Borderlands 2 is one of the best games ever made. Why does it matter that the game has style? Literally no games made nowadays have a unique style to them at all. All they care about is realism and minimalism
Borderlands 2's story was hard carried by Jack, who was in turn hard carried by the VA, who made even the biggest dumbshit lines sound exactly how they were envisioned in the writers' head. I'm not sure the Gearbox writer's room fully understand just how lucky they were to capture lightning in a bottle like that.
Yep! And the success of Bl2 went straight to Randy's greasy head. Dood's been trying to recreate the same thing for over a decade now and it just keeps getting worse.
Honestly for me jack and dopple jack also saved pre sequel from being forgettable, he is just a really great villain and character all around and it was going to be near impossible to top him in 3 (although i do think gearbox still dropped the ball hard when it came to the villains)
@@Tokumastu1Agreed, I feel like he’s striking too hard but then simultaneously striking too low, I LOVE borderlands and it has led me to new friends and new fandoms when I was at my lowest but goddamn for a game that basically shot Randy’s company into the limelight of gaming, he sure isn’t treating it like one.
@@andrewmeyer3599 every scene with him and moxie are the absolute best, hes just a cute little cinnamon roll that got stuck in the worst possible position lol
Hey hey kiddo! It's meeeeee! GREASY uncle RAAAAANDY~! Here, sit down, play some Buddylands with yer oooollllll *DEFINITELY* totally cool and not at all a creepy or violent uncle Raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaandy~! Wanna see a magic trick~?
a man so greasy he can easily ride a metal slide, without pants. a man so greasy he can't stand near an open flame a man so greasy he turns public pools into biohazard sites just by dipping his foot in a man so greasy they use his dirty towels to source industrial lubricant
the problems with Maya's death for me are context and agency, and it is helpful that we have Roland's death to directly compare to. Roland's death is quick and comes as a direct consequence of the players' and the narrative's actions; the VH, Roland, and Lilith have just worked together to kill Jack's daughter, and he spends a decent chunk of the fight telling the VH about how he'll get revenge, and he immediately does. Jack teleports behind Roland, the VH can't react and pop a bullet in him, Roland is in the way, and the VH has just endured a kinda long and gruelling fight, so they might not be as quick as usual. Lilith /does/ react, though, gets almost immediately incapacitated and Jack holds her in front of him, now the VH can't risk shooing him because they might hit her instead. All of this stems from the player's actions, and are a consequence for it. Maya dies because Ava didn't listen to her mentor, which lead to Maya being in a standoff with the twins, where she made the kind of un-smart decision to bring the guy with siren-sapping powers closer towards herself, and got herself dusted, instead of going for the girl holding Ava a full arm's length away from her. Didn't Maya have a gun in this level? Or could she not have just phasegrasped Ava back to her, out of Tyreen's hand, like, do what she did to Troy, but with Ava? Meanwhile, the VH is... just standing there? the scene plays out after they return from a Vault, you have to walk up to Maya for it to play, but, they're just not actually in the cutscene - unlike with Roland, where it plays from their POV, and are directly spoken to. There is no agency, the VH is inexplicably yeeted from the world to give space for this setpiece, it doesn't come as a result of anything the player does, and instead serves to empower, or pass the torch onto, Ava, who was already pretty unlikeable, because the token Whiny Teenage Character is, by definition, difficult to like. Maya's death feels like it's built on contrivance, which is not always a bad thing, but going so far as to ensure Maya made all the worst decisions she could have, and to delete the player character from the universe to ensure there's no player agency is just a little too much.
I put the game down for months after this. I always hate the dumb teenager character that gets people killed but it felt even worse to me in this one even though I was kind of liking her before this. How is a character going to exist in the Borderlands universe and be this dumb about danger? Then the fact that she takes 0 responsibility afterwards and blames everyone else, then we have to comfort her as part of the quest? Absolutely ridiculous. Didn't help that I always play Siren so both of my old PCs were dealt with in horrible ways in this game. I wouldn't mind her death if it was at least a good one like Roland. It also really didn't help that Ava is being built up as Maya's successor so she'll either be the Siren PC or a very important NPC in the next game. And on the note of always playing Siren, the fact that the character you choose to play doesn't matter in the cutscenes felt even crazier in this game. Why did the twins ignore me the whole time when they want to drain Siren powers? They drain Lilith, drain and kill Maya but just leave me alone the whole time? Why? It'd have been better to just not have a Siren PC like Aurelia in TPS.
Great breakdown, but I gotta point out that Troy's powers weren't even really understood at that point IIRC, conveniently it's not known he can sap other sirens besides Tyreen until....it happens.
@@MrLockfree dont even get me started on the prolonged frustration of playing as a siren against villains with the capacity to steal siren powers only to be completely glazed over by the narrative completely
the problem with maya's death is how little grace is given to her, she's a fan favourite character, with a supposed budding romance with a separate fan favourite character and she doesn't go down with a fight, she dies getting run up on by 3 annoying little nerds, evaporates, and is unceremoniously shat out of the story for solely plot progression. It's not that her death couldn't have happened, its that it was handled incredibly poorly.
It was a cheap death for the sake of shock value and trying to artificially make the twins come across as threatening. It lacks the viceral weight of Rolands death especially given that in that scene Roland's death came right after you gave Angel a mercy killing. That whole secquence is played comepletely straight right down to Jack straight up begging you not kill Angel. Like there's genuine weight and soul to that moment that Bl3 as whole just doesn't have.
The other thing that really bothered me is that Ava causes Maya's death by ignoring instructions to NOT be in the same place as Maya, then blames you for her death afterwards. Combine that with the moment the game teaches you about optional objectives to give you the option to console her is ridiculous. Beyond hating Ava, it just feels like the game punishes you for continuing the story.
@@operate170 I think it just made Maya look stupid and incompetent, not being able to control her piss poor excuse of an apprentice. And then Ava mouths off to Lilith(? I think. Somebody) right afterwards like it wasn’t entirely her fault
Even familiar guns work better in Borderlands 3 though. They finally feel modern, more of them are hitscan instead of projectile, and they really pack a punch when they shoot projectiles.
@@MiraihiAGREED!!! especially with one of my favorites: The Hellwalker!! It just gives off that type of feeling of power that makes you wanna shred through a whole level on the first try, it’s THAT good. Not to mention a total life saver from what I experienced, shreds through enemies like PAPER and makes boss fights more fun :]
@@NEEDLESALAD Some characters in previous games felt very underpowered too. But Gearbox did a really great job of making every single vault hunter in BL3 strong in its own way in the following two years after the release. I remember looking forward to patchnotes.
