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listoriented · 7 years

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Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel

bAUderlands: straya

Where/When/Why: Borderlands: the Pre-Sequel is the first of the series that I didn’t run through with friends at launch. Instead, I got it during a steam sale in July last year for US$16.50 as part of a finish-your-Borderlands-collection package/bundle, with an eye to playing it when I got to it. Apparently I bought Rocket League at the same time? Momentous.

What/Who: It’s in the title, hey - a Borderlands game set between Borderlands 1 and 2. I’m struggling to think of other game and movie franchises that have done this, which perhaps why there isn’t a better descriptive term for it. The newish Baldur’s Gate expansion maybe? Rogue One? Anyway, instead of being set on Pandora - the fictional frontier planet where the previous two games were set - Pre-Sequel is set on Pandora’s moon, Elpis.

Elpis is a noticeably Australian place; it’s inhabited by Australian NPCs and full of parodies of Australian animals and stories (the main characters are all still American though - don’t worry). This is probably because the game was made by the 2k Australia branch [official site], based in Canberra, and so apparently it just kind of happened that way. The Pre-Sequel came out in October 2014. Sadly, 2k Australia shut their doors in 2015, which means there’s no AAA games development happening here for the time being.

Time Spent: 23 hours.

Completed: Yep, finally - we managed one. 19 of 63 achievements ticked. Oh that’s not a lot, hey. Oh well.

Notes: We had a pretty good time. That should probably be the main takeaway. The day after we finished it, Lauren said that she missed playing it. The mindless shooting, looting and questing loop of Borderlands 2 is well repped again here. The flow of it is quietly addictive.

We found the going a bit tough for a while, though, there at the beginning. We spent a lot of time hunting for mission waypoints through the larger moonscape areas of the game, which are not intuitive to travel around in vehicles (lots of dead ends, crevices, mountains, barriers), and awful to travel around on foot (too many things that want to kill you and/or distract you). A few times we went to bed mad at each other after having our patience stretched thin (**n.b. it should be added that while we did often end up playing this in the last hour or two before bed over the past few weeks, this game, like the other Borderlands games, is not something that actually benefits from being played while tired, despite this seeming like the natural state to play it in). One particular semi-optional mission for urchin NPC Pickle nearly drove us to the brink with its arduous navigational requirements.

The quaint fugue that Borderlands draws you into can be a hindrance too: if you don’t pay attention you can be tricked into fighting scores of creeps that could easily be avoided, and which don’t offer much in the way of endorphin release or in-game reward. The next time you come past they’ll all have respawned anyway, making the intervening grind feel particularly pernicious. Things improved immensely once we had more fast travel unlocked, and as we got better at paying attention to who we were meant to be fighting.

Pre-Sequel also has a couple of particular gameplay gimmicks. At first we were like “???”, but we came around to them. The game is set, as mentioned, on Pandora’s moon, Elpis, which being a moon has low gravity. As such, you can jump higher and further. Because the moon surface lacks breathable atmosphere, you carry oxygen tanks, referred to forever as “Oz kits” because Australia lololololol. These deplete when you’re out in the open (which you are for maybe half the game), causing you to lose health, but we found after the first half hour it’s something you only have to be slightly mindful of, so far as annoying gameplay factors go. More importantly, you can use these “Oz kits” to boost mid-air to reach far-off platforms. It’s pretty good! Any excuse to be able to jump a long way is an acceptable one: thanks, videogames.

The Australiana accents/jokes/parodies that pervade the game are, like, pretty cool...I think? I enjoyed the ironic Australia-for-market shtick tempered by its necessarily cringeworthy over-the-topness. Cliches and stereotypes can be funny too, sometimes. I’m also aware how rare representations of anything Australian are in games, good or bad, particularly home-grown ones; a feeling which is enhanced by knowing this was made by a studio arm that no longer exists. O’, state of thy industry. It’s not that I’m at all patriotic, and the construction of this nation and its cultural identity is as problematic as any other post-colonial state, and there are issues which this game, with its frontier-Western representations of “Australianness”, attempts to avoid altogether, leaving the giant wombat very much in the room. On the other hand is the essence of the game and its uncritical light entertainment sheen, a series of good-enough jokes that beg not to be looked at directly in the eye, the fact that this is what it is, the last of its kind, no more big-budget gaming in Australia or about Australia (no Forza Horizon 3 I’m not talking to you), no Australia at all; and that’s upsetting too. Lauren and I both particularly enjoyed the foul-mouthed shotgun, Boganella, who somehow never stopped making us laugh, and who I kept equipped all the way to the end. I certainly didn’t expect to get that much mileage out of it.

