The Dangers Of Borderlands Syndrome

I wanted to take the time to explain one of the craziest anomalies in gaming. I may have come off a bit meaner than I intended but I do think it's important to let the people know the truth.
Had to take it down and reupload because of an unfortunate bit of copyright business.

[@Zer0Main43]

You said it’s impossible to tell 100 bad jokes in a row yet Borderlands 3 exists

[@SomeNobodyOnline]

Borderlands 3 is technically the game in the series with the highest number of funny jokes but that’s because it has like quadruple the number of 2

[@NutsackParachute]

@@SomeNobodyOnlineif you laughed at even one joke in bl3 you are a peanut brain

[@LTDLetsPlays]

@@SomeNobodyOnline i question your taste in humour

[@BloodyAltima]

@@NutsackParachute If you fire one hundred thousand rounds at a target and only hit fifty while actively trying to hit it, you're still an incompetent marksman even if you hit it fifty times.

[@KingBullDogg]

@@SomeNobodyOnlineyour sense of humor is deader than a doornail

[@mewxtwo]

"Being surpassed by every game in its series is the best way a game can age poorly" Beautifully said.

[@starstruckp4808]

Even if the first Borderlands was dry, I still like the relatively serious tone it had; especially the death of T.K. Baha, I will never forget about that jazz being the first introduction on how twisted the planet can be when I was younger.

[@Thanoswasright_]

I don’t get how it’s dry 🤣 there’s guns galore and crazy replay value

[@DrBodyshot]

Even the second game knew how to play serious moments straight. Bloodhawk and Roland dying were both pretty fantastic moments

[@naedanger123]

@@Thanoswasright_I guess it wasn’t quite as zany as 2, but tbh I liked how 1 felt more grounded, it has a special vibe that the series was never able to replicate again

[@shawklan27]

​@@Thanoswasright_ it definitely had a more grundy and dark look to it which the others are like the complete opposite

[@DemonBlanka]

Yeah BL1 has a lot more grit to it, its not afraid to play things straight. Even if it was bland at times I appreciated that relatively grounded nature. A heavily flawed comparison is I'd call it the Fallout 2 to BL2's Fallout 3 and Bl3's Fallout 76, tonally.

[@totalphantasm]

I think the big “gotcha” with borderlands 2 humor is that basically all nuance is sacrificed to make Jack work, and it’s a sacrifice I would be willing to accept again and again. The weird thing about the “talking to the player” humor is that it turns the player into the straight man. YOU, the player, are the voice of reason that makes the joke funny. So when Jack hijacks the straight man position from you, and paints your characters actions as absurd, it becomes strangely immersive. He’s talking to you, who has been blindly following quest orders. This is how Jack is the only character who is able to make death and failure mean something in universe. Because his perspective is jarringly set from your end of the screen, not pandora. By making everything a bit, the one time you choose to not be a bit is disproportionately impactful. Also the jokes are still funny they’re just dated.

[@SamThiebaud89]

You know you can just like things that others dont without qualifying it w a dissertation right?

[@totalphantasm]

@ yeah well I like qualifying things with dissertations

[@cousinpatsey2471]

@@SamThiebaud89 brother this was a video essay explaining something and he provided a brief counter argument to it. People are allowed to express a nuanced opinion. You don't need to try and undercut them for it.

[@MrRedpanda2442]

​@SamThiebaud89 you know people are allowed to express their opinions right?

[@dc7981]

This is why jack calls the player a kid. Its like he knows the audience of these games were mostly 13 year old boys, it wouldnt make sense for jack to call someone like salvador a kid

[@nmr7203]

The bit Claptrap were Claptrap takes forever in telling you to when to blow up the door actually works because you're allowed to do it at anytime while he's talking. By that point the player should know what kind of person Claptrap is and would either blow him up before he gets to really speak or they'd let him keep going out of curiosity.

[@ravenger5672]

I feel like anyone who sees that scene would know this, but the joke being, “Don’t shoot this gate until I get away from it”, but Claptrap refuses to get away from the gate. It just isn’t funny. It’d be funnier if they left it up to player choice. For the player to legitimately have no patience for Claptrap, nearly blowing him up and hearing his reaction. That’d be a joke not desperate to be heard. Forcing the player to initiate the joke just sucks the funny out of it.

[@BarafuAlbino]

@@ravenger5672 What are you talking about? It is up to the player if to listen to him or shoot.

[@ravenger5672]

@ Except even after a minute and a half Claptrap still won’t move, he’ll continue egging the player on to shoot while he stands there. Does Claptrap ever move? I’ve never seen it before, but clearly after a minute and a half they’re pushing the player to make the joke happen. It’s a joke desperate to be heard.

[@TheUmbraSol]

The best part about that joke is not hearing it

[@afrog2666]

"The bit Claptrap were Claptrap takes forever in telling you to when to blow up the door"? The bit where claptrap tells you to the to the bit in the bit where thewhatnow?

[@rougenarwhal8378]

Similar to saints row actually, 1 was mostly serious and the sequels got progressively more quirky

[@JohnSmith-se7pp]

Very true I loved both these series growing up sad the new games suck for the most part

[@Mattecrowd]

And that there 2nd game are seen as the best of the series

[@TomCat2563]

Saints Row in a dead franchise now because of gen z's bs.

[@senritsujumpsuit6021]

3 lost me a for half of it became collect points for powers in a dark dead city while 2 has me fight a tank while a dumbass yells in my ear

[@ashtrooper2083]

@@TomCat2563 nah GenZ wasnt able to work on the latest Saints row, they were too young and wouldve been at best bottom tier in programming and design. That writing came from Millennials trying to appeal to themselves and what they think Gen Z likes even tho gen z wouldve been kids when the SR franchise started and only wouldve been really touching the franchise by earliest Saints Row 3 but more likely SR4 and by that point the writing was wacky and stupid with the shitty SR6 writing being entirely Millennials fault.

[@dumbino7745]

Big shout out to the dialog skipper mod for BL3, I would not have been able to experience Amara, Fl4k and Moze after I finished my first playthrough as Zane if it weren't for it. Its honestly so weird that a game series designed to be played multiple times, with different characters or even difficulties with the same character, has no dialogue skip by default.

[@SomeNobodyOnline]

You can skip the cutscenes at least, couldn’t do that in 2 until the Handsome Collection

[@BrimBlam]

i got to snag that mod because god do I love the gameplay but hate the dialouge in BL3

[@Bigtoejoe696]

They have max level skip now though It took way to long

[@DaScr1bbledGiant]

At least you dont have to deal with the cutscenes

[@Childproof_food]

BL2 fix has a feature where pressing the Z key skips dialogue and skips some but not all cutscenes

[@RedshirtAfficionado]

I had a friend I was super excited to play BL3 with after years of waiting. .. ..We got a little bit into the swamp planet before the story annoyed us so much that we didn’t want to finish the game. They turned my two favorite characters (Vaughn and Rhys) into actual clowns with no interesting bits. We were yelling in anger when Ava got Maya killed.

[@SnipsyStripes]

...not only she got Maya killed, but she blamed everyone else after that and the characters were... fine with it? I would've pushed her out of the airlock.

[@ephxiaa]

vaugn was honestly fine, a little annoying but vaugn was fine, rhys is a different story, yes he was a little funny but man i hated his bitching

[@RedshirtAfficionado]

@@ephxiaa you are seriously understating just how badly gearbox butchered their characters

[@glowdonk]

@@RedshirtAfficionado They butchered almost eveyr inch of the cast, even fucking TINA

[@RedshirtAfficionado]

@ hot take, I never liked Tina

[@Taxman_42]

See, my favourite of the Borderlands games is the first, I absolutely love the comparatively bleak tone, and the fact that, unlike the rest of the games, your goals are in no way noble, you are glorified grave robber, sure, you fight through bandits and corporate mercenaries, but no out of good will. You kill hundreds and thousands of people, because they get in your way. I also like how the differences between manufacturers are subtle, as are the differences in the weapons’ design. The whole thing just plays in a much simpler, but brutal way.