"What if every character was claptrap?" This encapsulates most of what made the comedy stale or insufferable in the later games. I like claptrap, but his humour was intentionally obnoxious, and even in the second game, he got old very fast. Borderlands 3 decided it was a good idea to give EVERYONE this quirky XD lul random loud ADHD humour that was already tiring with claptrap alone.
Claptrap worked because the humor was slightly self aware, and every other character ragged on him for being annoying. Even in the second game, with characters like Tiny Tina or Mr Torgue, there were generally enough characters to balance it out, or just having a slightly different brand of humor. Bl3 really did just lose it with everyone being claptrap and ignored why claptrap was funny in the first place, which was him being cringe and pathetic, with every other character making fun of it.
@@Cardinalsqr the worst part was tannis. from the anti-social quirky genius character, she became an insufferable ADHD kid with a mouth diarrhea and apparently sexual attraction to mine carts. to me this was probably the game's lowest point
@@lior414 That’s very true. She feels like female Rick Sanchez. Tbh I just tuned her out immediately when she started talking so I didn’t even remember lol. At least her VA isn’t that bad so her voice isn’t as grating as it could have been.
I hate the Borderlands 3 villains because they are young people written by a 65 year old who thinks that UA-cam is “old timey silent films, like the keystone cops” or something.
@sinjin8576 Dude they didnt have to come up with anything new. Finish the pre sequel cliff-hanger. what the fuck is the watcher and what war was he referring to? why is he the only eridian that can communicate with humans? what else does he need to tell the vault hunters?
@@PoeticInsanity the ones in the pre sequel are guardians, modeled after eridians, the red being in the pre sequel is the only true eridian we have seen
I tapped out at the second game which was a 50/50 split between yelling Reddit memes from a year before it came out at me in an annoying voice and then wanting me to take it’s characters seriously and be sad when bad things happened to them. I could not do it.
@@ElectricheadPt1 When I got it it was still the era of having discs over downloads by a wide margin and I remember carting it around to a few friends houses. I ended up playing that beginning first hour or so with Claptrap in the icy area like 3-4 times to the point I never want to do that again. The game got a lot better past that part, but it really began to grate how long you were trapped listening to a character monologue before a door opened. I think I just played way too much of Borderlands 1 to really enjoy it. Of course I bounced off BL3 fairly fast too.
The worst part about borderlands is that the gameplay got better and better meaning you had to listen to more of the dialogue and "jokes" which are almost always based on memes that were played out by the time each game dropped
It always bothers me how rarely people bring up Gearbox using funds for Aliens: Colonial Marines to create Borderlands 2 when discussing the franchise.
@@masondarden2423 that's fair. I sprinkled them through anyhow. I think I was worried it would've gotten too meta for the subject at hand, but ye, I can do better
@@newlandpencilnut4754 it’s really not that bad he choose to focus on the small cringey parts of bl2 and not the large amazing part of it yet never talks about how horrible bl3s story and wrighting and said that a gun in bl3 that is from a copy of a mission in the second game that calls you a bitch perfect
Sometimes I think about how this video game enabled randy pitchford to get away with dropping a flash drive full of sexual material of a dubious legal nature in a medieval times parking lot which he claimed was actually magic trick research videos
@@VascovanZellerBorderlands 2 had a good balance. There was serious shit going on along with all the goofy stuff, there were some more serious characters thrown in with all the over the top goofballs but then 3 made everything and everyone a joke with a bunch of outdated memes and jokes.
@@VascovanZelleri mean if you compare the craziest character in one and then look at the least crazy from 3 there is a noticeable upping in the crazy over time, at least in 2 they had some serious moments mixed in with the crazier characters but by three its just "lol look at the mid 2000nds funny and then move on to the next scene"
After the presequel its just empty the twins dont really do anything after you meet them and maya is gone nothing of substance for their existence happene
My biggest complaint with BL3, aside from the ear-gougingly cringe levels of the dialogue, is that Tyreen hurt and killed characters that people REALLY liked, but we didn’t get to revel in our victory like we did with Jack. She barely even goes *POOF*, really kinda pisses in the face of the player’s revenge and struggle
Now imagine The better timeline, where, when troy went mad with power, he actually killed tyreen and became the primary villain, a character with an actual arc, and the more tolerable of the two, ending with a moment of silence before you dome him
@@V2ULTRAKill I swear I thought that was where the story was going. I hate the idea that the devs may have changed it to keep Tyreen as the main bad guy for the sake of appealing to the "girl power" demographic even though the story was being held up fine with Lilith and the other female leads.
@@V2ULTRAKill That would’ve been a bit better. Hell I was expecting a Eridian being showing up during his boss fight, and just crush both of them like bugs. Basically a God showing up to kill two wannabes who THINK they are gods. I think I’m reaching since I feel introducing a God similar to Beerus would’ve been amazing with how powerful sirens can get.
That and Ava getting the powers that Tyreen stole from Lilith. Which to me instead of making Ava reflect on her failings causing Maya's death vindicates her. It can be argued that its a fine attitude for a future vault hunter but at least give me the option to slap some sense into the brat
I have to give Rhys a crumb of credit when he becomes CEO of Atlas. He revives a dead corporation and tries to be an ethical corpo, too bad BL3 is so horrendously awful that the arc falls flat on its face.
Rys lives in a galaxy where megacorps basically supplanted governments as ruling bodies. Sure, being a CEO of a sci fi megacorp is morally murky, but it still remains a position where people can theoretically do good. It's like Eddard Stark being a fuedal lord. A good guy stuck in a job that's fundamentally hard to be moral in.
@@TheThing4444 it's moreso about the writers for BL3 making Rhys a useless whimpering coward when he had already gone through a substantial character arc
I think Typhon gets overlooked a lot, seen as a joke character only. While he is quippy, - and who isn't in these games - there's a genuine through-line of family that isn't realized until we get to talk to him. He did his best to raise two Siren children, staying strong for them after his wife dies, and keeping them safe from a universe that only wants to use them and celebrate them as tools, not people. But the children get restless, as all children do, and flee their father, leaving the planet entirely. And what happens after that? Something worse than Typhon's fear of the children being used in corporate warfare - his daughter turns out to be a sociopathic narcissist with superpowers who will stop at nothing less than owning the universe and possesses the means to do so. And caught in her shadow eternally is her brother Troy, who is told he should be loved by all, told he should want more, told he should sacrifice anyone to get what "he" wants. He didn't want any of that for himself - Tyreen did. When it comes to Troy running solo, he shows a dorkier side, and also seems to have some kind of genuine care for the COV, and deep down realizes the Tyreen is a bully and something is wrong with what they're doing, but he can't find it in him to go against her because of their unique power sharing, so he ultimately drinks Tyreen's kool-aid and becomes the monster she wanted him to be, which almost kills her too. There's a genuinely good family drama in there, shoved into the locker of hidden audiotapes and subtext which Borderlands historically fumbles due to its constant, agonizing fear of ever appearing genuine.
