Can we talk about Borderlands 3?

Submitted by RiKSh4w t3_11e3zp7 in gaming

I know I'm late to the party but I just got around to playing it through and... I'm disappointed.

So firstly, I felt the humour rarely hit. I remember liking the humour of the other games quite a lot. Especially TPS (The Pre Sequel) but I might be biased as an Aussie. In comparison BL3 was often eye rolling, samey, or even cringe at times. Is this a case of humour evolving over time? I feel like most of the jokes felt of a similar maturity but maybe the crass, absurdist borderlands style of comedy has simply aged to be not funny anymore. Or, maybe it was just poorly written. I don't know at this stage but I didn't chuckle a lot and there was only a few times I genuinely laughed at any piece of dialogue. Most times it felt perfunctory, like I could acknowledge the game was having a joke (like the mission which is essentially "COFFEE! Amirite guys!?")

Gameplay was fine. Most enemies are just fodder and that's fine, and I felt that the game threw a few more of the 'tougher' enemies into the mix at times. But I felt zero need to pay attention to what I was actually doing and especially what ammo type I was using. Bosses were especially bad, with most either dying (or reaching their next stage) within a few moments or just not dealing enough damage to be a problem.

But you know what gets it's own paragraph? No OZ kits. TPS showed us that low gravity areas and OZ kits were an amazing addition to the Borderlands formula. So what did they do with it? One. Only a singular low gravity area in the entire game. Oh and all characters can ground slam now but it does essentially zero damage. Why on Pandora did they ever decide that scrapping this mechanic was a good idea? Especially considering the space hopping theme of BL3? Ridiculous and unforgivable IMO.

I felt that the loot and RPG mechanics got real sloppy. Despite each character having three tree's which you can mix and match within, I rarely felt that any point was worth investing, and probably could have gone the whole game without spending any points outside of unlocking my ability. Additionally, Legendaries were far too common. I mean sure, we all love getting that orange glow after a boss but... it got to a point where it wasn't purple or orange, I wasn't paying attention to it. Legendaries were FAR more common than in any previous game. This would be fine if it had a similar system to BL2 where you had a few tiers beyond legendary to supplement the system but in the first playthrough that wasn't the case. So, what's the point in showering me with green and white loot when it's all just to be sold? I can't even mark it as junk while I pick it up. You loot FOUR vaults in BL3, which is at least 4x more than any other game before and yet the majority of them instantly had their contents sold, if picked up at all.

And story... oh boy the story. I was really on the side of BL3 for this one. Handsome Jack was lightning in a bottle and I was really going to be forgiving of the game for moving on from him after dragging him out for 3 games. But it just didn't deliver. Firstly, as per the ending of Tales from the Borderlands, there was a big promise made about something BIG on the horizon. Yet... are the Calypso Twins that big problem? I consistently felt like the only problem to beware of from these two, is cutscene power. These two, during gameplay, accomplish jack shit. During cutscenes they are gods and devour main characters like nothing else but only because they have the capacity to mysteriously make the Vault Hunters (player characters) obnoxiously absent. Seriously, every time they do something menacing it's because they conjured some BS excuse for why you aren't currently shooting their faces off. Now the game claims that Pandora and Elpis were in the balance here and that we almost lost both of them but.. I wasn't sold. Nothing felt real. I was never on board with the stakes and true enough, everything was wrapped up in the end by arbitrary sacrifice/deus ex. So, I felt it sucks on a macro level and on a micro level, there was also a ton of issues. Mordecai and Brick, two characters from the first game, and Tina, a major catch from the second, resign themselves to the 'B team' for this game. Wut. You're telling me that Pandora is about to explode, the entire planet and they aren't called in to help??! Ridiculous that we are asked to run errands for them. Lilith, The Firehawk, potent siren is defeated by the ol' "woops you were distracted by something really innocuous"? Why not have (you know...) consequences from destroying Hyperion instead? Jack was mining Eridium, we kill Jack = no more eridium. Lilith use Eridium to feel good, Tyreen use human to feel good. Lilith got no more power, Tyreen got lots of power. Nope, that would make narrative sense. Instead she just get's got by cutscene power and arbitrary 'surprise'.

