Borderlands 3

Also, from my viewing of various playthroughs, Lilith seems to have actually learned from her past arrogance and impulsivity, and is a lot more careful this time round. It's just that the Twins really aren't clear about their proper motives until they decide to conveniently drop them on us. Jack did the same with Angel working for him. Losing her powers humbles Lilith into throwing away the last, final shreds of her old arrogance. So I'd say as a leader she was actually doing alright.

Plus, seven year gap, entire DLC dedicated to her trying to step out of Roland's shadow, I'd say she's had plenty of room for improvement.

And if she really was a bad leader, there would be no ship and half of the main BL cast would be dead after we rushed into some painfully obvious trap and got slaughtered.

Edited by TheWildWestPyro on Sep 19th 2019 at 12:25:37 PM

Yeah I really absolute bullshit on the Twins being justified in their smugness just cause the heroes are morons.

Sure Lilith is too short-tempered to ever make a decent leader but that doesn’t mean everyone else has to be dragged down along with her.

It’s kinda bad-writing to have the heroes give the villains everything they want without the villains ever actually working for it through clever manipulation or deals.

Edited by slimcoder on Sep 19th 2019 at 12:27:41 PM

The problem is actually that she's too cautious now and doesn't take enough risks. And therefore fails to accomplish anything, while slowing losing the war of attrition. The idea being that if we had simply taken the fight straight to the Calypsos earlier, it would've been way simpler.

It's a pretty basic "the hero loses their confidence" thing. What she learns at the end is the willingness to go all-in for once.

Edit: IE: "You can't let this one major set-back throw you off your game forever."

Edited by Clarste on Sep 19th 2019 at 1:00:20 AM

You know what, good point. brb editing character page again.

Hasn't "the villains trick you into opening Vaults, Nice Job Breaking It, Hero" been the entire plot of the series since Borderlands 1?

Yeah, I think that trope is common. In BL2 You pick up Wilhelm's power core, which led to Angel shutting down Sanctuary's shields and later on Lilith arrived at Control Core Angel, making her Jack's replacement Siren

So in one way or another, Jack's plans still moved because of our protagonists doing something odd, intentionally or not.

I've just recently bought The Pre-Sequel though, might play that next week.

In the Pre-Sequel the Vault is already open, the villain just saw what was inside and is trying to blow up the moon to prevent anyone from opening it ever again.

Edited by Clarste on Sep 19th 2019 at 2:41:00 AM

This game is buggy though. In Eden-6, I just lose all sound effects. Voices, engine noises, gun noises. And only rebooting the game fixes it (till I go back).

I got stuck at a quest where the button prompts did nothing. Turns out if you hold them for like... a minute, they'll finally register. Other glitches like Maya's phaselock bubble staying around permanently even after she's dead. Also had a fight were Fl4k's pet was just staying away for seemingly no reason.

Edited by Ghilz on Sep 19th 2019 at 11:49:15 AM

How are Troy and Tyreen as far as "commentary on streamer culture"? I think the idea has plenty of potential since Jack was obviously a caricature of corporate culture, greed, and apathy. But I worry that it'll be a one note joke of 'Look, they're streaming their evil and have an army because "followers".' rather than doing something more creative?

If I had to make some caricature of streamer/online culture/cults of personality, I'd probably give them very fragile mask personas that they put on while streaming. Stuff that they meticulously cultivate and let drop when the cameras are off. And maybe depict just how fragile that mask is if they make the wrong move. I might also hone in on the paradox of the personal-group relationship many online personalities have; They will be your best friend and they're chill and they know you... But you know them and they couldn't pick one of said fans out of a crowd if they wanted or cared to. Streaming, Online Ads, and other things are marketed to 'YOU' the Mr. Special and not 'The Group Collective'.

But that's just what I'd do. Curious what the twins will have. Jack was a pretty good villain.

For what it's worth, I find it extremely weird how interested you are in commenting this game's plot, seemingly without any intention of playing it for yourself to find out. Then again, I suppose the situation with Epic Games and Steam or just generally waiting for it to be on sale makes some sense. But still, it's very weird to me that you care so much about this game you haven't played, and have such strong feelings on something you haven't experienced.