[@naturesfinest2408]

"simplicity" i think thats missing from modern games. I loved playing halo and borderlabds back in the day. A good couch co-op adventure. Now, too much happens on screen, or its not co-op anymore. Its no longer "simple". We need more couch co op fps games... Miss those days

[@Taxman_42]

@@naturesfinest2408 I don't need any fancy mod cons, like a grappling hook, a mini map that takes up half the screen. I just want a gun that feels good to use, and enemies that are fun to fight. You get me?

[@naturesfinest2408]

@@Taxman_42 @@Taxman_42 I get you all to well. Less equipment can make for more creative plays. Why not a simple tactical shooter? Without all the bells and whistles. A few guns, creative thinking, and some hope to get you through. Weirdly, I think most games try to go for grand in scale with visuals and a long story and this and that. But when everything feels grand nothing is. Where there is too much stuff there is too little space. Botw might be the most modern example of what I am talking about. (though there is a lot of inventory.) and the game does not need to be open world. I think AAA games are missing out on huge profits by going to multi-player fps and live service.

[@Lover_of_ebrietas]

Have you played maxpayne its really what you described.​@@Taxman_42

[@kabluey665]

FACTS

[@BbNaB]

7:00 everyone knows the crowning achievement of Telltale games was a minecraft pig died and a Canadian streamer lost his mind laughing at it turning into a pork chop.

[@martingarricks6209]

*BRO. TEAM.*

[@Plastic-c2k]

REUBEN! NOOOOO!

[@UndisputedBillyBadass]

It’s the 2016 “ragtag” group of quirky rebels. Suicide Squad, Guardians of the Galaxy, Rogue one.

[@oatmeal710]

yeah cause a group like that never existed before 2016

[@FloofMother]

Me when I didn’t watch rogue one (it is nothing like either of those movies)

[@UndisputedBillyBadass]

@@oatmeal710 yeah but that’s before they all started having dyed punk hairstyles and snarky quips every 5 seconds being fake funny

[@oatmeal710]

@@UndisputedBillyBadass that's existed for a while, it didn't just come to fruition when you started noticing it

[@UndisputedBillyBadass]

@ I never said it wasn’t around before

[@Cublins]

Its impossible to tell 100 unfunny jokes in a row? Ive had some coworkers that would challenge that perception of yours boss

[@woodchucksquirrel]

Real

[@measlesplease1266]

yeah but you don't see them 100% of the time for every joke they make.

[@Cublins]

@measlesplease1266 this is true. However I refuse to believe they make bangers while I'm out of earshot

[@Gloomdrake]

⁠@@Cublinsout of earshot is where all the stinkers happen

[@ThickRedPaste]

​@@CublinsSchrodinger's joke

[@constable117]

Honestly man, BL2’s humor worked for its time. I remember when I was 15 when it came out and my friends and I couldn’t stop laughing. I think it did a pretty good job of being silly while still keeping the story serious which is a hard balance to make. Early 2000/10s humor doesn’t really hold up today, remember, this is when people thought MLG meme montages were funny.

[@nouhorni3229]

Basically all kinds of humour have become highly saturated by now. It wasn't nearly as bad when the games came out.

[@spimbles]

i wouldnt even call it bad now, just dated. i still get damn good laughs out of simply the deliveries of countless lines. i.e. the straight to the point TK Baha echo log, "Scar killed my wife and ate my leg."

[@Jose_Doe]

Not me lol I was younger and thought it was stupid

[@_Arakiel]

As a BL3 lover if you were 15 now and into modern humor you would love borderlands 3 humor as much as you love bl2. one thing people forget is that games are not being made for the same group forever. when i was 15 back in the early 2k i was into some cringy ass shit. but now i look back at it and still can laugh. i like modern humor as well so i vibe with it. my girl is into all the modern humor so she laughs at borderlands 3. alot falls flat but some of it is good. especially the dlc.

[@Dampzombieslayer]

@@_Arakielnah even at 15 my friend’s younger brother still couldn’t stand bl3, the writing is just that fucking bad. Don’t even get me started on how poorly optimized the game still is

[@MordecaiBL1]

I loved how in Borderlands everyone thought you were an idiot for going after the vault. Even Pierce tried to stop you from getting to the coast because she expected you to die for a worthless venture. The only person remotely helping you was an insane archeologist with aspergers who thought she was having a conversation with a co worker choking to death on her blood. Some people did encourage you to go after the vault such as Marcus not because the really expected you to be able to find or open it but because his business was dependant on people looking for the vault. Vault hunter was almost a Slur in Borderlands 1. And Borderlands 3 (ugh) made it seem like Vault hunters were Atheletes competing in the Olympics that everyone was cheering on to FIND THESE VAULTS. Honestly, from an atmosphere standpoints Borderlands 1 wins for me. Also allot of problems like reload speed is dependant on Weapon Proficency in Borderlands 1 so its not a problem late game. And builds like Gunslinger Mordecai (Which is my favorite build) have insanely fast swap speed which makes for fun pistol & revolver mixups. I havent had time to watch the entire video but I agree with allot of the sentiments in the first 11 mins.

[@achimdemus-holzhaeuser1233]

You are absolutely right, which was also perfectly expressed in the grand F-You of BL1s ending. Next to Jack this is the thing I remember most about Borderlands.

[@DumbArse]

3 introducing the Tyson(?) "first" vault hunter guy just feals like an insult to the first game

[@Monomiknose]

IMO, the vault hunter thing is one of the very, very few things that makes sense story wise. It was vault hunters that organized the resistance against Hyperion on Pandera, managing to take on a megacorp and win, and by this point they've opened enough vaults to show it wasn't as much of a far off insane prospect as people thought. It's still incredibly dangerous, but by this point in the story it wasn't impossible, like trying find the lost city of Atlantis or whatever. THAT SAID, it does also feel like the whole Star Wars syndrome, where in the original films the Jedi were considered these weird religious monks who believed in space magic while the Disney films wanted to sell toys so suddenly everyone knew what a Jedi was and that they were the epicest coolest guys in all of the galaxy.

[@Holyluckdan]

Thank you for treating us like adults and saying porn instead of corn or whatever people say instead of the word itself

[@JustStop19]

Their argument is that they do it because of an algorithm, yet this video was recommended to me by it. So yeah, I hate that too: corn, pew-pew instead of gun, k*ll instead of kill and the worst - self-deletion instead of suicide.

[@smergthedargon8974]

@@JustStop19 It also affects monetization.

[@highpotencyiron4529]

@@smergthedargon8974 They should just use Kofi and Patreon, KZbin has proven time and time again that they don't care about the users who make videos.

[@bruhtholemew]

@@JustStop19 I feel like KZbin censors tend to be random when it comes to these topics and words. I'm surprised I can even read your comment, because I've said less and had mine vanish.

[@unknown6390]

​@@bruhtholemewKZbin: With each update we do the opposite of improving design

[@HighWire0]

The thing is about Handsome Jack, his actor basically improved almost all of his dialogue. Hence why he's the only good character from that game, Jack is the only character Antony Birch didn't write.

[@PelemusMcSoy]

I heard "God, these pretzels suck" was ad libbed, and Birch was jealous that this line was more memorable than everything else.

[@nmr7203]

@PelemusMcSoy The amazing power of just talking like how a normal person would in that position of power.

[@ReeceRacc]

Funny that 2 of the best villains in gaming, Handsome Jack and Vaas, were almost entirely because of the actors themselves

[@Geist1027]

​@ReeceRacc I don't really think it's that funny. A lot of the best villains throughout media were became of the individuals portraying them. Heath Ledger's Joker for example.