Aesthetically the game is subpar. Pandora looks about the same as ever, which I'd forgive if the other planets were good. Sanctuary is a busy mess that's a pain to navigate. Promethea... Well, they start you in a goddamn sewer, and the final area is... also a sewer. Could have been a cool metropolis and they just... didn't do that? Athenas (has a confusing name given one of the protagonists of TPS, and) only shows up for 1 mission. You're there once and the game tells you to piss off. We aren't using this aesthetic anymore. Eden-6 is nice, if derivative of Pandora's wilds. And you're also only treated to one mission from the Eridium homeworld which somehow feels very familiar.

I did enjoy myself in the game, probably because the pedigree of the Borderlands game's is inherently good. But I'm so at odds with myself over this one. I feel like I should be angry, and betrayed by the game. But I also feel like ambivalence is more logical. But if I emit that then it won't get my message across. I believe there's worth in these games and Gearbox dropped the ball. Perhaps on purpose as a cashgrab, but perhaps because of carelessness. Regardless; Do better. You have the ability to. Make good games with what you've been given. Goddamnit...

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The_Cost_Of_Lies t1_jac91uv wrote

Borderlands 3 has the best guns, gameplay and map design in the series, including Wonderlands. It's honestly not even close.

However, Borderlands 2 had the best story and characters. BL3 is not great in that regard, though the DLC is a big improvement.

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i010011010 t1_jaccppt wrote

I enjoyed it. Nevermind the story happening in the background, and I never cared for BL before. This one finally felt like the gameplay was refined enough to hold my interest, and I rarely play first-person games.

I picked up BL2 to go back and see if my opinion would change, and it has not. That game is rough by comparison, even simple quality-of-life changes were immediately missed.

The setting for BL seems promising, if only another team could take it over and spin it into something more like a Bioware classic. Would love to see what they could do putting a real story and characters (plus companions) to it, instead of being another shoot-and-loot.

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RiKSh4w OP t1_jaca094 wrote

BL3 had the 'best' guns in that I was commonly getting a legendary gun that was just like "Oh, this is a good assault rifle/shotgun". It wasn't unique or required some funky firing style. Just, a lot of decent guns.

But you could have given me an M4 from Modern Warfare and it would have done exactly the same. Just a gun where you pull the trigger and it shoots. All the 'wacky' guns were such a letdown in DPS that it was unusable.

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OrangeYawn t1_jac95rf wrote

Yes, as far as I'm concerned Borderlands 3 killed the franchise. I'll always have 1 and 2.

They deformed the art in order pander to the most audience instead of making this awesome thing meant to be enjoyed like the first two.

The gameplay is great, it felt good, but it felt like they didn't give 2 fucks about the characters or story anymore, and wonderlands is even worse. It's a shame, I was looking forward to it so much.

The fact that all the weapons had parts listed that you could see, felt like a big slap in the face too. Like why the fk wouldn't you let people swap parts of you make a part system?

I would have rather seen Claptraps lifeless corpse than hear that new one.

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nitrobskt t1_jaevr03 wrote

Fun fact, the parts system has been around since the first game. The only thing 3 did different in that regard was to let you actually inspect the parts.

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rikon67 t1_jacb13r wrote

I completed the game as all characters expect amara, and i liked only few parts, most planets were just big open areas and i had feeling that geting somewhere took ingame weeks, and story was for my taste too much complex, and last DLC ( arm race and the echocast of mayas apprentice- i dont remember her name becaus i didnt liked her), was just cash grabe from my point of view, Long stroy short, i like BL 1 more then BL3 even that BL1 is less colored

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Vlad__the__Inhaler t1_jacdejg wrote

Oh boi.

A buddy wanted me to play it with him, he already beat it twice at that point. He knew what was coming, i didnt. Had great fun in the beginning, id disagree on the gameplay criticism. The hame felt better than the first 2 regarding gunplay and mechanics.

Then we got to THAT scene at the end of the first pandora part. I couldnt comprehend what just happened, its so fucking dumb.

But we kept playing. I realized more and more how horrendously bad the writing was, from new and old characters alike, everything felt like a knockoff from what i was used to. Btw i went back to BL2 and the humor does in fact hold up to this day.