Anyway, I would say that Tyreen and Troy do not dive especially deep on the streaming culture thing, nor does it really try to. That said, there's certainly a public-face/private-face aspect to their performance, especially with Troy who's very much perturbed by Tyreen's on-screen persona. Plus the idea of just doing whatever the fans want without thinking about the morality of it: basically the whole thing is a death game meant to entertain their fans. They don't care whether you win or lose as long as it's entertaining. The cultists who get teleported down to fight you directly are called "Eridium-tier followers" with the implication that being able to die by the Vault Hunter's hands on-stream is a reward for their loyalty.

What's much more emphasized though is the idea of the cult as a "family", a place where the rejects of society can come together and be accepted, violent psychoses and all. But mostly in the sense that neither Tyreen nor Troy understand what a real family is. There's a huge theme in this game of Family, from both sides. While the heroes are a found family of different individuals who come to care about each other, every single villain has a thing where they murdered their own family members while also talking about their own twisted ideas of family. Tyreen even mentions that the twins were abused by their father right from the very beginning.

For what it's worth, I don't think Jack dived especially deep on corporate culture either. He was mostly defined by his idea that no matter what he did he was always the hero, and anyone who got in his way was the villain and deserved whatever they got.

Edited by Clarste on Sep 19th 2019 at 4:09:02 AM

Yes, how dare I be interested in a game series that I have played the last four installments of and am currently working through a full series replay of with my boyfriend in preparation for the latest game? Such an absurd and hard to grasp concept, I know, right? You going to keep criticizing me here?

It's not like watching others play a game you can't play yet is an unheard of concept. The game doesn't come to Steam until 2020. Currently, it's on the Epic store and since I find them to be a rather corrupt and abusive company and trying to be ethical about game companies is somewhat of a topic these days, I'm putting my money where my mouth is and waiting.

So, good, are we going to continue to call me out and nitpick everything about my reasoning? Or are we going to continue?

Well I think explaining every single detail of the plot is basically impossible, and ultimately all I can give you is my own interpretation, so you either watch a full game LP with all the incidental dialog or you just sit tight and wait for it to come out on Steam. It's really no different from waiting for a Japanese game to come out in English, imo.

Edited by Clarste on Sep 20th 2019 at 12:34:55 PM

Then why are you reading spoilers if you're going to wait?

Sometimes it'll become It Was His Sled, or Late-Arrival Spoiler, so spoiling will become inevitable. I certainly couldn't resist, but I too am waiting for the Steam release. I shall not give into tyrants.

I suspect BL 3 will be a bit better than usual.

Since its not just people who are slow to play/purchase the game this time.

Edited by 32ndfreeze on Sep 20th 2019 at 6:19:37 AM

Oh the melodrama.

If you cared about Ethics, shouldn't you not buy the game at all?

After all, Randy Pitchford and Steam are not bastions of morality either. One's outright abusive to people and straight up lies, the other, well, their flaws are well documented.

Edited by Ghilz on Sep 20th 2019 at 8:31:27 AM

It's more about proving Pitchford wrong about how he doesn't need Steam sales to make a success. Once the Steam sales in April exceed the Epic Store's equivalent sales, hopefully it will send a message, if not to him, then to others.

... he'd still get your money. So the message will be "Change nothing since you got a pile of epic's money and still got the steam sales anyway"

I don't think you thought your message through.

I know it would still end up at the rot at the top. But it still looks like a great game, and this is more about showing the Epic Store that their exclusivity bribes won't work on certain people. If I buy on the Epic Store, I only prove their strategy right.

That and I don't want to sign up for another service.

I get you.

I know that the CEO will get most of the revenue, but the rest of Gearbox is pretty reasonable, so a full boycott on behalf of him isn't going to hurt him as much as them. Not much an individual can do in protest, that's why the industry needs unions for, to prevent higher individuals from acting above the law, or decency.

Anyway, gamer boycotts rarely pan out anyway. Gamers have a really bad record when it comes to actually sticking to the "not buying the game" part.

I didn't wanna buy BL 3, then someone gave it to me coz they wanted to play coop.

X_X

Just purchased Borderlands 3. It's gonna take a while to download but I'm patient. Don't know If I'll post here or not because these topics tend to get spoiler heavy lately.

I went with Amara becuase she was both a mage-like character and a melee character. I haven't played melee characters in Borderlands yet, so I decided to kill two birds with one stone. She's fun so far, I'm only level 7 but I can figure out how her skill trees are supposed to work together and the Buttplug gun for 110 percent melee damage.