On the Quest for Buried Treasure

It’s hard to say if Gearbox could have known that Borderlands 2 would be as big of a hit as it became. Borderlands was a solid performer, and it’s like the studio expected they’d get solid sales and equivalent hype for the sequel. There was a solid fanbase, and a sizable contingent of recurring players for the first game, so likely the studio expected good sales… just maybe not to the degree that it eventually found. Borderlands 2 was a monster hit, though. In comparison to Borderlands’ lifetime sales of 6 Mil copies, Borderlands 2 would sell over 31 Mil copies. That is a staggering achievement.

And it’s one that really couldn’t be accounted for in its first expansion. Captain Scarlett and Her Pirate’s Booty came out just one month after Borderlands 2 was released, which meant it was already well into production by the time the game came out. Whatever feedback Gearbox would have gotten from Borderlands 2 couldn’t have been used for this first expansion; there just wasn’t time. And that helps explain why this expansion feels out of place, almost behind the times when it came to what players of Borderlands 2 expected from the game and its expansions. It almost feels like an adventure meant for the first game, despite clearly taking place in the second.

In a way, Captain Scarlett and Her Pirate’s Booty feels like a parallel adventure to The Secret Armory of General Knoxx. The adventure drops you into a new area, one that’s kind of rundown. There you meet a helpful fellow who guides you towards the parts you need to build a new vehicle. Then you’re introduced to a new, female character, Captain Scarlett, who tells you all about the adventure she needs you to go on, with the promise that there just might be a vault full of treasure for you to get, if you’re brave enough.

You head out on the quest, going hither and yon back and forth across this new landscape in your new vehicle and, all the while, Captain Scarlett talks to you, giving you information, adding color commentary, and generally just being a voice in your ear. You complete the various parts of the adventure, only to then find yourself confronting a big threat to Pandora. Defeating it, and the antagonist behind it all, nets you that big pile of booty… and then you get to do it again because if one pile of booty is good, a double-dip (or more) is even better. The adventure, while not a carbon copy of The Secret Armory of General Knoxx, feels similar enough in scope that you get the feeling like the programmers were told, “it’s the same case, do the same thing.”

In some ways this makes sense. The Secret Armory of General Knoxx was one of the best expansions for Borderlands. It fleshed out the world, had a great antagonist, and was an adventure that players could really sink their teeth into. It was the template, in a way, that Borderlands 2 used for its own adventure, just brought up to scale. Taking that same template, an adventure that players already had shown they liked, and doing it again in another expansion works, at a mercenary level, since the programmers can be given marching orders without worry they’ll go off the reservation.

Unfortunately there’s a lot working against Captain Scarlett and Her Pirate’s Booty and it keeps the adventure from meeting the heights of The Secret Armory of General Knoxx. The first problem is that the adventure simply isn’t that interesting. At a base level the expansion is kind of a tedious slog to play through. The quest is long and drawn out, with multiple missions requiring you to travel to the ass end of new maps, spending a lot of time digging through areas just to complete these missions. Borderlands had the benefit of having short, bite-sized missions, even in its expansions, but Captain Scarlett and Her Pirate’s Booty operates on the idea that “more is better”, and it does it to a degree that becomes tiresome (and that’s even before you take into account side quests that force you to replay long areas for a second time just for the sake of padding).

The adventure itself also isn’t that engaging. You’re called in by Captain Scarlett to help her find the four pieces of a compass so she can get to a vault of treasure. That’s it. Just a big treasure hunt, in a game that is already packed to the gills with loot and treasure. There’s no world-ending threat, no big villain looking to plot your demise. The only motivating factor here is greed and if, by chance, you decide not to help Captain Scarlett, nothing bad would happen to Pandora. This is about as low-stakes of an adventure as you could get, which is a real let down after the big adventure battling Handsome Jack a player had just gone through.

Scarlett herself fails as a villain. She says, from the beginning, she is going to betray you. She plays it off as a joke, but she then repeats it more than a few times. This ruins her character in a couple of ways. First, she’s not actually all that funny, going for the kind of over-the-top silliness and quirkiness that fans would quickly say was the worst part of later 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. writing. But the fact that she makes it obvious she’s going to betray you also means that you don’t feel any need to invest in her as a character. She’s an obvious villain, and irritating to boot, ruining any kind of fun experience you could have had with her.

I think, instead of making her a pirate captain, the game should have had her as a deck hand or maybe first in command of the ship. She could be working with you to try and prevent her own captain from attempting to open a vault and free a beast. Then not only would you be trying to prevent another threat to Pandora, it would also make sense why she’s helping you. Only near the end of the expansion, then, would she double-cross you right after you’ve killed the captain, taking the keys you collected for herself so she can have the treasure of the vault. Maybe she gets attacked by the creature living within, felled by her own hubris, or maybe she controls it and fights alongside the monster. Whatever the case, she needs to be an interesting, active participant in a story that matters, and in her current form Captain Scarlett is not and does not.

About the one thing that is fun about the expansion is the art design, which leans heavily into the pirate theming. Considering we’d already had zombies, soldiers, and a whole lot of wasteland adventures before this, a pirate setting was a nice change of pace. You’d fight pirate-based bad guys, ride around on sand boats, and have a whole lot of rip roaring pirate adventures. The concept isn’t bad on its own, and I credit the designers for doing their best to make it work. The core experience, though, just doesn’t rise to the occasion.

When it was released Captain Scarlett and Her Pirate’s Booty underwhelmed. It was the first expansion for the game, and the only one we had for a few months, so as Borderlands fans we, of course, played it. But as time went on the flaws of the expansion became pretty evident. Now, when I do a playthrough of Borderlands 2, I generally ignore this expansion. It’s too long, too tedious, and simply not interesting enough to hook my attention. There was promise to Captain Scarlett and Her Pirate’s Booty, but the final product didn’t live up to the expectations set by Borderlands 2 itself.

Thankfully the next expansion for the sequel would come along quickly enough, and it was a massive improvement in just about every way. Plus, it gave is Mr. Torgue, and that character is a treasure unto himself.