This is at the center of every great piece of comedy ever. Bad comedy waits for you to get it, good comedy just plows on as if nothing happened. Arrested development is a good example of this, as are most of the old Cary Grant movies. The humor is usually an aside that doesn’t have a spotlight shown on it.
BL in general has been very hit or miss, when they nail it, it can be really good, better than most in fact, but when it fails, it really fails all the way.
I like Tannis and Clay and BALEX. I thought it was interesting that at one point midgame I was in a dramatic scene on Sanctuary and when I looked around the room, all …six I think?.. characters were female, plus Claptrap.
Speaking to an earlier complaint I had, after about midgame they start having ammo vending machines outside boss battles, fortunately.
If you’re willing to tolerate a lot more Tyreen, the reward from the deathtrap quest is quite a good gun.
BALEX was alright, but BALEX was also just… Ice-T being Ice-T. The character voiced by Penn Gillette was also alright.
Well, I hear ya but I’m not quite as down on it as you are.
For me the denouement is ok, because one, the sacrifice of Lilith I thought was pretty powerful, as these things go, and two, I “got” Tyreen at the end. Yeah, they didn’t really establish major-league levels of motivation for the twins, arguably not enough to contextualize their horrific actions, but for me it was just enough. They were both Sirens, and I’m guessing, from the way most Sirens act, that that power messes with their heads in some ways. Combined with the isolation on Nekrodafeo, and Typhon’s sort of absent-minded parenting (plus his legacy and constant reminder to them of the world out there), I can see how the twins went bad.
I’ll give you the boss fight at the end, which was definitely easier than, well, most every other boss, and boring as well. But to me it was appropriate in some ways, because after all of Tyreen’s actions, betrayals, and arrogance, she gets what she wants–and becomes just an appendage on a cut-rate demigod. Her conception of the Destroyer, as I read it, was not really accurate–the Destroyer was something else entirely, not just another vault guardian. Or at least, that’s what occurred to me, and it works well enough for me to accept the ending.
What I don’t friggin’ accept is the pitiful loot. Hell, I was 40 when I killed Tyreen and what did I get from Lilith’s chest? A couple of crappy golds that I had already outleveled by a lot. Sheesh.
This is gonna be long and rambling, so apologies in advance…
I found Lilith too bland and absent from the game’s narrative, to really care about her “sacrifice” at the end. She was “lady on earpiece giving you objectives” for most of the game, except for when Ava was yelling at her over events that were in large part Ava’s own fault (if she hadn’t snuck into the vault against orders, she doesn’t get easily captured as leverage, and maybe Maya doesn’t die).
As for the Calypsos - their upbringing would explain their wanting to desperately leave the planet and make their own name for themselves. It wouldn’t explain how they became, like, completely unfeeling sadists who are also Space Youtubers, and want to destroy the universe. They never establish (that I can recall), that Typhon was an absentee parent - if anything, with him being marooned there with his wife, you’d think he would be VERY present. The ECHO tapes also make clear that Troy was basically tricked by Tyreen into leaving in the first place.
They also never explain why or how both of them are “leeches” of Siren powers and eridium, as opposed to every other siren in the game. And Typhon says that both of his kids were Sirens, but Tyreen describes Troy as basically a leech on her earlier in the game… until suddenly he isn’t any more? They hint at some sort of low-key schism developing between the Calypsos as Troy becomes more powerful, that literally never goes anywhere. All of this was confusing nonsense to me.
Regarding the Destroyer - it was the vault monster in the first game, that you apparently didn’t “really” defeat, which is why Tyreen says she was going to “finish what you started” to Lilith. I didn’t get the impression there was any ambiguity to any of this, though for some reason Borderlands 3 now treats the Destroyer as some sort of larger threat than any of the other vault monsters… despite you having already previously defeated it 10 years ago, in an infamously easy boss fight.
This raises another question I don’t think was ever answered - what was the Great Vault? How did it differ from the vault the Destroyer was in, in the first game? Did the Destroyer… switch vaults? Was the vault in the first game supposed to be the Great Vault? The game seems to imply that Pandora itself was a gigantic vault, it’s moon was the key, and that the Destroyer was in it… but how is that possible, if it was in a regular old vault in the first game? Why would you need a planet-sized vault to contain a monster that was about 100 feet tall at most, and defeated twice by a single mortal? Was this a weird retcon? If so, why on earth would the writing reference that you already defeated it in the first game?
Anyway, back to Tyreen - it annoyed me to no end how she just kept showing up when it was convenient for the plot, and effortlessly shutting down EVERYONE, making it clear that her entire bandit army was completely unnecessary and basically just there so that the game could exist and be longer than two minutes Virtually the entire story is ultimately the “heroes” running around gathering things FOR HER. The game itself even says this, with her mocking you by saying you’re doing her work for her - which you TOTALLY ARE! If you actually think about it, literally everything you do in the game is either 100% pointless because it does nothing to stop or slow the antagonists, or is actually actively HELPING them.
