I wrote this up a long time ago, and haven't posted in a while (global pandemics and all the things can do that to you), but I really like this review I wrote (but didn't polish) about Borderlands 3.
Borderlands 3 Review
Borderlands 3 is an incredible game. The amount and variety of effort that went into it, and that produced such a gem, must have been amazing in terms of time and skill. If you are a gamer at all but haven’t tried the Borderlands series, Borderlands 3 is a good reason, and good place, to start (although some of it relies, somewhat, on knowledge of the previous 2 or 3 games, in terms of repeat characters). It’s a bit reminiscent of Diablo with loot monsters, a bit like Crackdown with trying to jump everywhere you possibly can to explore that one little area up there, and entirely a Borderlands game.
Strengths
The visuals, from large to small, are incredible, and the writing and characters are well-done in terms of humor, warmth, and development.
Visually Stunning
The visuals are amazing, across the entire scale, from small (flyers, posters, graffiti, items on tables, clothes, trinkets, and more), to the medium (immediate landscapes, plants, water, buildings, vehicle decoration), to the large scale (planets in the sky, overviews of land you can’t travel to), to the thematic (different design styles of buildings, different alien flora and fauna). It’s just stunning. It’s constant, across the entirety of the worlds and maps in the game. The huge amount of technical, artistic, and planning effort that went into this was well-worth it. The views are on par with the mountain vistas of Skyrim and, from Fallout 4, The Glowing Sea (https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Glowing_Sea), which is the most breath-taking scenery I’ve seen in a game to date (granted, newer games have better graphics, but it was amazing). (There are some videos on YouTube of The Glowing Sea but the ones I can find have too many other things going on.) I should mention Breath of the Wild from the Zelda franchise, which I haven’t played but I’ve sat and watched several hours of gameplay (in the room, not on Twitch), as it too is stunningly beautiful, made with craft and care.
Writing and Characters
The characters and writing are funny and, at times, touching. The humor in the game is great, better than the previous versions in my opinion. It reminds me of Portal 2 in this respect, where, over time, you encounter more and more about the characters, adding depth to their backgrounds and personalities. Red Dead Redemption is like this, with depth of character and storytelling (as are some others, some of which I am sure I have played and forgotten, so many games), so I wonder why I didn’t get RDR2, but I think the problem is that I am tired of run-and-gun games, as I explain below.
The Borderlands team managed to work away from “every quest is shooting something” enough to make it worthwhile (although it does suffer from the D&D problem of, “here’s a map, kill everything since that’s how you get XP” issue). There are a few really heartfelt quests that engage with issues of difference and loss (such as one with a person in a wheelchair). Videogames have engaged with these dimensions of life before, but some run-and-gun games just focus on the action, and ignore characters and storytelling. Many players do care about characters and storytelling, and when done well, they are powerful elements (thus great literature).
To Be Even Better (But So Good Already)
There are only two large issues I wish they had dealt with differently: leveling and the run-and-gun aspect of the game. As I write this up, I realize there are two smaller issues as well: how the characters often tell you to hurry but the quest mechanic doesn’t care if you do, and that so far there is almost no need for revisiting (the giant and beautiful) maps once you “finish” one or level past it (so this relates to the leveling problem).
Leveling
Leveling, as I and others have pointed out, is problematic, although in games such as The Elder Scrolls Online the designers have managed to maintain the illusion of leveling (in order to keep leveling as a player motivation) while actually doing away with it. In Borderlands 3, with the side quests, I have managed to level past where the game assumes I would be, level-wise, in the main quest. It’s a bit weird, unfortunate, and unnecessary. (I was neither trying to level up, nor not trying to, I was just playing, and I like the side quests since you sometimes get to see other areas of the map, and they are all worth seeing.) BL3 does have a level-balancing mechanism, available in multiplayer, so if you and a friend are playing but you are different levels, the level disparity is not a problem. However this does not occur (as far as I can tell) in single player.