Lauren played as Athena the gladiator, while I played as Nisha the lawbringer. Neither of us particularly liked the special abilities of our characters. I found the auto-aim of Nisha’s “Showdown” a bit glitchy, with it sometimes locking on outside the enemy’s hitbox. We made do anyway without relying on them too much. Neither of us had played the DLC the Athena appears in, and I hadn’t remembered Nisha from Borderlands 2, so while playing we were unaware of these character’s other roles in the series.

One thing I did find surprising was how ‘epic’ the Pre-Sequel became in the final act. It almost seemed like it was speaking out of turn, I mean…it’s called “The Pre-Sequel”. That’s a title that screams incidental and unimportant if there ever was one. “This game is just setting the scene for the more important game that was worthy of a real number in its title”, is what it suggests. And for the most part as you play it, it feels that way too. You’re playing on the moon, for instance (and everyone knows moons rate lower than planets on the astronomical bodies ladder). And you’re helping the bad guy! Surely, none of what you do here should be as big, important or ‘epic’ as in the numbered Borderlands titles.

But then, as you approach the finish line, you find yourself fighting multiple boss battles (“surely this is it” I said, erroneously, each time), delving into a massive cavernous space with funky, brilliant colours, into a galaxy-esque background, fighting the forerunner guardians, while the stakes seem to go up and up. The ending is basically prophesy-esque, all bigger picture feels. It’s an odd match.

This is mirrored by the length of the game. We played for 23 hours, which was longer than my playthrough of Borderlands 2. Again, I find this surprising, not least because it also feels smaller at first, with the player limited to the same few compact (if difficult to navigate) areas for quite a while. I’d initially figured it for a 15 hour romp, maybe. This isn’t a complaint necessarily - the game was enjoyable enough for the most part to justify the time spent in it - it just seems structurally unsound to me that a “pre-sequel” should be as big or bigger than the game it’s foregrounding.

As for the story itself and how it goes about setting up the Borderlands 2 plot, it seems... well I guess it seems cohesive enough, not having recalled many details about Borderlands 1 & 2. You’re basically helping Jack, arch-villain of Borderlands 2, but he’s not evil yet - maybe. He just wants to stop the moon being destroyed by a group called The Lost Legion, while perhaps finding a vault and turning a profit for Hyperion in the process. You watch him do his Anakin Skywalker -> Darth Vader transformation as the game progresses, but because the protagonist vault hunters themselves are morally suspect, they/you don’t seem to mind too much. It's an unusual situation, to be playing the bad-guy, and it’s handled pretty effectively by the writers, if you take this game in a vacuum. That being said, it's also kind of...contradictory, if we do consider background events of Borderlands 2, where Jack’s evilness is established as being a more endemic, long-term thing. Whether the whole coheres depends on what you think/who you listen to, but I've enjoyed reading some forum-posted opinions on the matter anyway.

And so: This brings us to the end of our Borderlands sojourn. We finally finished one - hooray! Promises well kept. Paradoxically, finishing the Pre-Sequel took less time than it took to pass on Borderlands 2. All up, to sift, avoid and play through these three games has taken nearly the entire winter, which is...sub-optimal. My wish is to be done with the B’s by the end of the year. The letter grows stale; I yearn for a fresh beginning. As of now we've got fifteen games to go. Four months. Hmm. Addendum: My multi-talented friend Caro started a Tinyletter. It doesn’t have much to do with games but I’ve been enjoying it very much. Consider signing up! It will cost you nothing except your time.

up next is Botanicula

#game53 #borderlands: the pre-sequel #borderlands #2k australia #gearbox #take-two interactive #2k #agamewithguns #fps #first person #rpg #australian games #2014 #loot

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