[@pickle5666]

That is incorrect. Antony Birch and Paul Hellquist came up with the idea for Handsome Jack, Paul Hellquist, Mike Neumann and Jeramy Cooke provided feedback on the first draft, Antony Birch then finalised the script. Dameon Clarke only improvised the line "these pretzels suck". The writing, as was all other aspects of the game, a collaborative effort by the people at Gearbox. This information comes from the Gearbox developer blog article "Inside the Box: Writing Handsome Jack".

[@Rafaela-fnaf]

Pandora is like a more tame version of brazil

[@ryszakowy]

brazil doesn't have woke cringe millenials

[@ben.juan.]

Its LA in general

[@ben.juan.]

​@@ryszakowythey have lol

[@Rafaela-fnaf]

@@ryszakowy we have

[@SlopMeal]

@@ryszakowy Yes we do. Plenty of them actually.

[@ElPerroNegro97]

It's terrible to play Borderlands 3 after years of waiting and find that they turned these cold-blooded mercenaries into some kind of heroes of the galaxy, I have no faith in a 4th game It would have been a perfect trilogy but I blame them for taking too long to release a third installment

[@ryszakowy]

the only way they can make 4th game is to straight up announce that boredlands 3 never happened

[@ben.juan.]

I've been playng borderlands 3 for the last 5 months (i afforded for free on Epicgames 2 years ago, but just 5 months ago i have finally a pc strong enough to run it), its not that bad, chill

[@MILDMONSTER1234]

Borderlands 1 was the only game where the player felt like an actual anti hero mercenary. 2 onward ditched that completely

[@copeland7225]

@@ryszakowypretty much. They ain’t gonna do that so I’m not buying it. 2k and gearbox never admitted they messed anything up with BL3 so until they do no more money.

[@ivarent3784]

@@ben.juan. Tbh people should just accept that the story in BL has never mattered, ever since the first game there's barely anything interesting happening til like, the last half hour of the game or one or two dlcs. Is it cringe? Yeah sure. But people play BL cus orange gun makes the brain goblins happy, with good gunplay to make it even better.

[@pyrodontcutoffsoldiershand2746]

"No one is that ass that every joke is a miss." Have you played Tina’s Wonderlands? It's totally possible

[@Mostbaleia]

That's what happens when they want to milk every last drop of a once good franchise. Borderlands 2 D&D inspired DLC was so good, with great story and funny unique itens, "so why not make a entire game based on that dlc?"

[@hossdelgado626]

Have ya heard of Amy Schumer? It's a tale most don't wanna hear

[@OzzyWozzy27]

Honestly, the only BL game I never finished

[@opbush5272]

@@OzzyWozzy27 same here and I played every other game religiously except new tales.

[@el-xy1tq]

​@@Mostbaleia I feel like we shouldn't blame the idea of it, rather instead blame the execution. Mixing the FPS RPG elements and general tone of Borderlands with DND was a great idea in 2012. Tiny Tina's Wonderlands being the mixture of that but without the limitations of being a DLC in an already-existing game is a great idea. It just had issues with execution because of things like a lack of endgame, its humor being what it is, and same for story.

[@bonesmcjones8454]

Great video, but I do not want Anthony Burch back. He was involved with New Tales of the Borderlands, it's better if he just never write again.

[@measlesplease1266]

Yeah, it's like going from 0 to 1 out of 10.

[@obsidiancrow450]

hopefully in 4 they just said "fuck it" and hired a completely new team of writers. Im actually convinced it cannot possibly get worse than what came before it.

[@CPU_Fronz]

Same, I don't think that he would have had much of a positive impact on BL3's writing. His style of writing, was just "the style of the time" when BL2 was released. But this style has been regurgitated to death by Marvel movies and feels incredible dated nowadays. The early 2010s are over for more than a decade now.

[@achimdemus-holzhaeuser1233]

@@obsidiancrow450 I am thinking the same, lets hope we did not jinx it.

[@shexovehxnr284]

I like the Butt Stallion joke. It shows that Handsome Jack is so disconnected from empathetic thoughts that he made a living creature into an immovable object that weighs a ton. And that he’s terrible at naming things.

[@peterstorm8089]

Not to mention the other side of the joke is Jack at first just seems to be doing his routine trash talking of you and saying he was planning to name the diamond pony sh**-for-brains "in honor of you" but says that just felt "immature", before spitballing the name Buttstalion and saying that is far worse and that he'll think of something else. The joke being the clear hyprocrisy of Jack being worried about being immature when he is personally calling you just to taunt you and rub it in your face how rich he is. Then of course the second part of the joke is later you find out it wasn't just trashtalk but that he did somehow actually purchase a horse made of diamonds and that despite saying he'll think of a different name he has settled for Buttstalion.

[@michaelkolano8686]

​@@peterstorm8089and the horse isn't even a stallion either! BS is female

[@spimbles]

​@@peterstorm8089yes, exactly. people who want to just label the games humor as reddit humor love to just completely ignore these nuances of the jokes. its not JUST "Buttstallion haha!!" 🙄

[@l-e-v-117]

Everyone is aware of this. Doesn't make it any less painful to sit through.

[@GCheckCentral]

​@@spimbles after learning media literacy and general writing tips, it's still not that funny. Adding nuance and exposition regarding things that really aren't that deep is the pinnacle of reddit humor.

[@quitethehandful]

Probably one of the greatest examples of “they’ll buy it anyway”

[@doughboywhine]

Personally I thought the humor in 2 was a lot better, the story was quite serious and while some jokes don't land, some still hold up in my opinion and most of the humor is actually original. Pre-Sequel I felt was a lot more obnoxious with how much they try to hit you over the head with their bad humor like the people who explain their own joke after nobody laughs. 3 on the other hand, I felt was not only unfunny and annoying, but actively insulting to everyone- to the players (especially the players), to the fans, to the previous games, even to people completely unrelated to the games like twitch streamers. It does the thing Disney's been doing, where instead of actually coming up with a new story, they basically just took the corpse of the first, desecrated it even further, stuffed it full of fanfiction, and then watched some "Behind the Meme" videos to get a good idea of what to base their jokes around--then taped those on too. I don't think I've ever felt as dead inside as when I watched Lilith fly off and engulf the moon in flames. It's insane how much more of a protagonist she is than the player. By the end, I felt like Zane, who I had been playing, had been reduced to little more than a side character just like Ellie or Marcus. Also I heard the moon got destroyed in the trailer for 4 so I guess Handsome Jack should have just let Zarpedon blow it up in the pre sequel considering the mess of a story 3 has.

[@blarghinatelazer9394]

Took way too long to find this take, I have a hard time believing that so many people have such a low tolerance for low-brow humor that they would play Borderlands 2 on mute. Rose-tinted goggles aside, it feels like people are taking things just a bit too seriously.

[@imslamming]

​@@blarghinatelazer9394there's only so much badass badonkadonk dubstep and the narwhal bacons at midnight style humor I can take before I have to mute the game or using a dialogue skip mod

[@MrRedpanda2442]

​@@imslammingso you can take like 3 jokes

[@solairedude7119]

@@blarghinatelazer9394 Nah I'm with you, this dude completely misrepresents the writing of 2 and Pre Sequel and then says that BL3 is miles ahead of those games. He says that the story of BL2 and Pre sequel ruin the gameplay for him, so the gameplay for them must not have been that good. I've never seen someone glaze BL3 so hard, that they even say that BL2 and Pre Sequel stories ruin the gameplay

[@BingusMode]

​@@imslammingthis comment caught me so off guard 😂 you are right though, playing through 2 recently I realized just how obnoxious the dialogue can get

[@ThibautVDP]

that scene with Ava blaming Lillith... how did this get past quality control

[@Tman2bard]

the concept makes sense tbqh. A dumb kid would be stupid enough to blame others than theirself when something that bad happens, but the next step would be actually building and growing past that and learning from mistakes. They really.. don't do that until a DLC and by that point its too late.

[@omgstopturd6566]

@@Tman2bard yeah ava blaming Lilith isn't the problem, the problem is Lilith actually taking her seriously. The ending is fucking insane. Lilith saying "run towards the fire" as if she had some big revelation brought to her by an angry grieving teenager.

