v=W0QBTg3RgXs

Nice and emotional

youtube.com/watch?v=NIQd2fmwZZk

Gaige was a really fun character to play as. Probably clocked more hours as Gaige compared to all the other characters combined.