Run-and-Gun vs. Stopping and Smelling Roses (and the Visuals)
The run-and-gun aspect, although part of the Borderlands franchise in terms of game play thematics, is a slight problem because of the aforementioned strength of the visuals. There is a resplendent monastery planet. There is an amazing asteroid that I found stunning in terms of its appearance. But never once (well not that I found) is there a quest that asks you to slow down and observe. Given the strength of the visuals, and the obvious creative talent on display in the game, I think this is a missed opportunity. How to do this, in terms of quests? I am not sure entirely, but I think one avenue that game designers could explore is the variety of visual illusions (such as found at http://illusionoftheyear.com/), 2D to 3D visual tricks, and visual oddities stemming from the human visual system (such as how we see dots between squares, how color perception depends on the surrounding colors, and that darned dress that’s either white/gold or blue/black https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dress). Perhaps a quest where you have to spy on something from afar to learn about it. Or, a quest where you don’t shoot something even though doing so would be easy, which is where part of the greatness of the original Star Trek stems from. (There is a quest where one option is to let yourself die, but it doesn’t have a visual component to it like I am arguing for here.)
Run and Run and Run
This “rush rush!” narrative isn’t just in most of the gameplay, it’s also in the narrative of many of the quests. But, you don’t actually have to do any of the quests in a rush. You can run off and do side quests. You can drive around in circles. You can explore the map, regardless of quests (although many areas only become available as you advance quests). So far I’ve only seen one quest with an actual timer on it, and not only was it a side quest but it was one of those “outside the game narrative” quests, a boss level challenge quest on its own map. The timer was only relevant for an extra bonus, you could take as long as you want with no penalty. To me this narrative of rushing hurts the stellar writing, because you don’t have to hurry up and so this puts a hole in the believability of the script.
Leveling Past Maps
The maps, the worlds that is, are beautiful and diverse. But when you are done with one, I haven’t noticed that you need to return to it except in a few cases, and that’s too bad. You might want to, in order to complete some of the challenges (like getting the Eridian translations). But there is no other reason, that I have noticed so far, to do so. Given leveling, all the critters and loot will be below the player level (although you can do a second playthrough at whatever level you are after you complete the main quest and everything has leveled). Mostly you can run around and nothing can hurt you too much. If they had dealt with leveling differently, this problem could be avoided. This is a shame, given how cool the maps are in terms of artistic amazingness. But I can see how making the maps something the player returns to, again and again, changes how they are used. It makes them and the objects in them more permanent, which should give them more narrative weight. Not that the maps aren’t permanent, you can always go back to one, just that the player is constantly moving on from them, so they lack constant presence.
Hunting Vaults, Building Societies
I also wish they had included a building aspect to the game, like in Minecraft, or Dwarf Fortress, or even Fallout 4 with the settlements (which wasn’t perfect but was a lot of fun). I am not at all sure if the game engine is built for that kind of thing, but we know people love making things, so why not try to make a homestead or a settlement that can withstand the game’s various living creatures that try to do you in? Additionally, although many characters have depth, there is no real society here. There are cities, and homesteads and such, but no life on the societal level like we find in, say, Skyrim. But in Skyrim, you can have a house (or several), and you return to map locations again and again. In Borderlands 3, eventually you have the spaceship as your return-to base, and you can personalize your room a relatively small amount, but it isn’t like the towns or housing in Skyrim. There are important NPCs on the ship, but plenty of nameless NPCs who don’t do anything.
Bonus Items
Some fun little things are in the game, eventually you run into the voice acting of Ice-T (who has done many things in his career, including Law & Order), and Penn and Teller (the illusionist duo) who amusingly play versions of themselves.
There is also some homage, but not very much unless I am missing much of it (there is a lot of simultaneous poking fun at and showing respect for social media). The only instance I remember is a quest that pays homage to the (in)famous tribbles episode of Star Trek, which is pretty old-school although it was revisited in Star Trek: Deep Space 9. Possibly the writing is so good that they didn’t have room for (or need) too much homage this time (or I’m so old I’m missing it because it is homage to recent cultural items).
So…
It’s a great game, worth getting on its visual strength and writing alone. Oh right, the music and interface aren’t bad either! (I really like the song "Hold On" by Animal Fiction on the soundtrack.)