[@verdigo1]

@@Tman2bard After the fact they put out storyboards where she showed remorse, but it never made it into the game. All they would have had to do was have you check on her after she blew up at everyone, and have her locked in her room, bawling her eyes out and blaming herself for it. Earn a little sympathy for god sake!

[@beaurrakbeaubama8962]

I have a nostalgic love for the humour of BL2. Definitely my comfort game, it’s like a time capsule into the humour of peak recession 2012 while the internet still felt young, and before irony poisoning became terminal irony cancer that has rendered modern humour completely devoid of substance or sincerity.

[@Quasi_Fungi]

4:50 actually the developers of borderlands have stated that the respawn stations aren't real in cannon, i know its sounds really dumb but there is even a tweet about it from one of the developers, they pretty much made them non cannon because they have no explanation to how Roland doesn't respawn after Jack shoots him.

[@frazfrazfrazfraz]

It's not just about Roland, it would completely break the universe. No character could ever die because they should just respawn. The entire story would be hijacked by the concept because 1) the ability to triumph over death would be the most important tactical acquisition by far 2) it would raise a bunch of unnecessary philosophical questions 3) it doesn't even really make sense from a resource perspective. Why not just clone someone with a 1 in a million gun 10,000 times to create a perfect army? It's really best not to get into the weeds of it. They made the right choice by not taking it seriously

[@coobk]

theres even a rare respawn line saying that the new u stations arent canon

[@BlackSabbath628]

Pretty sure the "developer" in question was Burch. Of course he's going to say they aren't canon, their very existence invalidates his story.

[@BlackSabbath628]

@@frazfrazfrazfraz It would explain why the Borderlands setting is so depraved and violent though. If death has no consequence, then why even care about life? Respawn enough and you'll probably go mad. Not to mention that's its the corporations who own the New-U machines, which makes it even more bleaker. Throw in some extra bit of fluff about the machines having horrible side effects and the corporates knowing about it and not willing to use it themselves and you might have something interesting.

[@thesquishedelf1301]

@@BlackSabbath628yeah, in 1 and 2 it’s made extremely clear the New-Us are all - and only - Hyperion. The series was going to struggle to continue after 2 because Jack _being,_ to all intents and purposes, Hyperion in the flesh, gave him unlimited control over the New-Us. Killing him for real would have to involve breaking the New-U system, which could have made for one hell of a bossfight. It was pretty heavily implied in 1 that the New-U system was part of how Hyperion was able to still bleed value out of Pandora being a wasteland. Went along with Hyperion guns being rare and particularly powerful.

[@burgerdiverbanandodansparc9154]

made worse on the fact in the Director's Cut they had the cut cutscene for Maya's funeral to be way different and hit alot harder, making Ava blame herself more than Lilith how that was considered the cut option is beyond me

[@athrowawayperson9990]

You can thank Randy for rushing the production, according to the writers. Of course, the writers did a proper shit job without Randy's help, anyways.

[@The_Big_Jay]

I feel like it wasn't cut. I feel like it was made after the game came out and they realized Ava is the worst, so they made an alternate scene where she's slightly more redeemable, then just said it was "cut."

[@flamekiller3338]

canonically the New-u stations dont exist

[@GEONEgaming]

This is a case of the games disagreeing with the devs. The devs say they don't exist because it makes the story more difficult to write for. But the games say they do exist because there's characters, dialogue, and mechanics that acknowledges them. Whether they're "canon" or not depends on if you believe in authorial intent or death of the author.

[@drpygmr2416]

@@GEONEgaming he meant the respawn stations. That's why Roland/Jack doesn't/can't come back. Jack is the richest asshole but can't buy himself a respawn? He owned the Casino if it existed in universe then they could just have Roland respawn and return Jack to the main fold.

[@Mostbaleia]

Hardcore borderlands when?

[@drpygmr2416]

@@Mostbaleia one life?

[@Mostbaleia]

@@drpygmr2416 exactly, just like diablo.

[@WackestMack]

Mayas death was so annoying solely for the fact that they wanted another Roland and you can T E L L

[@solairedude7119]

I have never seen someone miss how well Jack was written in the Pre Sequel more than this video. 20:28 They literally do that multiple times in Pre Sequel to show Jack's descent into madness and psychoticness. Chooses to kill the Meriff after giving him a chance, understandable but the first step. Killing Felicity's personality in order to build the first constructor is the final call by Jack with justification but twisted. Jack vents the rest of the scientists because of his twisted morality justifying it by making sure there's no more traitors. And your take on Bl2 completely misrepresents the game's mixing of seriousness and humor completely. There is no point where any of the main protagonists do not take the story seriously, just because jokes exists in between the story beats, doesn't equal them not taking the story seriously. It's a fight against dangerous bandit clans who are built up in repuation. It's a serious fight against Jack and trying to take him down. The only person who doesn't take the story seriously is Jack up until you get past the security wall on Thousand Cuts. Which is by design of the writing. Jack is in a position of power believing he's untouchable so he doesn't take it seriously until you start getting to Angel, and then goes almost completely serious, the only joke he makes is making fun of Roland being dead, which still makes sense for the context. I completely agree BL1's atmosphere is awesome, I put BL1 over BL3 any day, but to say there's no seriousness to Pre Sequel and Bl2's writing is absolutely absurd and that fact that you put them on mute is extremely telling. Especially when you say that most of your borderlands playtime is in BL3.

[@asken2791]

Based. And he also neglects to mention the Claptrap dlc, Tina's backstory, and the continuing story of Tannis and other characters that were serious. And quests like the birthday Claptrap, where the only one who cared about it at all was the vault hunters and the rest didn't care at all.

[@montypython5521]

Honestly Borderlands 1 is the best. Definitely the one that got me to play it the most.

[@ianbuchan8548]

"Most of the characters are about as deep as the Mariana trench on opposite day" He should write bl4

[@supertboi123]

I played bl3 once with dialogue. Every other play through is dialogue muted with a good playlist in the background and it’s so fun. This video is very validating because i was always of the mind that bl2,tps, and 3 are perfect games if you turn your brain and the dialogue off and just engage fully with the gameplay. Now we have a good name for it! I may just go back and use dialogue skip mods since those are a thing now.

[@alkimos55]

Very recommended to use those kindsa mods, yes. Also the one that speeds up / skips all the NPC animations, so you don't just have to stand around awkwardly and have to wait for them to finish gesturing like a monkey asking for an orange. Additionally you can also replace all the in-game videos with custom videos, since they just openly lie around within the game folders.

[@MyFokMan]

Wish we could get dialogue skip on console ffs, I've put 1000s of hours into BL1 and 2 but barely completed two playthroughs of 3 because there's too much waiting around while the characters spout pure cringe dialogue at you

[@snoop_lion]

Something I noticed playing through 3 again was: the cutscenes NEVER feature the player characters ever. Not even one of them. The player vault hunters are like non existant as far as the story scenes are concerned. Its very odd and jarring watching it all unfold and your character is somehow nowhere to be seen. There is only one where it made sense, when lilith loses her powers the vault hunters are trapped behind a door. The rest? No excuses just not there.

[@MilanesaConPure]

Love Borderlands, but holy damn this series aged like milk under the sun. B1 is meh, is the first of the series after all. B2 is peak, but some jokes don't work anymore, and the end-game is a slugfest, and B3 exists, it's not bad but neither good, just painfully mid. Also the Pre-Sequel is good, but it suffers the same from B2, plus the writing is so brain-dead sometimes i can't handle it. The only thing that didn't age badly is the visuals, all about the characters design, the ambiance, music, all that jazz. Hope Borderlands gets a remake or even an entire new fresh reboot, this series can still go hard today but Gearbox can't achieve that nowadays :T

[@ryszakowy]

legit where first borderlands is much slower and lacking than boredlands 2 - it's written much better also i like that bullet weapons actually shot bullets BL2 guns are fucking trash 24/7 with slowass projectiles

[@TheOnlyPedroGameplays]

BL1 is my favorite

[@stevenyee1055]

Careful what you wish for, might end up getting a similar reboot to saints row, writing wise, it will be worse than 3.