And then came the part with Maya and the little shitstain. I think i yelled at my friend for 40 minutes after that, while he broke apart from laughter.

We finished the game, although i had even less to enjoy after that. Also not capitalising the name of the last boss as DesTROYer . . .

Fuck Gearbox and fuck Randy Bitchford

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RiKSh4w OP t1_jacfecm wrote

I had heard that everyone was upset at Ana (is that her name?) but honestly, I wasn't too upset by her. Yeah she was the 'annoying apprentice' cliche but I kinda felt for her? She was a ^little bit coddled. I saw a lot of people blaming her for Maya's death and I couldn't disagree more.

Maya died to cutscene power. We killed the boss and were miraculously absent from the cutscene, even though we spent like 30 seconds in the vault. Imagining that Ana didn't misbehave or didn't exist, there's a million reasons why Maya might have said "Alright, head inside while I hang out here... undefended" and it would have been just as BS. Ana wasn't the reason Maya died. Plot convenience was why Maya died.

I do think BL3 was a little improvement on the gameplay of BL2, but miles behind the Oz kit innovations of TPS. Did you ever play it?

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Vlad__the__Inhaler t1_jacqgwf wrote

Yeah mayas death was what upset me the most, the thing about Ana though: Maya died BECAUSE they wanted to focus on Ana. She is the reason she died, but on a meta level instead of a narrative level.

I didn't play the presequel, mind telling me what this OZ kit is?

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RiKSh4w OP t1_jad7x20 wrote

Again, I wouldn't really put that on Ana. I think the devs just realised that they now had 8 previous player characters without any idea of what to do with them and had to some off. Better than what they did with Brick and Mordecai...

So in TPS, almost every area is low grav. And quite a lot of the areas have no air. So you need an OZ kit (o2 kit), to breath. You find oz kits like any other piece of loot and they offer different oxygen capacities. They also gave you the ability to ground slam, and between ground slams and O2 capacity you had another gear slot to keep an eye out for. Good stuff (at least until you found the oz kit that reduced the cost of boosting and never changed again...)

Now, this did mean that you were 'tethered' to oxygen supplies. You couldn't stand out in the middle of nowhere forever or you'd choke to death. But honestly I never found that to be a problem. The maps are dotted with geysers which refill your air, most buildings have a forcefield and are breathable within, and you can find o2 canisters inside crates and such.

But aside from the slam the best thing the oz kits could do could boost you. So doubletapping jump in middair would 'boost' you in one direction (consuming some air to do so), like a double jump. This was slower than a car but much faster than running when you're in a low grav area. It made it so much more fun to run around! Something you do constantly in BL! It wasn't overpowered since you had no control once you boosted but that just made traversal into a little minigame of steering your boosts, managing your oxygen, jumping onto objects to get height for your next boost, and generally enjoying flying through the air.

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loyaltomyself t1_jacf41w wrote

I too liked the O2 kits, but a lot of other people didn't, and I suspect that's why they didn't make a return for this game. As for the main story, yeah it's kinda crap. BUT the DLC stuff, that's where it's at though.

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RiKSh4w OP t1_jacfm2m wrote

What's not to like about OzKits?

Did people not like the oxygen timer? I can understand that, even if I felt like the timer was quite lenient. But they didn't need to return to oxygen management, just the middair boost and scaled slam attack.

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brian11e3 t1_jacm14z wrote

Borderlands 2 was so good that it basically ruined the rest of the series for me.

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GARGEAN t1_jad8gds wrote

No PhysX - no luv

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NaturalNines t1_jadn5bg wrote

Playing the Gunner class was extremely disappointing. It started off so awesome, and then the mech just becomes one giant target that can't see shit when you're affected by an element, which late game is freaking always. Went from a fun powerup to just a shield regen ability.

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PhantomTroupe-2 t1_jaer2h5 wrote

I played Borderlands 2 and shit it off after a few hours cuz it didn’t grab my attention. This sounds about how I would expect Borderlands 3 to be.

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nitrobskt t1_jaeuyzp wrote

I started off reading this with the mindset of "I haven't played 3, but have played the previous titles so let's see what's up." Once you mentioned the twins I remembered that I have, in fact, played BL3, and I think that about sums up my thoughts and feelings on the game.

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