Let the Legendaries Flow

It took me some time to get into Borderlands 3. I was a huge fan of the first two games, enjoying each when they came out. They’re still high on my list of favorite games, and frequently I’ll boot up Borderlands or Borderlands 2 just to wander around, shoot enemies, and have a good time. I wouldn’t call either of them deep games, but they have fun, with amusing stories, enjoyable moments, and plenty of chunky shooting that I can get into. They’re the first shooting games I truly got into, and the fact that they scratched that same itch I felt when playing Diablo III certainly helped as well. Good, brainless fun.

The trouble for Borderlands 3 is that it came after another game in the series I also struggled with: Borderlands: The Presequel. That game, developed not by the main team at Gearbox but by 2K Australia, lacked the spark that made BorderlandsConceptually, Borderlands is Mad Max but set on an alien planet, with magic. The game play might be action-shooter-RPG fare, with a bit of Diablo thrown in, but the aesthetic is pure, Australian post-apocalyptic exploitation. great. It had the shooting, and the guns, and the action, all largely taken from Borderlands 2 since it was, more or less, a glorified standalone expansion, but it had a lackluster story. Worse, it refused to get out of its own way and actually let me play the game. I didn’t make it very far into my first attempt at Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, stopping sometime around level eight when I got truly bored of the missions.

When Borderlands 3 came out, then, it felt like the game had to redeem the series. One bad game had made me wary, and I was really hoping that the third mainline game could turn it all around. It didn’t. I wasn’t in love with the lead characters in the game, and I really hated the story. It had a pair of villains, the Calypso Twins, that were very irritating, but even the characters I had enjoyed in previous games grated on my nerves. Borderlands 3 illustrated to me something I didn’t realize could happen: good action can be brought down by bad story. I set the game aside after, once again, getting to around level eight or so, and then left it for years.

I’ve been recently doing a run through of the Borderlands games, though, giving each their fair due. I still didn’t like Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, but I could now at least say that I had played all the way through it and found some parts to be interesting. My hope was that, somehow, I’d actually find that Borderlands 3 wasn’t as bad as I remembered it, that somehow there was a good game buried in this title with characters I hated and a story I didn’t care about. And it’s true, there is. But that doesn’t entirely redeem the game, leaving it as a lesser entry I may very well struggle to get back to now that I’ve finished my main run through the title.

Borderlands 3 once again starts the player off on Pandora, the central world of the first two games. As one of four new vault hunters (a siren, a gunner, an operative, and a beastmaster) dropped onto the world and told to go find the Crimson Raiders for… reasons. Bad guys are shooting at you, and the Crimson Raiders aren’t, so that means they aren’t the bad guys. Now, the really bad guys are the Children of the Vault, the new cult that takes in all the psychos and freaks of Pandora, and the cult is run by Tyreen and Troy, the Calypsos, and Tyreen is a siren. After an early encounter, the COV make off not only with the vault key that the Crimson Raiders have been defending, but Tyreen also steals Lillith’s siren powers.

Depowered, but still the leader of the Raiders, Lilith orders the crew onto their spaceship, Sanctuary III, and has it make for the stars so they can chase after the Calypsos. This then leads to a world hopping adventure as the ship goes from planet to planet, with the vault hunters searching for new vault keys to open the vaults on each world. This is all to try and figure out what the Calypsos are after and stop them before they realize whatever plans it is that they have. Because if the Calypsos open all the vaults… well, actually, it’s never really clear why the Calypsos want to do that or what their end goal really is.

This is a big issue I had with Borderlands 3, and it’s part of the reason I struggled to get into it initially: the story sucks. This is based on three factors. First, the story doesn’t suit the characters you’re playing. Second, the main villains are incredibly irritating. And third, they don’t have a cohesive plan that makes any sense in the grand scheme of the game. It’s hard to care about the plot of a game when none of it works, but that’s what we have here: a plot that completely and utterly falls on its face every chance it gets.

I hear you saying, “but Borderlands barely had a story, so why should that matter in this third game.” There’s a difference, though. Borderlands, the first game, was powered on mystery. You were a vault hunter who willingly came to the planet because there was a rumor of a vault full of treasures waiting for you to find it. You played around on a sparse world, getting into trouble and as you slowly uncovered the clues about the vault. The story was the mystery and while you did a lot of other stuff that wasn’t directly related to the vault, what the game built towards was a reveal of what was actually at the vault. It paid off even if it was a low, slow burn.

Of course, Borderlands 2 got massive praise for its story, and that’s because it brought all the elements together. You had characters that were duped to come to Pandora for treasure, but were then immediately betrayed by the villain, Handsome Jack, when he tries to kill them. From the outset the game gives you a reason to want revenge against the bad guy, and then he constantly messages you, taunting you about his big plans. He’s going to open the vault and claim the monster that lives within it for himself. You have to stop him. It’s a clear goal with all the motivation you need, and it’s powered by a charismatic, funny, interesting villain who is a solid presence in the game.