[@MilanesaConPure]

@@stevenyee1055 Oh damn. On second thought, maybe we should keep glazing BL2 and keep it close to our hearts as a great game for its time :T

[@Red-yt2dk]

BL3 is an absolute banger of a video game that I had to buy for a friend of mine and force them to play with me just so I'd have someone to complain at about the writing in it. Every single character in that game makes me want to eat a brick. Except moze. Moze is bae.

[@boofhitter21]

IMO Destiny 2 Lightfall was probably the closest to being in my borderlands syndrome list, when me and my friends were playing it, literally turned off my brain cause i couldn't bother listening anymore

[@SomeNobodyOnline]

I thought Lightfall was fine the first time through but having to do it three times to unlock Strand on all your characters sucked balls

[@Bipolar.Baddie]

Lightfall was a mess because it was trying to do 50 things at once while implementing a seasonal model. The Taken King and D2 vanilla also had a lot of funny scenes but their stories were much more focused with specific goals. Lightfall had to introduce the show how powerful the Witness was, establish Neomuna, set up 2 mcguffins, explain the Cloudstriders, explain strand, explain the Darkness, conclude Calus' storyline, and set up Nezarec. There was just too much happening in too short of a campaign for anything to make sense. D2 vanilla had a ton of Borderlands moments like hijinks from Cayde and comedic NPCs like Asher and Failsafe but they fit in place because the plot was much more focused

[@boofhitter21]

@ I would’ve loved if Lightfall was more on just fighting Calus aboard the Typhon Imperator, having his character finally come to a close by dying as a pawn to the Witness’ schemes was a good idea on paper, but they could’ve made it so he was being partially controlled by Nezarec via a piece of him being lodged into Calus when he was transformed by the Witness or something like that, making it so Nezarec doesn’t just appear out of nowhere and ties him in more with the Witness and it’s plan, i dont know, but I think any idea is better than what they gave out at this point. Never played Vanilla D2 since I joined after Beyond Light, I have seen playthroughs, and it looks way more focused than whatever Lightfall was, I feel like Neomuna was an out of nowhere idea they had to somehow fit in because Final Shape was delayed, or that it was an idea for Frontiers that they had to use due to them not wanting that yearly expansion release to stop.

[@Oxykobl]

The effort it took for my friends to make me play more than 30 minutes of borderlands 3 can only be described as pulling teeth. I had to play with the volume muted, and the gameplay was the only thing that redeemed it. I couldn't finish the presequel, and tiny tina's was torture by the end.

[@spimbles]

couldnt finish TPS? 😢 how come you didnt like it? it had pretty poor pacing but the story wasnt bad at all, i thought it gave a very believable and sympathetic look into Jack as a person before he became Handsome. i cant imagine a better backstory than the one they fleshed out, whatd you dislike?

[@Oxykobl]

@spimbles The quirky writing was a little too much for me to take, I didn't really enjoy any of the character's abilities, and the low gravity options in combat didn't outweigh how bad it made driving feel. I may circle back to it eventually, but I was happier replaying the first 2 when it came out.

[@BLOODYBIESSREA]

You know that the only reason why im here is just because of that thumbnail

[@BLOODYBIESSREA]

Oh! Shiver me timbers

[@Kydino]

That dumb joke with Mike wazowski in the corner at 32:55 probably made me laugh harder than the entirety of borderlands 2.

[@stardustjessie]

Back when Borderlands 2 launched, I had the thought in the back of my mind "Borderlands wasn't like this" and really did not enjoy the game and didn't even beat it until a few years ago. But watching this video reminded me why I loved Borderlands so much and why I still find it the best of the series.

[@HereticSeraphim]

As much criticism as BL3's story deserves, I did think the Hammerlock/Jakobs relationship was pretty cute, and some of my favorite bits come from that part of the game.

[@copeland7225]

Bl2s writing isn’t that cringe. I don’t laugh playing it, but there are a few times where I exhale hard I guess. Tina outside her DLC is misery though. The biggest thing is that I can play BL2 happily with the dialogue on. There are also not many times you are forced to listen either and when you are, you can save quit with very fast loading. BL3 though, that NEEDS the dialogue muted to be playable. Even with the dialogue muted there are dozens of times in the main story where you are just waiting for it to end and even IF (since sometimes savequitting soft locks you or just doesn’t skip anything) you can save quit, the load times are much longer

[@MILDMONSTER1234]

All the dated internet memes are lame but im not cringing to death over them at least

[@donotwantchannel]

9:20 "I can't argue that, I *do* talk, but I'm not written by Anthony Burch" at work 4am Sunday morning laughing out loud rn, great vid, with quality like this I expect you to get big

[@radicalcentrist4990]

It would be fine if Borderlands syndrome stayed in Borderlands. But in recent years it feels like many other games are adapting it and that's the real problem.

[@Silverstar114]

I really loved TPS, and I thought it did a decent job at showing him getting worse and worse. My main griped was during the Merriff scene and the scientist scene, where he kinda overtly says "oh yeah that felt good :)", which seems really forced. Think it could have been handled better. Overall I liked the story beats of TPS more than BL2.

[@alkimos55]

Yeah, the TPS hate is definitely a bit overdone. I went into it before knowing anything about the stigma, and I was quite enjoying myself with it too.

[@therealthirst8099]

Borderlands is like the primordial soup of the "Millennial Writing" we've been suffering through in the current crop of AAA games comes from

[@tyclips4155]

I just went back to Borderlands 2. Played like 40 hours of it, and in that time I laughed precisely once. "Permanent Death? Shmermanent.....shmeff."

[@ryszakowy]

i was gonna laugh at that but then i realized that those are hyperion respawners and they are acknowledged in game events which makes entire jack trying to get rid of you stupid as fuck when he's literally allowing you to use his respawn station and somehow roland doesn't respawn and i fucking hate that moment becasue canonically 6 people are standing in front of roland and lilith next to him AND NOBODY SAW HIM AT ALL fucking hate that shit

[@misterbuck1242]

@@ryszakowy oi, keep in mind that Respawners are NOT canon!

[@aspiringadonis1253]

​@@ryszakowy In borderlands 3 there's a new u quote that says "We can always bring you back, unless you die in a cutscene." Unspoken rule.

[@lapine.mp4lapine.mp350]

@@ryszakowy the new-u machines aren't canon, buddy

[@moosecannibal8224]

There's a lot of people saying the respawn stations aren't canon... Now that makes sense, but also, they shouldn't have been so fleshed out in terms of "which company was doing it" or adding voice lines to it if they weren't meant to relate to the story. I'm sorry but if you had a character say "I am god" and then proceeded to do godlike things like reviving someone from the dead, and one of the devs just said "That's not canon", everyone would flip their shit at how dumb that is. The fact it's owned by a company in game makes it imply that it's canon, even if it's not meant to be, so it's stupid that it isn't, and it's stupid that Roland dies like that. Whether they're canon or not, it's implied they are unless you go looking outside of the game for that information, which is stupid. Sorry not sorry

[@rileyharber8030]

I think borderlands 3 rewards you too much with legendarys which is why I didn’t really play it that much. You feel way better getting something really rare

[@petoperceptum]

The best thing about Ava is that she didn't have a full-fat DLC made around her that ended up getting its own sequel.

[@door4281]

Just "her own" dlc and hopefully it stays like this with bl4

[@olli7881]

Destiny 2 has Borderlands Syndrome

[@Jenkkimie]

It's simple. Everyone likes a good joke once in a while but when you try to force it and overdo it, then it comes off as cringy.

[@jordanwilson4182]

I think you all are missing the point of irony.