I do agree to some extend, but I really wish it actually amounted to anything meaningful. The setpieces are all in place but the story delivers no real payoff. I really liked the parts when Troy was coming into his own, having those internal battles with his sister and all that and even having his own charismatic monologue moments. I really wish he didn't just kinda fall off and die just for the story to move on and not care. I wish they would've taken this family dynamic somewhere where it is more than a nice lore dig
@shcdemolisher this exactly man. I said this the moment he died for me the first time. The setup was so subtle and kept building, only to be thrown away. It's a shame really.
@@ravenatorful Yeah. It did have the bones of a good story, but it wasn't able to be materialized. As for who is responsible for making that not happen... I don't know who to look at.
Something my friend pointed out to me, Troy and Tyreen aren't even like, full adults right? They're teens aren't they? If he was right, it kinda makes more sense, considering they're kids
You're wrong about one thing. Maya dying is bullshit not for the reasons stated but because Ava is responsible at least partly, thus making the Tiny Tina equivalent not merely annoying but actively detrimental. That's why her death specifically felt narratively worse than Roland's.
@@KBash Except LotR was not trying to make Gollum likeable, and even when it tried to make us feel simpathy for Gollum, it did a better job than B3 did with Ava.
@@DevonDekhranGollum still has a whole ass fanbase which I highly doubt would be as big as it is if he was a woman. Like you can dislike Ava without coming across like you’re always furious about women CEOs.
The irony of taking swipes at Borderland's "comedy" in one sentence, and then making an "anime conventions stinky" joke the very next sentence was not lost on me.
@Synthpopper As someone who went to AX for years, it didn't smell bad. There were a few of what I'll call THOSE GUYS. They were gross but 99.9% of people were well adjusted and normal.
@@Synthpopper 100 percent. I was at Nerdcon like 6 years ago, it was so bad my nephew couldn't wait in line for concessions, he walked off with his Dad while I waited. It should have been illegal. You would just walk into to it every now and then while checking stuff out.
As much as I love long form essay videos, this guy is really coming off as someone that just likes the sound of his own voice. We get it, borderlands is juvenile and you're above it. Only reason I lasted about 40 minutes is cuz I was distracted by something else or I'm sure I wouldn't have lasted more than 15 minutes.
Facts he's always had that kind of attitude but now it's clear he's got no regard for his own audience and on top of that he constantly projects his white guilt in this vid which honestly made me unsubscribe - being snarky and acting as if pointing to his own skin color and going "haha lacking melanin is bad" is not a good look for any UA-camr
Dude is completely tone deaf as to why People hated Maya's death. Its not what the twins did, its how the situation was handled: Immaturely, inconsequentially for Ava's direct involvement, and lack of pay off. Ava being a child excuse could work if the adults treated her like one and reprimanded her for errors; like getting Maya killed by refusing to listen to her. Instead the MCs just took her insults like shes right, and they are wrong. Completely lazy analyses and lack of empathy from Kbash here.
Boarderlands may be a mess but with friends its senseless fun. Perfect for turning your brain off and trying to get the number to get higher and higher. I met one of my oldest friends on it while we were kids
The “villains” in borderlands 3 aren’t bad because they are annoying and they killed main character. Jack was brimming with charm and oozing charisma and that’s the only way to make a character like that work. They aren’t like Joffrey or Ramsey where they are so annoying it helps vilify them. Tyreen and Troy are bad because they had no real follow through, just went through the motions, “be the bad guy”. They even hint at some conflict between Tyreen and Troy which would have been very interesting, but no, the villains felt rushed and boring
you know borderlands 3 can be better if there do evil powerful Aliens that kill off the Aliens that make the Vault instead footleg forbidden siren's cults. (or is it Silent Hill , Dead Space?)
The opening cutscene of the first game killed Borderlands. I miss the halcyon days when I just had a blank screen with nothing on it, the true, purest Borderlands experience.
Borderlands was really better when it was a niche and extremely obscure tech demo with totally different aesthetics. Becoming a buyable product you could experience outside of a few tech shows or by being an employee really sucked the charm out.
Maya's action skill is not inherently interesting, especially during the first 30 levels. I am a Maya main, it is not until you get higher in levels and get more gear that things get crazy. Other VH's have more interesting action skills off rip, well except axton and gaige but you know.
I was almost 30 when it came out and I found her very funny too. I have a dark sense of humor too. This has nothing to do with age, some things are funny and some things aint. His issues with Tina's style has nothing to do with the humor.
Has nothing to do with age, that game came out in like 2012/2013, that was just the style of humor at the time. Looking back with hindsight you can say "lol cringe reddit humor" but back then it was cool to see jokes like that in AAA games
It’s funny how this dude can say Tyreen and Troy aren’t “only” cringe, but then turns around and says Tiny Tina is only cringe and questions why people like her
At least it makes sense for Tina since she's supposed to be part psycho and was only saved by Roland taking care of her. The pyscho mask on her head showcasing it being kept at bay (she even talks a little like one too minus the murderous one liners). The twins don't have that kind of depth other than streamer culture. But yeh Tiny Tina is cringe.
I passively listened to about 2 hours of this video, ignoring a lot of small inaccuracies or small trite comments I didn't appreciate. But your tirade about Maya's death being "because she's a pretty woman" is fucking ridiculous. Yes. Villains are villains. They kill people. In Borderlands, there are times when even our heroes are downright villainous outside of their typical morale apathy. The issue with Maya's death isn't that we didn't get a big dramatic "coping with their loss" moment. There are a variety of issues with it. But the one that sticks out to me is that Maya wasn't just some random schmuck with a gun like Roland or Mordecai. Sirens are a rare breed of person in the Borderlands universe and that rarity isn't something that's been taken for granted before. Sirens have always been shown to be incredibly hardy beings, only being killed off by Vault Monsters, Jack's Eridian infused machinery, or another Siren. The Twins' powers *were* foreshadowed earlier on in them siphoning off Lilith. But, in that context, there was an understanding that they were capable of stealing that power and using it for themselves but they weren't outright dusting people just from a single touch. The issue with the messy lore of Sirens is only further complicated later with the "bequeathing" of Siren powers onto Ava and Tannis because there's so little build-up to these things happening. They foreshadowed them, yes. But foreshadowing alone does not justify something happening. Someone winding up their fist foreshadows a punch but that does not justify the punch being thrown. Maya's death was predictable, expected with how closely they were following the template of Borderlands 2. But how it was carried out was vastly different than how it was portrayed in the second game. We're not even talking about THE PLAYER CHARACTER being present for the entirety of Maya's death but being basically catatonic. Roland's death was an immediate consequence of Angel's death, the player was passive in that moment because Jack ambushed them and then immediately sedated Lilith. The Twins ambushed Ava, held her captive as leverage over Maya who attempted to take the male Twin as a hostage (all while the player characters[s] are present), only for her life to be stolen by a previous unexplored side of the Twins' powers. Even THEY comment on never seeing their powers work that way before. There's a lot of things in play but it boils down to WHO they chose to kill (one of the SUPPOSEDLY most powerful characters in the universe), HOW they did it, and the LACK of player agency. It is so much deeper than "oh no, they kill pretty lady." Fuck you.
