So, turns out Borderlands 3 is okay

 Yeah, so we have a bunch of people who have aged out of the demographic for the Borderlands games who are all acting like Borderlands 3 is terrible and awful and a bunch of other stuff that it both is not and works as a form of hyperbole when talking about it 

A lot of it comes from the fact that most of the player base of Borderlands games suck at doing media criticism. Mostly due to having been playing Borderlands 2 instead of learning proper media criticism

So most of the complaints are on par with that crappy lazy 00s crap where Disney Princesses were terrible and stuff like that. Or on par with CinemaSins

The game is okay. It isn't as good as Borderlands 2--but that is because it has Handsome Jack in it

Let's Remove Handsome Jack for a start

"Some nonsense!" -- Claptrap

So, Handsome Jack is a hard act to follow. Though it isn't from good writings. It is from a cisheterowhite guy saying stuff with confidence and conviction

Now, just change any of those to either trans, homo, black or woman (or a Gay Trans Black Woman), and Handsome Jack's stuff starts to fall apart

I'd love to live in a world where you could have a Gay Trans Black Woman able to do the same level of nonsense of Handsome Jack and have people love every second of it--but we don't live in that world

Maybe Borderlands 4 will feature somebody who is pretty much Handsome Jack by a Gay Trans Black Woman. Which would be awful. So awful it would distract from the skillset of Marcus' son. Which they've been hinting at for a while now

Going further... let's demonstrate that it is entirely THE DELIVERY OF HANDSOME JACK AND NOT THE WRITING with an exercise I call "Steve from accounting"

The Steve from Accounting Exercise 

So, this could be done as a mod--but find somebody who is able to voice a character that has no confidence to them at all. Their voice kind of has a bit of a droning effect--while also being very nasally. Have the pitch be somewhere weird, with it constantly cracking at various points in time. Have the voice also snort

Then have Steve from Accounting do every line done by Handsome Jack

Add some flare, like Steve having an asthma attack every now and again, or making weird wonky noises

For any time other characters mention Handsome Jack, have it dubbed over with a very monotone text to speech of "Steve from Accounting"

I am very certain that this exercise alone will demonstrate that good delivery and performance can completely hide when writing is weak or bad

The nature of Borderlands Writing

"I am a total dingus who likes sitting in his own farts" -- Jack Black

So, Borderlands Writing is mostly done by throwing stuff at the wall, and seeing what sticks, and then pretending it was a Mystery Box type situation going on with it. It has included memes since the first game

Most of the First Game has been retconned to no longer be canon. Most of the Second Game appears to also be having this happen as well. With the Presequal not mentioned. There is a good chance all of Borderlands 3 will get Retconned to no longer be part of canon as will any thing after that

Let's go over two examples. One from Borderlands 3, and the other "from" the first entry

Did Typhon Hook Up with Six Year Old Maya?

So, on Athena, there is a bit of an odd bit of stuff for how it plays out. Typhus is the first vault hunter in the universe--and we learn stuff about him by just driving to the wrong spot because we got lost

He also has a bunch of recordings posted all over

Most of these recordings are fairly easy to get to. With them being on walkways, places you can just walk up to--and various places that while out of the way, could be considered "hiking trails"

Generally the only times they are hard is when there is an active battle going on with the area that has clearly destroyed a lot of the stuff

One exception though is on the Planet Athena

The three recording log entries for Typhon are located in a spot that requires a ridiculous amount of parkour to reach. Locked at the back of a graveyard that is off limits to most of the people who live there--never mind tourists. With the last one locked in a safe enclosure that you need to help Maya get back open. As the attack on the planet has it closed off and inaccessible. Though with indications that Maya has been in there before

Now, if you listen to the recordings Typhon talks about hooking up with the Queen of Athena

Which, would be fine if before Maya there had been one in the last few hundred years. But Athena had been without its queen for hundreds of years before Maya shows up to take that role. This is supported by dialogue in other areas of the game (as well as bits in Borderlands 2)

