Those words start off our not-so-little excursion into the wasteland, coming from a voice quite familiar to fans of the first game. As to who this character is, I will not say. We'll meet him soon enough, fellow Psychos.
He goes on to loosely retell the plot of the first game, about how, upon the planet of Pandora, an ancient Vault caused a migration of people, accurately dubbed Vault Hunters, to the planet in search of it and its untold riches. Four such people were able to, in the end, brave the hostile environment upon the planet of Pandora to open it, finding that it was, as the voice put it, "just a container of tentacles and disappointment." These four left, certain there was nothing more to find other than the giant one-eyed tentacle abomination they just shot to shit. But, they were wrong.
Triggered by the Vault's opening, a rare alien mineral sprang up all throughout Pandora called Eridium, named after the alien civilization associated with these Vaults. This brought in major companies seeking to mine this mineral for the riches it was worth. One such company, and probably the only company that lived, if I had to guess, was the Hyperion corporation. However, this is not the end of our story, dear Psychos, because otherwise i'd probably cry. No, our story is not over, for upon the planet of Pandora, the Hyperion corporation found something far greater than Eridium.
And what is that, you ask? Ask the Vault Hunters heading there now...
There's four of them in the train hovering along some sort of magnetic rail line in a train presumably making use of quantum locking.
Beforehand, there had been a dog and a billboard sign. Well, perhaps I shouldn't say dog. Skag is the correct term; they'll be described more when we encounter them, although the scene of their jaw's... splitting, is reminiscent of the first game. Let me just stop right there, actually. Anybody who assumed, at this point, after hearing the sounds of an approaching vehicle that we'd be seeing the skag get hit by a bus should be pleasantly surprised to learn the skag is being dragged by a chain along the ground by a large vehicle with a towing cable in the back instead. The midget psycho at the back proceeds to the front, headbutting a bandit in the process, and promptly starts imitating Diddy Kong as the vehicle is rammed by the train we see ourselves in now. I feel most sad for the sucker in the turret seat, though. He lived through getting rammed by a train unscathed to get killed by a sign as he stood up inside the wrecked vehicle resting on said train.
The Hunters are in the train, apparently welcomed there by the Hyperion Corporation, when the sign in the background drops to reveal an evil version stating "No Hard Feelings", and yellow robots transform from the background to kill them. Naturally, the four start running to various levels of success.
Firstly, we have the military guy with a metal symbol of his rank on his forhead. Okaay. He runs, tosses a deployable turret onto the ceiling and from that spot above him it decimates the robots behind them as he launches a rocket shot forward from a launcher he whipped up out of nowhere.
Axton as THE COMMANDO
The rocket shot travels forward to the next hunter, a woman. After it hits the robots assaulting her, she lifts one up into the air, grint, then slams it through the wall and out the train.
Maya as THE SIREN
We follow the robot as we see a midget of some Spanish origin hang onto the outside of the train. Damn, he's fast. He slings himself back inside, withdrawing two big guns from nowhere as he goes to town on more robots, eventually firing at the roof madly as he laughs.
Salvador as THE GUNZERKER
We follow the bullets this time as two humans in an exoskeleton of sorts search the outside roof of the train as it moves. Decloaking behind the last guy, a slender suited man stabs through the one in back, jumping to the front and pushing off of the first guy, sending him into the sword as well as the suited man rolls onto his feet.
Zer0 as A NUMBER
Couldn't just up and label him Slenderman, could you?
Anyway, the four reach the end of the car, assembling as the Commando kicks the door down. I guess they were expecting the guy behind it all there, as a replica of him turns to them in a car full of many, many explosives. One boom later, and the cameraman is rammed with the car as the screen cuts to black.
Everybody died.
With that, we travel to the character selection screen. Since we're starting out as Krieg, I won't make a big deal out of it all, but I will take the time to list out the six playable characters and describe them briefly by listing their Action Skills, or the chief skill their character revolves around in most cases.
- Axton: The Commando. Makes use of a deployable turret upon the battlefield.
- Zer0: The Assassin. Makes use of holo-decoys and gratuitous stabbing.
- Maya: The Siren. Uses Phaselock, a sort of psychic ability to lock enemies in the air for a time or damage them if they're too heavy.
- Salvador: The Gunzerker. Uses guns to fight.
- Gaige: The Mechromancer. Summons a death robot to fight.
- Krieg: The Psycho. I'll describe his Action Skill when we get there.
I pick Krieg, obviously. The character customization is pretty minimal; you can choose a head, a color swap skin and the name of the character. I decide to stick with the standard head (KRIEG!!!!) and skin (KRIEG'S SUNDAY FINEST) for now. The temptation to name him Bane or something suitably silly arises, but I'll just stick with classic Krieg. Krieeeegggg.
We're not past character select and i'm going a little insane. That speaks volumes about the following.
We awake to... a robot. Smaller than the others, operating on a single wheel with a shovel. When he notices us standing, he's very happy. He introduces himself as a CL 4 P-TP steward bot, or Claptrap to his friends. If they were alive! Or had existed in the first place!
He hands us some loot salvaged from the corpses of generic Vault Hunters, then starts off towards his home, apparently. It's now that I should mention two things. One, it is a frozen wasteland where I am right now, which i'll describe once I've moved out of the snowstorm. Secondly, we have one particular item in our inventory of mention already- Wait.
Okay, I can't remember if Gaige had one, but typically every character has an ECHO Log thattells why they're here. I guess Krieg doesn't. That's kinds sad. Well, we have other things in our inventory - guns. The Gearbox guns, to be exact, which i'm dropping. I'm only going to keep the Vault Hunter's Relic, which increases the rare loot drop for me. Both of these are pre-order bonuses, which I recall.
Since there's nothing keeping us standing here, we move forward, greeted over radio waves by someone female saying that we're here for a reason and she's here to read us. Okay, second voice in my head.
We follow Claptrap through the whiteness around us, apparently benefitting from a thick layer of fat over our own skin. Speaking of, let's take a look at Krieg right now! To start off, he's got a mask that makes me think of Bane, one eye covered over. A tube runs around one arm to a gauntlet placed there, and the other is bandaged. He's wearing pants with a punk belt, apparently. If there's one thing I can say, it's that Krieg feels like something big and menacing not openly portayed but definately there.
The security door opens to Claptrap's home as he comments that it's to keep the Bullymong's out, and that they'll rip your eyes out. Yep. Definately not foreshadowing. We get inside and Claptrap points me to a pistol as, and here's the shocker, a Bullymong drops down through the gaping hole in the ceiling to rip Claptrap's only eye out. Wow. Moaning about the gun, we make our way to the cabinet as I decide to end off this installment because it's been fucking long already.
Looks like we'll have a longer journey ahead of us than I hoped; definately not getting through the first whole area today. It'll all work out in the end, though, so not to worry Psychos. I'll close off with this:
Welcome to Pandora.
Comments