yeah i feel like this guy just has never really leaned into the whole "what's the narrative repercussions of this event?" and instead pulled shit out of his ass with the reasoning being "because i can" and its so bad of a take that i cant see this video as anything more than "im insufferable cause i dont find anything funny/find any of the characters important to the story as a whole"
This. Maya's death felt insulting because it was contrived, unearned and meaningless. The Calypso twins didn't give a shit about her and killed her by accident, she died like a chump to an asspull power, and the player characters presumably just stood there twiddling their thumbs while it happened. Then everyone basically forgets about her immediately, and Ava never actually gets proper character development or does anything meaningful afterward to properly pay it off narratively. Maya's death should have been a much bigger deal.
I am so happy someone saved me the trouble of writing out a comment I watched this video in the background while playing Civ V and rolled my eyes at a couple of instances like when he complains about Tina talking like a black person which is like... You know that accents have nothing to do with race right, it has to do with who you grew up around, your environment, so no it isn't racist to have a white character speak in that cadence in fact its more racist to gatekeep an entire accent for 1 race. And also all of his snide comments on colonialism and corporatism and capitalism and blah, blah, blah, but after hearing how he boiled down the outrage around Maya's death, yeah I'm done with this video bro sounds like ethanisonline honestly. His argument about people being mad about Maya just being, "Duuuuh you are just mad that they took out a character you liked duuuuh." is reminiscent of people who justify Joel's death in Tlou2 like yeah we knew that he was most likely going to get taken out, most gamers expected that so we wouldn't have been outraged if they did it in a good way, but having the seasoned survivor in an apocalypse who has made enemies with most likely 3 quarters of the earths population, BLINDLY trusting a room full of combat ready people with his real name. Yeah, eye rolling. It is a very bad acting facetious type of argument to have.
@@pintolerance785 I WAS ALSO WATCHING THE VIDEO WHILE PLAYING CIV LOL, i think the worst takes this guy has is anything related to maya, shes a siren, and they killed her off like a side character, and thats why the community was outraged, yet he ignored it like it was childish for the community to be outraged over a bullshit death
I think the negative reaction to the characters and plot points of BL3 as compared to BL2 is related to how each game executed certain plot threads. Writing isn’t just related to the cringey one liners and jokes that each BL game is notoriously guilty of - and if I were to go back to BL2, I know for a fact that I’d feel embarrassed by lots of the dialogue, but that’s not really the point. Rather, the scripting of certain sequences is crucial to how fans reacted to character deaths - primarily Roland’s death in BL2, and Maya’s in BL3. I don’t want to go super in depth right now, but I know as a player of both games that I was way, way more invested in the events leading up to and the aftermath of Roland’s death than I was for Maya’s death. That doesn’t make either death more or less impactful, but think about the events surrounding each of their deaths, and you’ll realize that one game sold us on a character’s death, and the other game did not. Side note - one of the reasons that I did not like the writing in BL3 is due to how heavily flanderized certain characters were - the two obvious choices that come to mind are Rhys and Vaughn. I did like the cult leader villains tho! Kind of funny that even after watching a majority of the video and jumping in to write this comment that their names slipped my mind again. I also remember enjoying the planet towards the end of the game where you meet the villains’ father - I thought his character was a breath of fresh air, and he helped bring some serious heart to the final hours of BL3. Kind of… underwhelming death, though? Like he gets thrown into a wall and just dies? That’s all I remember off the top of my head at least. Ugh, now I have the craving to play some of BL3 again, that’s never a good thing. At least the gameplay is good.
That was probably the most disingenuous and reductive take I've ever heard on Maya's death, which is a staggering accomplishment. Don't engage with any of the actual arguments against it, don't even pretend some people might have genuine and innocuous grievances with the writing and execution, no just strawman your way through that entire segment so egregiously that I'm not even sure why you mentioned the controversy, because you really just didn't actually.
Honestly his whole video is full of bad takes, he has a few points like with the bad humour starting with 2 but he misses the point on why people dislike 3 but then goes into why 3 is bad which is the exact same reasons who he claims the anti woke crowd dislike the crowd but acts disingenuous as if there problems were only women and not you know... A fun story which it is not. It's a fun game with fun side quests but it's main story is full of cheap shock value and unfunny characters.
@@utes5532 I said this years ago when Maya's death was the most bullshit writing that I have ever seen. Even when her struggling she could of easily fought back including the hold what that wanna-be playboy star model (Troy) grip by a harsh elbow slam to the chest. The way that gearbox handle it WAS the problem on how she died and make's matter worse there is hardly any grief about it after a short cutscene that plays. It feels like they didn't give two shits about a main vault hunter that players spend hours on in the previous game like I did and turned it into a cheap laugh. Matter of fact most of the vault hunters from the 2nd mainline game doesn't even even get seen once like WTF?!
@@utes5532 Yeah. Like I don’t thirst for Maya. I played as Maya for dozens upon dozens of hours and formed an attachment. Of course her being fridged and forgotten is going to upset me.
The real problem with Borderlands 3's story is that I just wanted them the shut the fuck up the entire way through. The dialogue just drains the life out of me. It's almost like Tyreens powers are real and they're affecting me through the screen.
Blue Shift genuinely felt like It had no pourpose. You are playing as the least fit for the job guy compared to the three games yet it's the easiest one by far. @@ChronicSensei
Spoilers for borderlands 3 and rant below. The problem i have with borderlands 3's story as a whole can be boiled down to one thing: Lilith fucking sucks as a character since 2, and they try to push her as some "super badass strong leader" type when she constantly jobs, makes terrible decisions and gets off Scott free and is celebrated for being great by the other characters. Lilith enabled a blood cult of psychos in her name, Lilith is a big reason why Jack is crazy, Lilith wanted to firing squad Athena for no go reason even after she explained herself and go the sympathy of the other vault hunters, Lilith got Roland killed by outright disobeying his (and angel's) order to stay behind, she is the reason Jack was able to wake the warrior, she jobs in a downright comical way to the twins, decides arbitrarily that Ava should be the next leader even though literally any other character would be better at the job and then has her "this Girl is on Fire" TM big heroic suicide death (that is teased to not even be real). I'm fine with Lilith being a fuckup character, but they act like she is an untouchable kween girlboss who everyone just loves. Randy tries to gaslight you into loving his favorite character. It feels insulting. Why do no one call her out for her bullshit, not even once? The Twins are more of a disappointment than anything else. Especially Troy. During the game they set up a bit of drama between the two, Tyreen is obviously the leader and Troy plays second fiddle, and you can tell it kinda bugs him. He slowly gets more and more powerful as the game goes on, and It is set up perfectly for a twist betrayal, but instead he fights you solo for some reason, dies, and Tyreen turns into a big dumb vault monster. Maya's death doesn't really bother me personally, but it just exists to set up Ava as a character. Ava then proceeds to just be an annoying teenager and actually do nothing. tl;dr, the story of borderlands 3 deserves all the hate it gets. It's not just bad like the other borderlands games, its fucking insulting. The gag fake out ending is better than the real one.