And then Borderlands 3 messes all that up. Your vault hunters aren’t there because they care about Pandora; they’re just treasure hunters seeking fame and fortune. They have to dog in the fight between the COV and the Raiders, and yet every character automatically assumes you’re there to aid the battle. Hell, the villains taunt you regularly because they decided you’re one of the Raiders before the game even commits to the bit. And for what? So that the Calypsos can open vaults, kill the creatures within, and steal their power, all to do… well, I’m not certain. By the end of it Tyreen turns into a massive, mutant beast after stealing the power of the beast within the great vault and you’re left thinking, “and now, what can you actually do with that?” It’s incredibly stupid.

I had a lot of time to think about this because Borderlands 3 is a long, extensively constructed game with plenty of side quests, hidden bonuses, and other things to discover. It’s a huge amount of content, and that means there’s plenty of time to mull over the actual adventure you’re on and what it all means. You’re supposed to be stopping two tyrants from gaining… something. The game doesn’t make it clear exactly what they’re after until late in the game, and their final master plan is only truly revealed in the last act, so there’s a ton of time for you to walk and think about the decisions you’ve made. Why are you here? What are you doing? What led you to play this poorly written adventure?

I really hated the story of Borderlands 3. I hated its lead villains, but I also hated all the main characters that I’d previously spent three games playing with before. They’re all so quippy and dumb, making bad jokes and worse decisions. No one feels interesting or integral to the story anymore. In part that’s because the writers on this game, Danny Homan, Sam Winkler, and Connor Thomas Cleary, don’t have the same voice as the writer for the second game, Anthony Burch. But it’s also that the cast has become massive, and there’s only so much time that could be devoted to everyone and everything we’ve seen before. Borderlands 3 really needed focus. A small core of characters, a few we could root for, one villain we could root against, and a specific, tight story that made us care. The game lacks all of that.

And yet I did play through it and that’s because when you finally get ten or so levels into it and the game finally gets out of its own way so you can just play, it’s actually really fun. The Borderlands games have always been known for their rip-roaring gunplay and action, and Borderlands 3 really builds on that. It has four very interesting playable characters, each with unique skills and skill trees, along with a huge number of ways you can customize each of them. I played as Amara, the Siren, while my nephew took FL4K, the beastmaster, and we each had a grand old time. The characters were fun, their powers were great, and the guns were even better.

I will note that the treasure drops in Borderlands 3 are far more generous than in the previous games. In a playthrough of Borderlands 2 I think I could count on getting four, maybe five orange Legendary weapons total, but in Borderlands 3 by about level 20 I was already fully kitted out in Legendary gear, and every boss fight, and plenty of random, tougher enemies were also dropping oranges left, right, and center. It got to a point where I was ignoring anything that wasn’t orange because there simply wasn’t any reason to use anything less.

This is a good and bad thing. On the one hand, the legendary weapons are really solid, with cool mechanics to each of them along with plenty of killing power. At one point I picked up a level 20 fire sniper rifle and I used it to melt bosses up through level 40; it was that good. Every time I got a new orange I could trust that it would be lethal and effective, and I was generally right. But that also meant that all of the bazillion of guns that the game features, from common whites, uncommon greens, rare blues, and epic purples, all were cast aside by level 20 because I didn’t need them anymore. They’re a huge selling point of the game, all the many different guns you can use, but they ended up being vendor trash because I wouldn’t need them when I had my full compliment of oranges. The balance of the game was… off.

But it was fun. I loved going through the game, ripping through enemies, melting bosses, and having a grand old time as an overpowered machine of death. Even when I got into the end game, handling post-game content (much of which we’ll review individually later) and upping the difficulty via Mayhem levels (which increase the difficulty of enemies in exchange for better loot and gear) I still had a blast just being this gun-totting bad-ass. The game, when boiled down to its basic gameplay, is fun as hell. It’s just any time the story has to rear its head and get in the way that it all falls apart.

And that’s really where my conflict lies. On the one hand I enjoy simply roaming around and shooting enemies. That was fun from start to finish and never got old. It’s the Borderlands bread and butter, and this third entry does it so well. At the same time, though, this is a really long game that is sold as much on its story as its gameplay. It has a long story that makes you follow it through to the end of its linear progression, and if you’re going to play the game you have to play it all out. I just don’t care about the story at all. Not one bit.

If this were just an arena shooter you played with friends, I think I’d have no issue recommending Borderlands 3, especially to the faithful. The gameplay is solid, chunky, and a lot of fun. But you have to get through a long intro that forces you through its story without giving you reason to care, and then it drags you along on an adventure that I never, not once, actually invested in. If you’re someone like me that plays these games as much for the action as the world that it’s all set in then Borderlands 3 misses the mark. It takes effort to get into the game and get to the good bits and I don’t see everyone putting in that time for a story that simply doesn’t matter.

Now that I have a solid character and great gear I’m working my way through all the end game content. I’m in it now so I don’t see a point in stopping just yet. But would I go back and make another character to do it all over again… ehh.. Maybe not. And that’s why I struggle to recommend the game. It’s fun for what it is, a looter shooter with a lot of gear, practically throwing its best, legendary bits at you to keep playing. But for the long haul the story just isn’t there to keep me coming back again and again to revisit all its moments. I love the gameplay, but deep down I think I still truly hate Borderlands 3.