[@BorntoOrnn]

I'd like to add something to what you said at around 7:50. You said that players actively hunt down the story of Souls games because of the gameplay. While I don't deny that there might be some people that might do it simply because of gameplay, a majority do it because of world design. In Dark Souls 1, if you happen upon an area like Ash Lake, you will have questions. In Dark Souls 2, when you stick a keyblade through a guy's face to unlock a big birdcage that houses a woman that, when talked to, immediately disappears and leaves a ring behind, you will have A LOT of questions. In Dark Souls 3, when you walk though a city in ruins with the charred corpses of thousands of people, you will have questions. In Bloodborne, when you see the effects of certain experiments that are happening in Yharnam, you will have questions. And in Elden Ring, when an early game boss comes back later with a different name, you don't have questions, because his identity was obvious, but you still wonder what exactly is going on. FromSoft gets us to ask questions by showing us something but not directly explaining what exactly we are looking at. You see it, you wonder about it, and then if you care enough, you investigate. If you don't care, then you just keep playing and move on from it. It's a pretty good way of giving a detailed world and lore for the people who want to ask questions and it's easily ignored by people who just want to fight through the difficult world that's presented to them. And hey, if you end up going Hollow... at least you're not Anthony Burch.

[@MacDiggityDog]

hot take: i dont think handsome jack's character was particularly well written. Dameon Clarke's voice acting elevated a less-than-mid antagonist to a proper and iconic villain. just try and imagine his corny dialogue voiced by someone who didn't put their soul into it: it would be forgettable/10.

[@MALICEM12]

I feel like that applies to anything. Like imagine if Darth Vader has a nerdy voice. Would he be as iconic?

[@alexanderradcliffe5578]

Agreed. I think Handsome Jack is the most overrated game antagonist I've ever seen.

[@chickenchaser8822]

Regardless what anyone says about borderlands and the series, I love it to death. 1 and 2 I have the most hours and memories with, i remember growing up watching my dad play borderlands on the ps3 and thinking it was awesome and I got to play it too but since I was young I wasn’t that good and couldn’t get too far. Before my parents got a divorce, I was walking with my mom in target and happened to see borderlands 2 for ps3 and knew I had to get it for my dad and bless my mother because she bought it and after the divorce I went to my dads friends house he stayed at and we stayed up late playing borderlands 2 and from there we were addicted. Shortly once he moved in with my step mom we continued to play and had so many late nights making koolaid and frozen pizzas and spending couple hours on the weekend on it. In 2023 I lost my father to suicide and now I treasure these games, even 3 which we had fun on as well but nothing like 1 and especially 2. Miss my dad and I cherish the memories I have playing with him on these games and is the reason I went back and played only as sirens.

[@itsagabe]

OK, but hear me out. I had zero interest in Borderlands prior to a fateful day when the Handsome Collection went on sale for so little, I had to buy it. Then I tried 2 and could not get into it due to the writing. Fast forward a few years (after Commander Lilith came out, so I missed out on it being free) and I gave it another shot when I was in an odd mood to play an FPS game. Boom. It had me. The writing grew on me to the point where I find Claptrap and Scooter endearing. I don't laugh at most of the game, but I do vibe with the quips, the side quests, and the overarching story. BL2 is not at all my brand of humour, but I think everything in that game (the cringe writing included) comes together to form a pretty unique experience. And then there's BL3. I do appreciate the undeniable improvements to gameplay, but I find the writing to have no soul. Its defining characteristic is that it has to follow up on BL2's and all the acclaim its story got thanks to Handsome Jack. The nail in the coffin for me was the level design. I love existing in BL2's Pandora, but not so much in BL3's constellation of planets. Some of those planets have great level design, but I find them to be severely underutilized. There came a point with BL3 where I was just so tired of moving from one arena to another via an obvious corridor that I had to put it down. Everytime I boot up BL3 thinking 'this time I'll get into it,' I just get the itch for BL2 and go back to my years old save file, where I'm clocking nearly 300h. Maybe BL2 just has everything design-wise that I value in a game, a lot of which I find lacking in 3. But yes, the writing in 3 was one of the top reasons why I couldn't carry on with my first playthrough and why I never finished it. For all its worth, BL2 was not afraid to offend anyone whereas BL3 is terrified of it, which is where I think most of its cringe comes from. Heck, I should be the target audience for BL3's writing, being gay and all, but I can't stand it. I'll take the offensive college bro attitude of BL2 any day of the week before I give BL3 more of my time.

[@Orpheustel0s]

I don't know if this counts as BLS but I remember playing Dead Nation on PS3. we got it for free because of the 2011 PSN hack. It's a twin-stick shooter where you play a lone survivor in a city overrun with a zombie outbreak and you 're trying find a guy that can make and distribute a cure from the protag's immunity. I had a blast playing it, until I got to the ending where [SPOILERS]... You find out the guy you've been fighting your way to reach was lying about wanting to creating a cure from your natural immunity to the zombie virus and was going to make a super-weapon out of the main character, who he now has trapped, the MC responds, in kind... with a cyanide capsule they had on them and dies. Then they comeback as a zombie, because their immunity was temporary. I also realized that as the game was ending that the MC was narrating the events of the game as they were happening in cutscenes, even when he was becoming a zombie. When the credits started rolling, all I thought about was how much that ending sucked. To have gotten invested with the game, only for it to bitchslap you with such a shitty weaksauce ending felt kind of insulting, I never touched the game again.

[@kielbasamage]

… wait a minute. Is that the one where you have three options of powered armor to wear? I liked playing that. I guess there’s a reason the story slid off my brain like Teflon and eggs, though.

[@PKDeviluke25]

I remember that game, that twist was so sick. Housemarque was the developer for that game.

[@knavenformed9436]

That sounds great and memorable, I'd rather have characters with unique storylines, failure included.

[@__mae__06]

honestly i think that 3 was where borderlands syndrome fully kicked in. Anthony Birch's writing was not perfect, far from it but it's still way better than what 3 turned into. plus Anthony birch hate is kinda overdone, he was a really good dm in dungeons and daddies

[@hossdelgado626]

Problem is, a dm can adapt in real time, and there is more room for characters to play off each other. In a linear story game, the characters aren't gonna have room to adapt to each other due to the time constraints alone. He's a good dm, because he could react to those around him then. He sucks at telling a story in a void

[@hyenawithgun]

Tales of the Borderlands & The entire Yakuza series are both proof that you can absolutely have an audience take you seriously and unseriously at the same time. I think there's a level of groundedness and self-awareness in the writing that is just non-existent in the rest of the BL series.

[@tigrexkiller1548]

Problem is that Borderlands just never really has any significant distinction between the two. Jack literally goes from "im gonna murder you for killing my daughter" to "Hey its totally me Roland and I'm not really dead and we should all go out for milkshakes" within like 15 minutes of gameplay. And the one character that most people would actually agree on them being serious (Mordecai) is constantly being belittled for being serious. So I think they kinda created that one themselves.

[@MarcelyWelly]

I couldn’t even tell you how annoyed I was watching Maya die because of Ava, then proceeded to blame everyone else for her actions.

[@The_Big_Jay]

You know what's worse? The story never tells her she's wrong. The world acts like she's totally justified acting that way. The writers literally don't think it's her fault.

[@MyFokMan]

My first console was a PS3 and the very first game I got was Borderlands 1 So it will forever have a special place in my heart, although the gameplay is dated now this game has such a timeless and unique space-western dark tone/atmosphere

[@daedalus115-2]

heres one that came out before BL3... Sunset overtrive. the best open world traversal gameplay i have ever played, stapled to terrible 2014 dialogue.

[@shortcatofficial2137]

Idk i feel like it works with the "its the apocalypse do whatever the fuck you want" theme well enough to not get irritating. It's corny but most of the time funny enough to not be that annoying.