@@yaboi9742 that shit made me so salty, it was never the funniest game of all time but parts 1 and 2 and ore sequel make me laugh at least every 5 minutes, 3 made me laugh once the whole game if that. It's hard to quantify but it's true, the games before 3 were simply better written and it's easy to see the change since 3 has different writers
Pretty bad take on the B3 story; Maya getting Fridge'd and instantly forgotten was a poor execution on a tired trope and pretending as if the only critics are simps or the anti-woke was a bit frustrating. You can just be invested in the characters through having grown up with B2 or be given hope for stories in the setting by Tales 1. The plot of B3 was 'okay' from a theoretical mechanical standpoint but managed to spit in the face of fans with its execution
How is it frustrating when it’s mostly true? You can annoyed by it and move on but declaring that BL3 killed your family and is the worst thing imaginable very much makes it clear that you need therapy and not digital women to make your life better.
@@jman2856 "mostly true"? How can you measure it? How could you be sure they aren't a vocal minority? These are pretty bad faith assumptions you're making, borderline disrespectful
I second this. Borderlands 2's writing was miles above 1 & 3's. When I played that game, I actually felt something. I'm a conservative, but I can respect a well written story even if it expresses themes and ideas I might disagree with, so long as it's willing to explore those ideas on grounded terms. I can enjoy a story with "diverse" characters in it, so long as they, y'know, treat the characters like they're people instead of just people-shaped ideologies? BL3's story was, in my opinion, a dodgy mess that decided Lilith was suddenly much more important than she ever was in the franchise leading up to that entry. It absolutely fell for the "strong female characters" and "diversity for its own sake" tropes that we've been seeing Hollywood try and mostly fail to execute on repeatedly for the past decade. It failed to make me care about its characters as people, and in my opinion cheapened a lot of the characters we already had. If Gearbox wants to incorporate themes like that into their stories more heavily, fine, but maybe they could take notes on shows like Invincible or movies like Into/Across the Spiderverse? Watching Gearbox and its fanboys try to invalidate criticisms of the story/clunky political pandering extant in 3's writing is just sad.
@jman2856 Uh... I never finished BL2, never played as maya, and never really cared for any of the playable siren characters. Mostly because I prefer playing snipers, while the sirens seem to appeal to witchy emo chick players, and that got really annoying a long time ago. ... Borderlands 3 was still atrociously written, including that scene, and you're an absolute child for dragging out the "go to therapy incel" argument, literally justifying my argument that this game really is the woke trash KBash pretends it isnt, when femin@zi rhetoric like that is all anyone can say in defense of this garbage.
@Psycorde god damn dude, perfect way to put it. He honestly had a lot of good points in there, and was genuinely funny at times, but then ruined it with chugging the blue coolaide a little too hard by the end... MUCH LIKE BORDERLANDS ITSELF.
a 3 hour retrospective on a franchise where you couldn't be bothered to even play all the content is crazy. and your humor is just as cringy as the games, if not more so.
I remember first playing BL1 as a preteen at my dentists office on those old game console setups they had. Why the fuck did they have that at the kids dentist I do not know
it was probably for the dentists themselves, my dentist occassionally plays games like solitare or zumas revenge on their work pcs, almost everyone in an office enviorment is gonna do that, they were just more creative, or maybe im thinking too hard and thry want to make going to the dentist less painful
Stop acting so smug and pretentious, dude. You act like a contrarian as well. I love The Pre-Sequel but you only seem to point out the good in it and ignore it's flaws. And for Borderlands 3, you acted as if the fan's points about the story were dramatic. The villains were cringe and Maya's death was poorly executed. You CAN have villains being like influencers without making them cringe (or at least not that annoying and while recognizing their cringe), and you CAN kill a beloved character if its death is respected and makes sense at all. The problems are in the execution, not in the ideas, just like most ideas in game design and writing. Once again, it almost seems like you saw those "BL3 is woke" comments and decided to be contrary to the points the game's audience complains as if those anti-woke people are the only fans of the franchise.
I like to think the Pre-Sequel was. If it was advertised and funded properly the series would probably be a lot different in tone, humor, and overall quality writing wise than it is now. The fact that it flopped isn’t the main culprit but it certainly contributed.
Chipping away at this, I'm seeing the issue and the reasoning for the dislike bar. You're working way too hard to be a complete contrarian lmfao. Maya's death for example. Killing off a character isn't an objectively bad thing, but what good comes from it? How does it improve the story? Joffrey's death completely shifts the power balances in Game of Thrones and creates some of the best moments of the entire series from the court cases to the Viper and the Mountain fight. Maya's death only tells us that the villains aren't messing around and they're actually really powerful! Except they aren't because we effortlessly dust Troy a few chapters later and much of Tyreen's power aftewards comes from the plot mcguffin powering her up. You also conflate concepts and act like the story is great and everyone is just insanely whiny for having issues with it. Rallying all the bandits together as Pandora's ultimate resource IS a good concept, but the execution? Just as you said; annoying joke after annoying joke with 99% of the characters and dialogue existing to please nobody and annoy everybody. It's not a good story when every single character exists to be annoying and spew garbage jokes. And lastly, no the other games being annoying doesn't suddenly justify 3 or Wonderland's annoyances. In fact later titles only exemplify the annoying factors. I hated Tina at launch and didn't find anything in TPS to really be funny, but you refuse to mention how every character has to emulate how Jack or Tina talk, you don't bother mentioning there being about 20x more moments where you're forced to stand around and do nothing waiting for dialogue to finish, and you act like this story is somehow good without saying anything good about it WHILE promoting a "no dialogue" mod in the same exact segment. A lot of reviewers fall into the trap of wanting to simply be contrarians for views, and it seems like your pieces on 3 and Wonderlands are just that, where despite AGREEING with the amount of lambast the games received indirectly, you're forced to defend them with literal nothing statements to "own the chuddies" which is a real fucking stupid reason to defend anything.