So, either Typhon is lying, and it is getting locked up because most companies need Typhon to seem at least somewhat sincere. A total scoundrel--but still sincere. As otherwise they might run into issues with people trusting them (which... uh... is already fairly worn thin)

Or Typhon had inappropriate relations with Maya when she was six, seven or eight. Based largely upon the timeline when Typhon would have disappeared from public view 

The most correct answer is that the team that made those recordings likely did it without knowing that Typhon is not somebody from several hundred years ago--but alive today. With them coming from earlier in the design process, and forgotten about when it came to updating the writing in other places

As _MOST_ of the Borderlands games are very slapdash put together. In this case, they just accidentally suggested that Typhon molested a child via purely not actually thinking stuff through

Did Claptrap Take Over Pandora 

Further in weird ways the writing is "just throw a bunch of stuff around and see what works" is the DLC for the first Borderlands Game where Claptrap takes over Pandora. Which has been removed from Canon--except for where it has not had this happen to it

In Borderlands 2, this DLC is refranced offhand. Though in a way that makes it sound like they are talking about sex stuffs. While also acting like it never happened

Then in the Borderlands Presequal, some DLC is given to suggest the take over of Pandora was just a hallucination that Claptrap had while a cyber attack was going on his systems. Except the cyber attacks point in time and the planetary take over occur at different points in time

The Cyber Attack also explains that Claptrap cannot make use of stairs as a side effect. Giving a bit of a personal vendetta when Handsome Jack places them everywhere

.... excceeeeeepppptttt...

On Sanctuary 3 in Borderlands 3, Claptrap is seen to be able to go from the loading bay area at the bottom of Sanctuary 3 all the way up to the bridge which is at the top of Sanctuary 3. Claptrap really should not be able to do this--and it never is actually explained

Why? Because the people making the game generally don't think that hard about what they include. They just include a bunch of stuff--and then act like the stuff that didn't work didn't happen, and move on with the stuff that appears to have some progress 

Let's Address What People Have Said About Borderlands 3

"Oh no" -- anonymous

So, I've already mentioned that the criticisms levied at Borderlands 3 are crappy stuff on par with 00s talk about Disney Princesses. Naturally I'm going to have to point out why they are silly 

None of this is "defending Borderlands 3". There are reasons to complain. However, that doesn't mean we need to field every thing people say as a complaint against it. If your complaints are shullbit, you need to be told it is shullbit

Carte Blanc approaches are bad

Maya had to die for Lore Reasons

So, one of the loudest complaints about Borderlands 3 is that they killed Maya

Which is stupid, as Maya was not going to live to the end of that game. They had set up a bunch of lore about how the Sirens work, that in order to demonstrate this stuff, Maya was going to need to be unalived for plot/lore related reasons

When Maya is killed in cut scene, your character is currently inside a vault, so she isn't right in front of you--like what happened with Roland

No idea why people don't realise it is clear the cut scene is suppose to end with you coming out of the vault, having shown up after it ended. The dialogue at the start of the cut scene is the same dialogue that is happening as you go into the vault to grab the Eridium harvesting knife and map to the next location. You can literally putter around and have stuff start to sound awkward, as the game kind of expects you to go right into the vault 

The cut scene exists because most of the player base would be too dumb to clue in to what happened before hand otherwise

But a bunch of players missed the hints that this cut scene happens while your PC is away, and somehow missed the various lore dumps that kind of required Maya to not make it to the end

I will note that it is weird Lilith is arguing with Maya about "passing on powers" while Tanis is standing right in front of them. But the people writing these games are very much on the "just throw stuff out there, and don't revise things based upon later stuff". The other games also kind of have this issue as well

Eva is literally just a kid

So, Eva acts like how a child her age would usually behave when presented with all the trauma and shullbit thrown at her. She acts like a real person