I need to get an eye exam.
Sorry, all, for the extended spoiler discussion, but it’s either that or, well, spoilers!
I’d agree with a lot of what you say. There isn’t much logic in a lot of the story, though I’m ok with Tyreen being nearly omniscient given that the game is really uneven with its treatment of Sirens and their powers. I also don’t have much issue with the way Troy gets treated–he’s apparently born a Siren but his abilities are latent, or perhaps some Sirens are more or less vampiric, who knows? I really didn’t care much, to be sure, but it didn’t bother me either.
The thing I definitely agree with you about is the Great Vault. Hell, all of the vaults. They don’t seem very, well, significant. The loot sucks, the guardians are disproportionate to the paltry loot, and if there is a greater purpose to them, well, they don’t bother to tell us, do they?
As far as I can tell, the Vaults are just space jails that the Eridians also inexplicably stored loot chests in with their inmates. Also, those chests from this long dead civilization mostly consisted of green-quality guns made by modern weapon manufacturers.
Also, for some reason the Eridians chose to put these monsters in space jails, where they might one day menace a future universe, rather than just gang up and murder them - which was surely possible, considering they were an advanced civilization, and multiple vault hunters have been able to solo these monsters down.
For me, the worst story bit was -
Maya’s death. Not that I care about Maya, at all. (I have no nostalgia towards the previous player character heroes.) No, what annoyed the Hell out of me was that I walk back into the boss arena, then control is taken away so Tyreen and Troy can kill Maya. Like, WTF? I’m right there in the same room! Why don’t I do anything?
While the cinematic is playing, they don’t even show me standing there in the background. It’s like the director forgot the player is in the room. So damn weird and lazy.
I agree with this, too; had forgotten that scene, but yeah, 100% crappola.
I uninstalled the game. I really enjoyed my forty one levels or whatever playing through as Moze, but I tried to start a new TVH game and…just couldn’t do it. Could not do that campaign again. Just no. Tried FL4K, but same. It’s just not as engaging the second or third time around as BL 2, where I managed to do a fair bit of repetition and have fun.I just can’t be bothered with 3 though. I had my fun, and I’m sure I’ll reinstall and go through DLC stuff eventually, but right now, I can’t bear another round.
Every cineematic is like that - your player character is ALWAYS absent, and a passive observer to whatever happens. I assume it’s because they are literally pre-rendered, and they didn’t account for every possible character/outfit combo - thus it’s just easier to leave them out completely…
More modern games would just render these in real time (Gears 5 does it at much higher visual fidelity to boot), but it fits in with the general theme of BL3 not seeming to have picked up any lessons from the last seven years of games since BL2.
Here, I’m in near total agreement with ya. There are incremental changes, yes, but this is sort of a lateral evolution if anything. In some ways I feel it’s far less engaging. It really feels that they’ve tuned the loot quality/drop rate down to encourage people to play longer rather than more intensely, with the character skills being a way to keep people interested in progression between increasingly infrequent good loot drops. The skills though simply aren’t that interesting, especially as they require a lot of grinding to get to a really defined build IMO (at least on the Gunner that I have the most experience with).
The game is fine, in general, but it’s very much not exciting, sad to say.
Sorry, FL4K, you’re still too awesome. More nerfs.
yeah, that was an egregious one, but there’s been a bunch of stuff where it feels like I should be a bit more relevant. The bit that got me was the conversation between Lilith and Siren Tannis when Lilith says “sorry we couldn’t tell you but being a Siren puts a huge target on your back. but it sure is great to have another Siren finally” motherfucker, I’m Amaya, I know what it means to be a Siren.
Yup. Like @ShakesMcQueen wrote, all the cinematic bits are bad, and discount the player’s presence, but for me the Rampager Vault was the worst because at least the others try to set up a locked door or some other lame reason for not doing anything.
It gets worse if you’re playing co-up. The whole story is solo-centric.
It was a needed nerf. I was doing some boss grinding this morning because of that event this week, and absolutely MELTING lvl 50 Graveward and Tyreen in about a minute, in Mayhem Mode.
Post-nerf, it has slowed me down, but only slightly.
I’ve got a legendary Jakobs AR that returns two rounds to my magazine every time I get a crit. So with a Fl4k crit build, plus his own talents that return ammo on a crit, I can basically fire forever in some cases. And when Fade Away is active, it just becomes comical.
Sounds like Wan Zane might have some issues.
Gearbox apparently hasn’t heard of unit tests.
These expire in less than a day.
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