There are plenty of criticisms that can be thrown at Borderlands for its cringy humor. There are some youtubers who could make those criticisms, but, uh... not you, bro. Not you.
it felt more like every possible joke about prison rather than "gay bad" so i don't kinow who he's trying to pander to for christ sake shank's introduction cutscene has him and chaz in showers
1:37:38 not that your gonna read this, but your rant reaches the same level of ignorance as the group you're trying to criticize by deliberately ignoring observable aspects of the character's design in order to assume a moral high ground and claim you're above such shallow criticisms. It's as if the character's obviously shoehorned visible traits were intended to serve as an ideological crutch for externally motivated writers to inject surface-level critique into the narrative, rather than taking the time to earn it as the previous story did. It seems redundant to make a point about how you won't stoop to such a level, only to go through hoops and ladders to explain why they objectively fail anyway. You don't have to pretend to see the big picture if you're going to take your glasses off anyway. (good god this video essay is very contradictory after watching the whole thing)
At least he educates viewers about the evils of cultural appropriation, white privilege, and the many many ways he learned in college how to be a living apology for those and to never step out of his lane. And I need a follow up to find out how Tiny Tina “you can’t talk like that white baby” was racist while…you know…her hero and father figure was Roland. Odd he doesn’t mention that relationship. Then at 1:02:29 he parodies and makes fun of another culture right in the manner of “you can’t talk like that white baby”!! But apparently since he is mocking and turning white Australian’s into stereotypes it is now OK. It is quite interesting to read between the lines and see how thought of BL’s and gaming before and after going to college. I wonder if there is a connection…… But seriously, for the first few minutes I was really wondering why this guy didn’t have many more subscribers..
I appreciate you guys using your own collegiate level rhetoric against him, perhaps this level of high brow snobbery to say "no no, this really is woke trash now", might actually get through to him. And yeah, I do find it funny that KBash criticizes those mad at Maya's death as must be simps for a digital character when it kinda betrays his own attraction for the character, and projection of that attraction. ... That was a poorly written scene... And I'm saying that as someone who finds emo chick character designs generally utterly anxiety inducing, given the last time I tried dating one who looked like that, she was abusive as all hell to me for 2 years, and told me I'm the reason she started smoking and cutting again when I finally tried to break things off. That's... About as close to the exact opposite of attraction towards that character as anyone could feel, lol. The criticism of that scene has literally nothing to do with it coming from h@rny dude bros.
I've played them, and find them MID af. I think I missed a lot of the charm because i was playing it with 3 others in coop only, but yeah, I didn't enjoy the game much, only enjoyed time spent with muh buddies
Kbash don't be dissing my boy Axton like that! Axton's skill trees and turret is way better than Roland's skill trees! From dropping 2 turrets to drop a nuke everytime you drop your turret and create barriers around said turret! Compared to Roland's turret it might as well be a minigun on a wobbly stand! Axton ftw!
And? 😂 I'm black and gay been in video games since I was age 6 playing super Mario Bros! At this point in my life as long as the character has good gameplay, good personality, and plays a role in the story I don't care what race, gender, sexuality they are! P.S. I get your trolling/joking but seriously the white hate stuff getting old knock it off please and thank you.😊 😊😊
Axton has always been my choice for Borderlands 2 because I like turrets haha. But I still think he's underpowered. Always struggled even with his best builds.
@@Chris6570 God bless, you, sir. Anti-white racism is still racism and doesn't help get rid of the larger problem as a whole. I appreciate your level head.
I like to think that the pre-sequel did a great job at following it up in both humor and story as well as character and charm. It just didn’t get pushed marketing wise properly and marketing made it look like “another dlc” or as the video put it. “More borderlands 2” when it truly isnt
@@biteingcobra363 yeah I don’t understand the hate for tps. Imo they did recapture the magic. I played bl2 and tps for the first time back to back and had an equally great experience with both. I honestly just wish that tps had more content.
I have the distinct feeling this guy doesn’t like playing borderlands that much ik he said he avoids looter shooter but why make a video about it if you don’t like it, the main dead give away is him saying maya is a boring character while saying stuff like roland died because he was black and maybe not truly put any thought about how he was main reason there is a force that can fight hyperion to begin with, he only formed sanctuary from the rubble of atlas, the forgotten atlas soldiers. Roland had to be the one to die because he of all four og vault hunters was the face of sanctuary and everyone’s friend thats why there is a whole mission devoted to telling everyone in sanctuary. Maya however had such an unceremonious death and the game tries to tell you that the new vault hunters had no way of stopping or helping and yes they wanted to show that ava is a character that can make mistakes but afterwards ava blames everyone else which is annoying
I think you made some good points that actually support the point that Roland was a more interesting character, making it more heartbreaking and important when he's killed off. Maya really didn't get much background in BL3, only on the one planet really. I can't really blame a guy who's new to these games (besides bl1) for not giving a crap about Maya. She doesn't even really get a chance in the midst of BL3's bad pacing.
Yeah this very much feels like a forced review due to the movie causing so much word to spread. He uses bl2 weapons as examples for bl3, claimed he only bought the bl3 dlcs to review them, says Roland was given a statue in bl3 but that came from bl2, and he clearly saw no interest in the stories with the way he shrugs off character development and almost all moments of sincerity within the games. He also mocked people who said tiny Tina’s dlc made them cry, can’t say I cried but the dlc is fairly emotional.
28:33 As a bisexual when I played through the prison sequence I just found it pretty funny. I think most gay people have shared experiences of having first found out they were gay and half denying it half playing into it. Mr Shank seemed to just that but cranked to the usual ridiculous degree of Borderlands
@@YOGI-kb9tgNo, dude. The joke very much comes off as making fun of us. Maybe it wasn’t intentional. But it’s mean spirited at best, harmful at worst. Not a good look. Definitely would make me uncomfortable.
@@Maxdamageplus well grow some tougher skin the games riff on everyone you don't deserve special treatment. There are plenty of gay people who have no problem with it. It's also old when games did more risky stuff so you can't in good faith judge it with modern values.
@@YOGI-kb9tg You can make jokes about sexuality that do not come off as shitty as the one we’re talking about. Pretty reasonable to be made uncomfortable by a joke that awful. I don’t know why you’re bringing up that some gay people aren’t bothered by it? Do their opinions negate mine?
@@YOGI-kb9tg I can judge art with modern values. We should look at games in the context they were made, but I don’t have to pretend it’s 2009 when I play Borderlands. I don’t think you know what bad faith means.