[@talullah1065]

@@shortcatofficial2137I agree, I didn't find sunset overdrive to be funny but I was always having fun hearing what cornball on the nose line was gonna be said next

[@muggins2279]

That Firefly was chosen as a tonal guide for BL2 says a LOT, the Chuck Wendig energy is off the charts Edit: I fucked up, Joss Weadon did Firefly but come on they're basically the same guy

[@Bonelord69]

I have over 2,000 hours on Borderlands 2. I have not heard a single line of dialog from my game in over 9 years.

[@jacksonboyd8630]

So over dramatic

[@toolittletoolate]

Not gunna lie, I actually like Handsom Jack and Butt Stalion and all his quips. It made sense to his character and fit for the most part. But it feels like they pulled a Marvel where he was supposed to be Iron Man making quips and that did well so they decided literally every character would do quips just like him. The second game was at least tolerable with occasionally acceptable stupidity. 3 is where it just went off the rails I've never been able to finish the game because I can't take standing there waiting for them to shut the fuck up so I can continue the mission.

[@tigrexkiller1548]

This is basically my issue with 3. I can accept the shit story cus I tune it out, but the constant stop and go drives me nuts.

[@zdrident]

Honestly think that a large portion of the "wacky" humor in bl2 comes from claptrap, and how much time they force you to interact with him. Im not saying those are the only instances of it, but i think that's what makes it stick in your mind that the whole game is like that.

[@jordanwilson4182]

I think bl2 was written specifically to annoy critics, which is the genius of it. The writing is so bad that he has to be on purpose, and I love it,

[@LordGrandKaiser]

Of all the Borderlands games the first one is still my favorite. While the gameplay was rougher, the writing, the setting, and the "feel" of BL1 were all far and away better than anything that came after it. I think you do a very good job of explaining why. To add, BL1 also worked because despite Pandora's inherent absurdity, the world still made sense because the characters in it took their own lives and roles seriously. They felt like "real" people in the otherwise unhinged space-western/adventure movie satire that BL1 was, and any points of unbelievability could be hand-waved because ultimately the whole game is just a story Marcus is telling to some little girl.

[@ronchum5178]

You've really hit the nail on the head, all the way through. My takeaway from BL3 was that the gameplay was better in some ways, but the writing made it a worse game overall than BL2 and Pre-Sequel. I now realize that you're right. The gameplay *is* an improvement, though I do still have issues with it. It's just that the writing is so much worse than previous games, it actually made me think that the gameplay was worse than it is. Of course, just as you said that Burch doubled down with the writing in Pre-Sequel, Gearbox once again doubled down with the horrible writing of BL3 in new tales. At this point I have no hope in Gearbox's ability to save the franchise. It's sad because I recently set out to find a co-op game that my friends and I could play after Borderlands, but nothing comes close. The only games I've found that can hold a candle are the games of the Ashes series. Those games are in some ways better than Borderlands, they aren't close to the same scope and are strictly single player experiences.

[@funkey6737]

I would highly recommend Helldivers 2 Incredible co op horde shooter some of the most fun you can have with friends

[@alkimos55]

Some other good co-op shooters are Deep Rock Galactic, Gunfire Reborn, Killing Floor 2, L4D2, Payday 2 or 3, all the Serious Sam games, Half Life 1 & 2 (Sven Co-op & Synergy), or even Shadow Warrior 2 if that's your kinda vibe. Lots of good options as long as you don't have picky friends like I do... hmph.

[@funkey6737]

@@alkimos55 dude... Killing floor!! Do you think they'll ever make a new game

[@alkimos55]

@@funkey6737 Oh yeah, they're actually working on Killing Floor 3 right now! It's already on Steam for wishlisting, and with trailers and such. From what I've heard it will be a bit more different than the other two, which some fans dislike, but it looks pretty cool to me.

[@YoQ]

The first game also made me realize that deserted settings that let said setting do the talking are my jam

[@accountwith16chr]

I can't believe you make better jokes in this video than the entirety of the borderlands franchise

[@Vanque13]

The sibling resentment is the biggest dropped ball in the entirety of the writing. It genuinely starts to feel like there's a point where the brother might turn to our side as his sister gets increasingly out of control, then it just doesn't matter.

[@10ua1]

4:45 Actually this is wrong, Cannonically the New-U stations do not exist, they only exist for the sake of being a video game. Any time you die as the player is not canon to the story, everyone only has one singular life, it's the reason people like Roland and Handsome Jack never come back into the story.

[@alkimos55]

The problem is - this isn't represented this way in-game. If you only play the game, they very much seem canonical, especially with them being tied to Hyperion and all.

[@MrRedpanda2442]

​@alkimos55 then why doesn't jack respawn?

[@10ua1]

@@MrRedpanda2442 Or Roland? he had no issues in the first game. The only logical thing was that they were clearly never canon. Or at least they might have been in the first game only for the developers realizing how that ruins their continuation of the story.

[@thesquishedelf1301]

@@10ua1Roland is explainable as Jack using his Hyperion weight to deny the service after killing him. Jack… needed a boss fight explicitly about killing him so hard he disconnects from the New-U system. Never finished BL2, but I gather that’s not what he got.

[@10ua1]

@thesquishedelf1301 That doesn't really make sense and the Devs have stated that they are not canon, so there really is no arguing about it.

[@BbNaB]

For me the town of Oasis sums up the universe of Borderlands games: Flat cut out characters propped up in place waiting for you to push a button so they can recite their line all sounding like the same person. The fun for me was in leveling up, customizing my character, and finding loot.

[@mblade01]

I don't believe that Borderlands Syndrome is a real thing and was just made up simply by some nobody simply to get his 15 mins of fame but evidently that isn't a popular opinion.

[@meekaboo_]

It is insane that the calypso twins got fumbled so hard. You can almost feel the VAs hurting, you can plainly see how much was cut or just didn't get applied to the story at large. How the hell did we not wind up with at least troy flipping to help the vault hunters when realizing his sister is going too far, willing to stop her even if it means his own supplemental lifeblood gets cut off. Hell, something like she's still keeping him alive while they actively hunt her. The lack of guard rails hurts so much what could have been sooo much more than "haha twitch streamers," something more like "tragic emotionally tormented twins on liveleak." To say nothing of, literally everything else. BL1's vibes returning for 3 would've done wonders to the new heights that super corporate hands in the pot does to shake things up alongside the unified bandits idea like, they had so much going for them. And with the previous representation and all the shit they wound up doing with swapping siren powers now, we really couldn't have had a transmasc troy that bonds with ava/tannis and winds up transferring his unique siren powers instead of killing off maya for no reason? Idk I think that coulda gone hard and allowed some more time to like, endear people to ava or the zuko'd bad guy. There's just so much like that in the game though. Typhon should be so interesting, the vaults opening all over, the eridians, the sirens, like it's wild how much is just fumbled so astronomically, they're out here telling 200 unfunny jokes in a row and it feels like it's to spite us. When BL1 had a tone that looked at a ruined hell planet with deserted workers turned to desperate measures as super corps leave or continue to make things worse, and the comedy is primed to come from the nihilistic absurdity of it, I don't know how you take a look at the world and what BL3 could've set up (especially post tales!) and just bungle the whole thing so astronomically on all fronts but (most) moment to moment gameplay.

[@Alloveck]

I like how positive you are about Borderlands 3's gameplay. I mean, sure, its writing is really bad, no question. Really, really bad. But that doesn't change the fact that it has the best gameplay and game design of the whole series by a sizable margin, and it's not fair that the gameplay it got so right gets so overlooked in favor of trashing the story and writing it got so wrong. So yes, shame it where it failed, but it's nice when people don't forget to give credit where credit is due too. On a related note, I really hope that Borderlands 4 has kept the development staff responsible for 3's gameplay but completely replaced its writers... Well, unless there was some junior/support/secondary/whatever writer for 3 who was objecting the whole time and recognized its problems but kept getting overruled. In fairness, games are big projects and just because one chef burnt a dish doesn't mean the rest of the chefs did their parts wrong. A single bad call from the top can negate a hundred good decisions further down the ladder, so you can't fairly assume all of a game's staff are equally at fault for a bad final product. Also, I wasn't really a big fan of the character designs in 3, so... changing up the character designers for 4 is also on my wish list, as long as I'm complaining about 3. Absolutely nailed the gameplay, fell short everywhere else to some degree. I'd even say it was a small step down in terms of music.