Which doesn't work when everybody else in the game is a Loonie Tunes cartoon character

Her issue is that she causes a bit of tone conflict with how here character comes into stuff, compared to everybody else. Give her a world full of real people (and not cartoon characters) and she is a decent character. Throw her in a room full of the nonsense zanny shullbit of Borderlands--and she stands out from everybody else

It is like that time Punisher did a cross over with Archie. The tones conflict with each other

She is fine... and well, there needs to be more real people in the world of Borderlands. They just didn't do enough effort to indicate that real people exist in this universe. As literally everybody else we've run into is a ridiculous over the top clown caricature

If they are going to do the whole corporate intrigue stuff... they cannot have everybody be rubber hose armed type people

She is fine... the idea of a normal person hanging out with muppets was not handled well with Borderlands and is kind of a bit jarring

The Villains are The Paul Bros

Now, because most of the complaints about Borderlands 3 come from people who are professional streamers--they come from people who lack any real self-awareness to realise what the twin villains are making fun of and mocking

Essentially, they are a slightly less evil version of The Paul Bros with Logan Paul being gender swapped for Lore reasons

One of their segments they upload are their "epic pranks"--where "prank" is the definition you mostly see on YouTube Prank Channels

Mix a little bit with Tea Channels and Jim Bakker... and well... that is what is going on there

The reason why the villains don't hit as hard as Handsome Jack is they don't seem to actually believe in anything really. Sure, they understand themselves as the greatest--but everything else they say? They don't really believe

They mostly are saying it for the Vine... or the Tok... or what are kids on the day? For the Toilet?

Which fits with them being based upon The Paul Bros

Oh right, and people also misunderstand the fact they changed the recordings in a subway station to have fart jokes, that they are personally talking to the PC with that stuff. The Echo communications system shows up differently in the game when it is used compared to stuff over intercoms

No, it doesn't repeat on loop... but... I think that was because the game designers wanted to avoid the most irritating bugs in that level's designs. As imagine it replaying everytime the enemies in the area respawn?

Like... the people moaning about these Less Evil Paul Bros lead by Womanified Logan Paul generally are not the sort to understand why streamer might be something people might mock

The villains have always been immature

So, people want to act like the villains of the previous game have been mature and dignified and not petulant toddlers

The main villain of the first Borderlands game was literally a Toddler. We didn't directly interact with said Toddler leading the local detachment of Atlas corporation... but everything happening on the planet was a direct effect of all of Atlas' local forces being commanded by a literal Toddler

The second game's villain was Handsome Jack... who uh... is actually somehow more immature than the Paul Bros of Borderlands 3

You only are now noticing because you cannot not see it

So part of this might be because a lot of the playerbase for the Borderlands series were introduced while they were teenagers

I was introduced to the series when I was in my mid to late twenties. As that was how old I was when the first Borderlands game was released

So I can easily be all, "yeah... it has always been like this"

No, I've not really waiting for new releases and new bits in the series. I know better than to make that mistake

I mean, yes, I got excited for the release of Fitness Boxing Hatsune Miku where I currently live just a couple of days ago... but I was more surprised at it coming sooner than I expected. I was thinking it would be Novembre. So... like... that isn't quite comparable to the whole waiting for the new Borderlands stuff with bated breath

Yes, Borderlands 3 isn't as strong as Borderlands 2... but none of the other entries are as strong as that one

It is like watching Pokemon fans get upset when the new Pokemon game isn't on par with Gen 5. Only Gen 5 has been on par with Gen 5

Reasonable Pokemon fans (yes, I know, fictional cryptids) would know to compare new entries to Gen 3, 4, 6 and 7. Those being more middle of the road expectations for how Pokemon can play out

Though Gen 3's dexit is still far worse than any of the later Dexits that have happened

But yeah... it would be nice if I didn't have to occasionally see stuff on par with the "But Disney Princess Bad" from the 00s