2:08:00 I gotta disagree. Maya is a character people have played for years, 7 years by the time the game came around. I wasn’t massively upset about mayas death, but I know if they killed Zer0, my main and favourite character, I would’ve been upset, especially because mayas death is given so little emotion
Yeah, I think the main problem is the lack of emotion and buildup. Like she didn't really get to be a character for me to like before she died, most of my connection to her came from a previous game. When you want to do something like this in a story, especially to a previously playable character, you first need to give them time to breathe for the players to actually care about them. But that is also a lot to expect from a Borderlands story excluding the original Tales.
I'm sorry that outro rant was complete nonsense and had nothing to do with Borderlands. Of course long running franchises naturally change overtime and when that happens it can split fanbases but I can enjoy the Borderlands games just as much now, as a 25 year old, as I did when I was 13 years old playing 2 on my xbox 360. Those complaints about them using the word "midget" or Tina using black slang are flat out dumb dude
I'll always remember my friend telling me the only time he laughed while playing BL3 was when a random brute trash mob screamed upon death "Jokes on you, I was in massive credit card debt." which I can see being funny when it hits you out of nowhere in the middle of combat.
I'M COMING FOR YOU, JEREMY! These random shouts were pretty funny, as they weren't out of place and could afford to be silly - they're all out of their minds anyway
What stuns me most about Borderlands is its flat refusal to engage with microtransactions and lootboxes. It existed before we had those terms and still fends off investors on this point today. I may not be clamoring for the next Borderlands, but I had loads of fun with it as a Co-op Hangout Game with friends in an era where Non-competitive online games were a dying breed. A game like Borderlands is still rare, especially among those games that offer an equally viable single player experience when you can't convince your friends to buy in with you.
@@V2ULTRAKillnot skins so much but heaps of DLC. It's way more evident with BL2. With all the headhunter packs and Gaige, who was functional at launch but shafted into being a DLC character. Gearbox has always been somewhat predatory with content, they just had the respect to actually give you something that could be at least slightly worth the price.
it does get worse and worse after every game, specifically tiny tina's wonderlands, the DLC's are like 5 minutes long each and cost almost as much the full on expansions the other borderlands games got. also at some point, randy asked people if they'd be interested in a full on live service MMO type of game, and the majority voted no ( it was a poll on twitter, u can probably still find it ). but yea, credit with credit is due, they overprice some stuff but at least they don't try to sell you battlepasses, lootboxes, etc. in 2024, that's genuinely something.
i just left a comment trashing this video but what? whats wrong with bojack horseman? i mean it fell the f apart after like the middle of season 2 but it was still watchable all the way to the end.. even though it really became grating near the end
guy has 3 different comments on this video clearly you don't like what you are watching why continue and comment, you know the edit button exists right?
how would you know hes a good boy if he doesn't virtue signal how awear he is at his inherent evilness of being white dont you understand ..the irony of him being so overbearingly 2006 while complaining about a game being of its time is funny as hell tho
I understand "mediocre white guy" is a meme, but usually it's to complain about overpaid executives or inept politicians or whatever. Randomly applying that label to *yourself* for no apparent reason was really weird.
You spent several minutes dogging on Tiny Tina. Spent almost no time on Ava. Then criticized people for hating Ava while giving the most surface level description of why people hate her. I wish I could see the analytics for this.
Yeah, it's something I do enjoy seeing in Borderlands. Legit never saw a Mexican in a game until I played BL1. Kid me thought it was cool how Mordecai spoke Spanish like my grandparents
Yeah, honestly, I dont get why he sh@t on BL1 so much for being supposedly offensive. I'm bi... Gay characters in video games almost werent even a thing back then, and even when they were, they often were tokens (Mass Effect 1 comes to mind, which was practically heralded as some woke masterpiece for even having a token gay character at all XD). BL1 was weirdly inclusive for the time, and quite frankly, the fact that not a single one of those minorities was above being joked about made it feel all the moreso to me... Moreso than BL3 that feels like it puts women in particular on a pedestal or something, and makes every male character feel like a soyboi ned flanders or an "abusive ex" scott pilgrim villain stereotype.
@@hatman4818 I get what you mean with the BL1 stuff, but I don't really see your point with the "putting women on a pedestal" thing in BL3. The game never congratulates them on being women. Same with the thing about the guys, I don't really see them being the "soyboys" or abusive ex. The only thing that comes to mind in terms of having "women being out on a pedestal" was the main cast being mostly composed of women, which could easily be because of the fact that BLs cast probably does make up more women than men (if we're only counting the ones that are still alive)
Maya is more than a controller, she is an elementalist and a slagger (elements and slag specially make a lot of difference), and is a pretty good and fun character to run.
Lol, I hate that criticism. Don't need to be a 5 star chef to know when food tastes like rat poison. Besides, TO BE FAIR to KBash, making a 3 hour long video of even semi comprehensible critique, good or not, is an achievement and must have taken an insane number of hours to make. Not everybody has time for that... Which is WHY it is not a valid counter-criticism to say "well if it's so easy why dont you go do it then"... Bro didnt say making this video was easy... He said it was god awful and off base. It is possible to put a ton of effort into something that otherwise contributes nothing to society.
The only thing that bothered me in Borderlands 3’s story was the twins' relationship. After Troy kills Maya, he becomes less dependent on his sister and starts competing for control over the COV. I thought it would lead to a falling out between the two, but it just leads to him using his sister to charge a Vault key. Tyreen didn't like being a battery, but the moment didn’t feel like Troy physically forced her into doing it. Then the player kills Troy and Tyreen isn’t bothered by it at all for the rest of the game. It's so weird. The twins were a major selling point. Seeing the Troy overtaking Tyreen's place as the main bad guy would have been unexpected and interesting. I've never seen a narrative fizzle out like that. It's like the devs thought making Tyreen furious over her brother's death would have been too similar to Jack's breakdown to Angel's death in BL2
how the fuck did pandora after handsome jack's death allowed maliwan to make fucking cringe twitch streamer teenagers into power figures they could go to any other planet but no it just had to be pandora back on square one
There's actually a hefty amount of evidence that indicates this is due to massive rewrites of the original plot. Not an excuse for it, but certainly an explanation. It ties together Troy, Ava, and the playable Vault Hunters in a weird soup of original intrigue that got squandered.
