Borderlands 3

Three words: The Corporate Wars.

Pandora, hell, all 6 galaxies HAD law enforcement, then several companies got together and wiped the government off the map. Not only is Jack still the bad guy, he's one of several.

So then he's like a Communist dictator. You really can get the reasons for it, but then you see em' in practice and there's nothing else but to say "Yeah no he's still the worst."

Well you could prolly just let him wipe out all bandits on Pandora & then kill him.

Like sure genocide is a terrible thing to do but razing the bandit population down to 0 isn't exactly a bad thing.

Well, most of the 2 was showing that would probably sadly cost many innocent lives as well since he was killing anyone not willing to kiss his boots and using people for slag experimentation.

It's also logical to say you don't want Jack anywhere near that kind of power with how he already abuses his own with his company...though of course if we take the game literally, one Vault Hunter could have taken down the Warrior themselves anyway!

Even if one was gonna go to a "At least Mussolini ran the trains on time" thing, that's not even true (like Mussolini and the trains incidentally)

Jack didn't enforce any law. Pandora was still full of bandits preying on anyone they could reach. Jack only cared about his stuff, the vault and the eridium and that's all he ever enforced. If anything Jack actually added more bandits with him financing some of them (See: Fleshstick, his general bounties), and outright creating others (See: Krieg)

The corporations quite explicitly created the bandit problem in the first place. Bandits are former employees abandoned by corporations and left to die on Pandora.

Technically the masses of Dahl miners were just prisoner slaves.

The games have back and forth on that. BL 2 shows that several miners were employees based on the caustic caverns log.

Speaking of Retcons, Typhon's logs don't make sense chronologically. He mentions that when he returned to Pandora, Dahl was there now (Which also then implies there were Pre-Dahl in habitants since Typhon is from Pandora) and he mentions that when he left with his wife, Atlas was taking over. But Tannis says she arrived on Pandora after Typhon left (hence her never getting to meet him). But she was a Dahl employee and arrived with them...

Edited by Ghilz on Oct 8th 2019 at 10:26:52 AM

Blarg, I just found a stupid transphobic joke in BL 3: In "Going Rogue" e you track down some incognito agents for Clay, one of them's disguised as a woman psycho who's seducing crowds of male psychos, and when he removes his disguise he's a massive muscled man.

I thought they were better than that.

They actually go double-twist on that and she's actually a woman who could disguise herself as a man disguising as a woman. Or... something. I don't think they ever make it clear what that person's actual gender identity is, just that they're a master of disguise.

I dunno if that's better, but it doesn't just end with that.

Edited by Clarste on Oct 8th 2019 at 2:53:21 AM

That might not be better, but to me it feels like it probably goes down an awkward grey area that maybe we just... shouldn't? A woman pretending to be a man pretending to be a woman is... yeah, I'm pretty sure that's just digging it deeper.

I mean it just feels like typical shape-shifter stuff with their original identity purposely a complete unknown.

Either way, we still get that mouldy old transmisogynist "lol, men got tricked" gag, and Clay refers to him with he/him pronouns throughout.

The thing is that Jack isn't actually replacing Pandora's bandits with something better, just something shinier and more difficult to remove. Lynchwood is a straight-up bandit stronghold, and Opportunity (supposedly for Hyperion's privileged elite - anyone else just gets worked to death as slaves) is an Orwellian nightmare with death around every corner. He's just another Ax-Crazy warlord. At least the Calypsos tried to make their subjects feel good about themselves amid all the random murder and depravity.

The Bandits are terrible and insane. But Jack's idea of cleaning them out is just a shinier and better armed bandit camp. What I've seen of the Calypso's, I don't think them 'making them feel good' is even accurate as their feel good-ness seemed rather surface level and superficial. Or what I've personally seen.

The Calipsos are meant to be parodies of streamers and YT personalities.

The way that the friendliness they're showing to their followers is meant to be insincere and a highly abusive parasocial relationship isn't even subtext.

But they became bandits because Dahl abandoned them.

Well Dahl needs to be taken down then but easier said than done sadly.

Edited by slimcoder on Oct 10th 2019 at 6:13:34 AM

The whole point of the Calypsos' appeal is that they're offering media that openly celebrates the bandit lifestyle after they've spent their whole lives as the trash of the galaxy, the written-off detritus of the corporate wars who are too incurably mutated and insane to ever live normal lives. Now, the bandit lifestyle is completely deranged and horrible, but it's still better than Jack's approach of making people do terrible things and doing horrible, irreversible things to them, and then mocking them because they'll never be as cool and wonderful as him. At least the Children of the Vault get to feel happy and validated for once in their short, ghastly lives before Tyreen eats them.

It's why she keeps calling them "family". The Calypsos aren't twin gods so much as they're mom and dad to these loons. Doing some of the Crimson Radio side things I've heard their new announcer say the bandits should feel "honored" to be husked by Tyreen.

Mommy needs to eat, after all.

Favorite quote thus far would have to be the Twink's "Come'ere and GIVE ME YOUR EAR!"

My fave? "TELL MY KIDS....I wish.....they were born."

Waiting on a wiki update to read all of them. Heard one that started "YOU WILL REMEMBER MY NAME" and then the rest got drowned out by gunfire.

Yes, my gunfire. In my defense I had shot off a goliath's helmet and was trying to not get dead.

Nah, you didn't miss the rest, that's the joke. You'll remember their name, which is a name they'll fail to be able to tell you before they die and gurgle their last.

I'm rather amused with the New-U stations

"Hyperion: We're not the bad guys this time"

"Welcome back from death. If you didn't die, Hyperion suggests hunting down the duplicate"

It just occurred to me that the theme of BL 3's basically "inheriting power".

Even aside from the way it elaborates on how Siren powers work (and transfer), every allied company is trying to maintain a line of succession (Atlas has Rhys trying to keep control of the company he adopted, Jakobs is trying to fend off attempts by the current owner's effective sister-in-law), and Maliwan's CEO literally murdered his siblings in a power struggle.