Borderlands 3 - Searching For What Works

Borderlands 3 Has More of Everything, Good and Bad

 Borderlands has always been a mixed bag for me. The first two games always mixed annoying and entertaining elements. The addictive game of "what's in the box" that makes looter shooters appealing, comes from the scattered weapon boxes and loose firearms, the product of cartoonish mass-murder on some alien planet. Rinse and repeat for two main games and a prequel and finally Borderlands 3 hit the scene. For better or for worse, it's a hot mess that feels more like Borderlands 1 and 2 talking over each other than a manifestation of lessons learned and ingredients refined. The clutter of elements from the first two entries must have been multiplying like fruit flies, because there's an exponential amount of content in Borderlands 3 compared to the previous two games. This time there's more planets, more side-characters, and more vaults full of multi-colored loot. Some of these elements enhance the gameplay, though most stifle it with clutter. 

The first and second Borderlands games always had that Echo comms banter. Characters spouting exposition and cringe comedy every few minutes to fill the otherwise perfectly fine staccato of gunfire and explosions. Here is where Borderlands 3 doubles down on it's most annoying element. Characters of both good and evil alignment spew verbal diarrhea like it's open mic night at a slam-poetry event. It's a constant stream of dialogue from goodguys, badguys and characters that don't appear onscreen aside from their fifteen minutes of fame courtesy of skippable cutscenes. Borderlands 3 tries to convey emotion and character so much that when it finally works, it doesn't justify the noise pollution from characters I'd rather be shooting. The biggest utility of the Echo network chatter was story exposition, but I'd rather they left it a mystery. 

The borderlands series was always about those mysterious vaults buried in backwater planet Pandora. Ancient aliens and their secret treasures motivate Vault hunters to clash with bandits, zealots and handsome villains, that was always the point. This time there's multiple planets to explore and vaults to loot, but it all amounts to the search for some key fragments to open the bigger, more important vault. It's a setup that justifies the McGuffin vault tech that the main story characters fight over, all of them being Sirens. If you didn't pay attention in the first two games, or in my case, all three. The Sirens are magical space wizard people make up the mage class in the series, this time the entire game revolves around them. From the two antagonizing Kalypso twins, to the supporting cast of latent Sirens bursting from the woodwork, it became a crutch for lazy writing. All of them bickering back and forth on a radio network that quickly turned into a message board for angsty space-witches. It's fitting that they're called Sirens given their ability to cause headaches.

Not all that shines is gold, but I'll take it

Another source of headaches is the loot system sifting through a crowded inventory. Borderlands has always had this issue, walking that fine line between looter-shooter and trash collector. Because the third game follow the "more the merrier" school of thought, there's an equally huge amount of guns to collect. I'll admit, that's the thing that had me coming back to the series, it is addictive to check the stats on the next orange or purple rarity drop, but only when there's a sense of rarity. Late game and newgame+ both suffer from the visual spectacle of loot confetti and over-inflation of orange drop rates. The loot-score, new to Borderlands 3, often didn't help me discern good from bad oranges and I found myself carrying the same gun for several experience levels before parting with it. It's a double-edged gun here, on one hand it's fun to collect loot like a hoarder at a landfill, but then again you'll have to sort through all those items, selling them for petty cash. This is a problem in ARPG games too, but the difference here is gameplay. The combat in ARPG games is so repetitive that it's downplayed in favor of loot and stats, whereas the strongest element of FPS games is the actual gunplay. 

Large open world areas make their return, with a vengeance. Across the handful of new planets and areas there are the same vehicle segments that further distract from the meat and potatoes of gameplay. Never have I heard someone praise the vehicle sections of Borderlands. Those Road Warrior looking buggies and carts are justified by big empty spaces with the occasional enemy spawn or ramp to do sick jumps on, but it hasn't gotten any better in terms of entertainment value. The fps gunplay once again outshines the vehicle element, so by the third game it needs to be either improved or down-played entirely. Driving isn't even necessary a lot of the time with the wealth of teleport waypoints that unlock across the game, further making vehicles redundant. 

The problem and benefit of Borderland 3's design is that there's a lot of content and elements fighting for attention. When it comes to creating any kind of content, you've got to pick a favorite child to sell to the public. Maybe the wrong analogy, but I only picked one, that's the point, just what should I be doing? Just which character should be getting my attention? Borderland 3's answer is always "yes", followed by a barrage of things both good and bad. I did like finding rare equipment and I did like the gunplay. It'd be lying to say that I hated all the characters, but there's no excuse for constant drone of character dialogue that shouldn't have passed quality control. A decent game to play in the evolution of Borderlands titles, but Borderlands 4 needs to cut the bulk and play to it's strengths, that's my opinion anyways, Comrades.

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