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Borderlands 3 and peculiar case of representation
5 years ago
So, i got my hands on BL3 a month or so ago, now that its finally on steam and have some rather mixed feelings about it.
The gameplay is vastly improved compared to BL2, with tons of little quality of life improvements (more mobility, easier shopping, new badass rank system etc.) - so, as far as "turn your brains off and play" type of grindy game are concerned, its a really good thing to get.
The part i got a problem with is the writing itself. Aside of few rather nice lines, the main story and characters are written rather atrociously - and in a series that never boasted great writing, thats telling.
The main plot is as bad as it gets - the player constantly needs to be told that yeah, the stakes are really high ya guise - something thay never really comes off during the gameplay. Even while trying to play this high stake storyline, the plot is 80% filler, and it feels like that the story could be told in much less time than what it ended up being. The main antagonists are bland and the try to present them as cult leaders/streamers comes off as rather cringy.
As far as friendly NPCs are concerned, there are hardly any new ones introduced, and the "main" ones that have the most impact on the story are all female. The game didn't manage to introduce a single male character, and the ones that came up were played for laughs. And even though the devs talked big game about inclusivity, theres not a single new character that sticks out - you get a gay old white dude and a fiery latina kid, amazing, i know.
Their mold breaking non-binary character was fl4k, a playable robotic hunter that looks masculine, has a masculine voice and acts masculine, but really is non-binary, just trust us (even though hes a robot, so literally binary with 1 and 0s). Its the most low effort inclusivity addition ive ever seen in my life, cause, if i didn't knew about it via articles and tweets of people gushing about it, literally nothing in game reveals this - and ive played this character extensively. The other playable characters are: a boring white chick, a boring black chick and a boring irish dude. I have no clue how they managed for a robot to have more character and personality than all other human characters combined.
"But pav", i hear you asking "ya said this game is inclusive, but aside of robot and feisty latina, there isnt much there?". Thats where ya is wrong - ya see, the true panopticum of races, gender and sexuality is found in enemies, so you end up slaughtering thousands of women and minorities during your game time, a feat that is only rivaled by all dem banned far-right games. As a cherry on top, the aforementioned fl4k has a skill called dominance, with which you can enslave enemies for a short while by bashing them in the face - and considering you fight a lot of poc's, i'll let you make the connection.
Maybe im just too old school, but mowing down and spilling guts of women and minorities just seems wrong. But, with gore upped again for this game, it proves the old saying right - on the inside, we are all the same <3
The gameplay is vastly improved compared to BL2, with tons of little quality of life improvements (more mobility, easier shopping, new badass rank system etc.) - so, as far as "turn your brains off and play" type of grindy game are concerned, its a really good thing to get.
The part i got a problem with is the writing itself. Aside of few rather nice lines, the main story and characters are written rather atrociously - and in a series that never boasted great writing, thats telling.
The main plot is as bad as it gets - the player constantly needs to be told that yeah, the stakes are really high ya guise - something thay never really comes off during the gameplay. Even while trying to play this high stake storyline, the plot is 80% filler, and it feels like that the story could be told in much less time than what it ended up being. The main antagonists are bland and the try to present them as cult leaders/streamers comes off as rather cringy.
As far as friendly NPCs are concerned, there are hardly any new ones introduced, and the "main" ones that have the most impact on the story are all female. The game didn't manage to introduce a single male character, and the ones that came up were played for laughs. And even though the devs talked big game about inclusivity, theres not a single new character that sticks out - you get a gay old white dude and a fiery latina kid, amazing, i know.
Their mold breaking non-binary character was fl4k, a playable robotic hunter that looks masculine, has a masculine voice and acts masculine, but really is non-binary, just trust us (even though hes a robot, so literally binary with 1 and 0s). Its the most low effort inclusivity addition ive ever seen in my life, cause, if i didn't knew about it via articles and tweets of people gushing about it, literally nothing in game reveals this - and ive played this character extensively. The other playable characters are: a boring white chick, a boring black chick and a boring irish dude. I have no clue how they managed for a robot to have more character and personality than all other human characters combined.
"But pav", i hear you asking "ya said this game is inclusive, but aside of robot and feisty latina, there isnt much there?". Thats where ya is wrong - ya see, the true panopticum of races, gender and sexuality is found in enemies, so you end up slaughtering thousands of women and minorities during your game time, a feat that is only rivaled by all dem banned far-right games. As a cherry on top, the aforementioned fl4k has a skill called dominance, with which you can enslave enemies for a short while by bashing them in the face - and considering you fight a lot of poc's, i'll let you make the connection.
Maybe im just too old school, but mowing down and spilling guts of women and minorities just seems wrong. But, with gore upped again for this game, it proves the old saying right - on the inside, we are all the same <3
In virtually all the cutscenes in the game the Vault Hunters presence is completely missing, treated as if they aren't even there at all. And all the spotlight is given to the other characters. It really put me off.
Don't forget that we killed off a fan-favorite old character, again (the Siren whose name I forget) so that we can have a whiny, entitled, angst-ridden self-insert teenager inherit her powers (since when is there ANY ability to predict Siren powers?!), and Tannis too, why not. There's a fantastic breakdown of the BL3 story here if you wanna listen and pick up even more things you didn't realize made you irritated: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yuEKEdEXTI
I don't recall the exact point, but I too realized somewhere about halfway through that every single NPC with functional importance is female, and every non-player male character is played solely for laughs - even Zer0 lost his edge! The exclusion to this is the Antagonist Brother, and even then he gets upstaged at the end - which I wouldn't mind if the whole game wasn't already so heavily skewed.
It seems to me that the more any particular entity says "look how much we love X, aren't we great", the more likely it is that they will disrespect X more than an entity that outright hates X.
As far as im concerned, the best written gay male character was still Kung Jin from Mortal Kombat X of all games - instead of him loudly proclaiming his sexuality, or acting in a really stereotypical manner, the whole thing was addressed subtly in a dialogue in one cut-scene. One might say, it's hardly enough, but given the subject matter (game where people tear eachother limb by limb), its as classy as it gets.