[@V2ULTRAKill]

If you look at the cut content from 3s script Its the executives more than the writers The writers were likely forced to rewrite dozens of scenes due to meddling and even change the primary villain of the twins

[@frazfrazfrazfraz]

I would say that wonderlands has better bosses than 3 by far. I hope we get a lot of the wonderlands gameplay improvements in 4

[@Alloveck]

@@V2ULTRAKill Interesting. I know nothing of 3's cut content or how it changed over its development, so that's news to me. But considering how much the twins felt forced and like the writers really couldn't decide what exactly to do with them, I'd certainly believe executive meddling was to blame.

[@SoraGoob]

I hate how they did my boys vaughn and rhys. They were some of my fav characters in my franchise, and they killed em. They killed em for underwear and mustache jokes

[@Jack-h4h7w]

Always thought that Colonel Hector could’ve been amazing for borderlands 3 as the villain

[@remnantgaming716]

"It's impossible to tell 100 unfunny jokes in a row, nobody is that ass" *Borderlands 3 has entered the chat*

[@redips8947]

I am happy that you've made this video as an honest criticism rather than cash in like every other ragebait culture war channel on YT.

[@YoQ]

Ngl, new tales might actually be the most worthless video game of all time. A boring slog for fans and newcomers where events just happen for the sake of happening. Fortunately it did make me realize that a skip dialogue option is actually good and part of game design

[@andypandy3694]

Legendary KZbin recommendation pull

[@jiggycalzone8585]

Pearlescent

[@sahilhossain8204]

Lore of The Dangers Of Borderlands Syndrome momentum 100

[@bohdanvakulenko4266]

BL 1 is Halo meets Diablo, Randy said it himself. They were aiming for of a “safe” experience, so the game was a bit more “grounded”. Then the DLCs started to give a little bit of that early 2010s meme culture. More irony, more dialogue and generally more insanity. And Gearbox didn't start it. Saints row among other franchises started heading to that direction. Borderlands 2 is the quintessential yearly 2010s game. It's one of the most sold games on steam with 20+ million units sold I believe. Then there were Telltale games and Pre-Sequel. While Tales was received warmly, the Pre-sequal was a cash grab with only one true DLC. Borderlands 3 came out when the margin from lotter shooters was taken over by Destiny and Warframe. Gearbox simply could not compete with that market due to their size, so they experimented with Battleborn and failed. They even made an Epic exclusive for the time and in Fortnite the psycho skin I believe was the first to be introduced from another franchise, which now is super standard to have skins from other games. Borderlands 3 was released at the end of 2010s,the culture has changed, and those times are gone. And now we are all waiting to see what will be of Borderlands 4. With Gearbox being newly purchased by 2k and the mass layoffs in the industry, I'm not that optimistic. At the time of me writing this comment we have not even seen gameplay or story trailers, but I just feel that things are going to be different.

[@SLISKI_JOHNNY]

Gearbox was "owned" by 2k the entire time, ever since BL1. Why do you think 2k logo is shown more times than Gearbox' does?

[@Redvox57]

borderlands 3 is the reason why when i do tier lists for games i make 2. A gameplay list and a story list.

[@thouartseraph]

35:42 the funniest moment in borderlands history

[@ripoutyourprejudice]

Hellgate London came out in 2007 and created the looter shooter genre. Borderlands was the one to make it mainstream.

[@Flufferpup]

Small correction, the respawn system has been confirmed to be non canon. When people die, they die, otherwise Roland and others with money would still be around.

[@alkimos55]

You wouldn't think that just by playing the games, is the problem. Feels like a problem with the writing, honestly.

[@JohnSmith-kt3yy]

@@alkimos55 I mean, if you think about it for even a second it is obvious the respawn beacons aint canon. Nobody in the story respawns at all

[@SkylorBeck]

I've put hundreds of hours into the entire series and I couldn't agree with you more. Glad to see other people recognize this phenomena

[@Tak3034]

Only time I enjoyed Borderlands was when I played Tiny Tina wonderland. Thought her coming to terms with Roland’s death was really sweet. Beyond that I found the whole series was insufferable. The gameplay to me was tedious and unchallenging. I will give the rpg mechanics some credit, it had more depth than Destiny 1, but I generally had more fun playing Destiny 1. P.S. The friend that convinced me to play this game with them is the person who laughed at everything. I mostly groaned and tried to get through the game.

[@antifreeze3526]

If time travel will be Invented In my lifetime I am pulling a reverse flash on Randy Pitchford for what he allowed to happen to BL3

[@mynamesnotshanekid813]

Remember Duke Nukem Forever

[@mdoro99]

In short the games get better but the writing gets much worse.

[@johnny1599]

And they made her the siren in 4. I believe we are doomed.

[@AGrayPhantom]

18:40 What Jack did to Felicity and all the scientists that the player saves is unforgivable! Or did you forget about that?

[@durandol]

A lot of people forget The Pre-Sequel existed, unfortunately.

[@goblinRa2a]

Moze's mech has an airdash ??? Countless hours sank into the game and I never knew

[@DutchEmblem]

one of my main problems with borderlands is that all of the games are supposed to be replayable. You're "supposed" to dive into ng+ and try multiple characters, but there's so much design that goes against that. The jokes are unfunny the first time and make you want to commit a crime the 4th. There is no way to skip dialogue and the games all have moments where you're just waiting for dialogue to end before an npc opens up the path. it completely kills any momentum the fun gameplay has.

[@alkimos55]

BL3 has the options of deleting dialogue files as well as the animation skipper mod, that mostly mitigates those issues. Still pretty ass that we have to fix that ourselves.

[@Individ321]

I dunno I've replayed this game a few times since 2012 and it never stopped being fun

[@NoPeacekeeper2008]

Wolfenstein: The New Colossus is “fantastic gameplay, INSUFFERABLY bad writing” personified

[@imbeast90]

Athena is my favorite play ale character in borderlands. So much fun

[@DHKrieg]

I disagree with you and think the pre-sequel did a good job in portraying Jack as a man whose terrible side eventually comes out. He becomes very resentful and bitter about the betrayals he went through with the Meriff, Harold and Moxxi and you can see that throughout the game. The big turning points for the Vault Hunters themselves too are with him deciding to kill Felicity instead of just making a copy and him killing Katagawa and the scientists because "one of them could potentially be a mole hypothetically" at which point you realize Athena, Aurelia, Claptrap and Timothy are horrified or made uncomfortable, while Wilhelm and Nisha think it's smart or attractive. It gets to the point where Jack literally tells you to just execute a surrendering unarmed Dahl grunt because "if you let them live they'll stab you in the back" That's what makes Jack a bad guy, he's "the hero" (wants to pacify Pandora to save lives) but is an extremely violent man who only values himself and his paranoia gets to the point where he just becomes a cruel dictator. That's almost the whole point of the game lol Also regarding Ava's "run towards the fire" line, it makes it infinitely funnier when you remember Maya said being a vault hunter isn't about just running into danger before she died LMAO but yea, it's like instead of being treasure hunting mercenaries, Borderlands 3 thinks Vault Hunters are space superheroes

[@octopusteeth2490]

When I first went to play a Monster Hunter game, my brother told me to ignore the story because it was dogshit and that the gameplay was 1000% better. I'm happy I did that because now, unless a game is expressly praised for its story, I just assume it's mid/bad and enjoy the gameplay and/or aesthetics instead.

[@FeelsGoodman124]

As a fellow Borderlands 3 fan/apologist I think you made a great vid and gave very well structured criticism while maintaining a good level of respect. Peak Borderlands video essay, great work.