@@shcdemolisher Not full copies, but given evidence that I've seen over time, I think at least the bones are evident. It all comes down to Maya's death, Tyreen and Troy's power dynamic, and the Vault Hunter's lack of agency. Literally all of them can be answered via three cutscene, two cut, one in game. The two cut ones are the two cut moments of the aftermath of Maya's death, showing Ava to be a lot more broken up about it, taking the blame on herself, and Lilith relating to her in regards to Roland. It also shows the Vault Hunters in both cut storyboards, unlike the entire rest of the game. Except for one singular cutscene. The one in Jakobs Manor when Troy phaselocks the player. Literally the only time the Vault Hunter is a direct part of a cutscene, in my memory, and it just so happens to be a cutscene that shows Troy as becoming more independent of Tyreen, unlike the unceremonial offing he got in the final release. Personally, I think these all suggest 3's story was going to have a far different outcome, with a more sympathetic and well-rounded Ava, Vault Hunters that had a presence in the story, and a more consistent characterization and ending for Troy. But hey, I might have some tinfoil affixed to hard to me lol
There's nothing wrong with recognizing something you enjoy is flawed or even just bad. People always equate liking something to meaning that thing is good. But sometimes it's okay to admit that you just like a thing that's poorly aged or was never that great in the first place. Like, there are a lot of games that I genuinely love and would play over and over and over again, and I will gladly acknowledge that they're poorly designed or have aged poorly. Other people critiquing the things that you like doesn't mean you can't like them, doesn't mean you're wrong for liking them, it's just good to look at things through a more criticizing lens so that we can learn from the mistakes of past things, and try and make new stuff that's even better
@@the7569 I'm mostly fine with people making critical videos, although I think a decent chunk of these videos are ignorant as hell and ignore so much of the history, making judgement calls with 20/20 hindsight and not appreciating how spoiled they were. But that's sort of besides the point. This site is designed to push whatever it is you seem interested in, and I got stuck in a storm of bad news. I made the previous comment to express this frustrating experience of being bombarded with bad news.
@@coachmcguirk8277 yeah but the way that the algorithm works, the more that you click on videos and interact with them the more it's going to send that stuff to you lol. So by leaving this disgruntled content you've basically just told UA-cam you want more stuff like this. If you want less stuff like this just click the do not recommend to me button and don't interact with the content
@@the7569 I understand, but I mostly watch "game dev" and "making of" content so to me it just feels like bad news is simply more popular - which makes sense, sensationalism sells. It goes beyond gaming as well. "The rise and fall of X!" they tout, about something that ended on a high note. Can't anything just end gracefully anymore... I swear there's this misguided idea that a game or movie that hasn't had a sequel in a while is some kind of tragedy. A work of art with a proud legacy should be left alone. Anyway now I'm rambling.
Holy crap dude! You sent me down a rabbithole with that codehunters comparison! I had no idea it was THAT bad, seems like gearbox's creativity has been bankrupt for WAYYYY longer than we thought, I was just too young to notice.
Ya know, as someone who clearly didnt play BL, BL2, or PS for more than 30 hours each, even admitting that you did not play the DLC, do you really think you are qualified to try and put forward your opinion as objective truth, as you did multiple times in this video? You were not even aware that the three weapon examples you used to try and support your claim about BL3's legendaries being superior to BL2's legendaries are weapons *from* BL2!
Um, 5'10 is an inch over the average for men. Technically you're "tall". I'm 5'9 (the average) and I'd probably ask you to get things on the top shelf for me.
regarding the DLCs, i think you're broadly missing the point of the Western themed one. yes, it is filled to the brim with tropes, but i saw the use of Japanese aesthetics and lingo as somewhat inspired, considering that many Western films were directly inspired by Kurosawa movies. it's to the point where the idea of the American cowboy and the Japanese samurai often have many parallels to each other in fiction.
I didn't play Borderlands 1, so I didn't know Roland was a main character from that game when he was killed off. I can't ever know how I could have felt about it if I was a fan going into 2 blind, but when I did feel it with Maya I felt the intended feeling of loss from seeing my main get killed off. That being said, I though the way she was killed off could have been executed better since it seemed like she died over plot induced idiocy, and separately from all of that The Calypso Twins just bored me as villains from start to finish. Even killing Maya didn't make me think they were getting better as villains, I just continued to be disappointed at how boring they were.
Roland was my main in the first one, and my friend mained Mordecai, so we were both hit pretty hard in 2. I still get kinda teary when I watch the funeral scene with Tina.
I cant think of anyone more qualified to talk about how borderlands 2 is a 2012 time capsule than a guy with smosh hair
It’s pretty goofy honestly, looks like a wig
Looks like La Roux
It's true though
Borderlands 2 is one of the best games ever made. Why does it matter that the game has style? Literally no games made nowadays have a unique style to them at all. All they care about is realism and minimalism
@@trppstarwhy do mfs say “games nowadays” when they actually mean “call of duty nowadays”
Borderlands 2's story was hard carried by Jack, who was in turn hard carried by the VA, who made even the biggest dumbshit lines sound exactly how they were envisioned in the writers' head. I'm not sure the Gearbox writer's room fully understand just how lucky they were to capture lightning in a bottle like that.
Yep! And the success of Bl2 went straight to Randy's greasy head. Dood's been trying to recreate the same thing for over a decade now and it just keeps getting worse.
Honestly for me jack and dopple jack also saved pre sequel from being forgettable, he is just a really great villain and character all around and it was going to be near impossible to top him in 3 (although i do think gearbox still dropped the ball hard when it came to the villains)
@@Tokumastu1Agreed, I feel like he’s striking too hard but then simultaneously striking too low, I LOVE borderlands and it has led me to new friends and new fandoms when I was at my lowest but goddamn for a game that basically shot Randy’s company into the limelight of gaming, he sure isn’t treating it like one.
@@gatordragon6140 doppelganger is still my all-time favorite class and he was comedy fuckin gold
@@andrewmeyer3599 every scene with him and moxie are the absolute best, hes just a cute little cinnamon roll that got stuck in the worst possible position lol
The thinly veiled (justified) hatred of Randy Pitchford as a human being is the funniest part of this video.
Hey hey kiddo! It's meeeeee! GREASY uncle RAAAAANDY~! Here, sit down, play some Buddylands with yer oooollllll *DEFINITELY* totally cool and not at all a creepy or violent uncle Raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaandy~!
Wanna see a magic trick~?
Greasy Randy-Bo-Bandy Bitchford
a man so greasy he can easily ride a metal slide, without pants.
a man so greasy he can't stand near an open flame
a man so greasy he turns public pools into biohazard sites just by dipping his foot in
a man so greasy they use his dirty towels to source industrial lubricant
You can't possibly hate Randy enough. You think you do - but no.
@@nexusvideoyou will never hate Randy as much as Randy hates himself
the problems with Maya's death for me are context and agency, and it is helpful that we have Roland's death to directly compare to. Roland's death is quick and comes as a direct consequence of the players' and the narrative's actions; the VH, Roland, and Lilith have just worked together to kill Jack's daughter, and he spends a decent chunk of the fight telling the VH about how he'll get revenge, and he immediately does. Jack teleports behind Roland, the VH can't react and pop a bullet in him, Roland is in the way, and the VH has just endured a kinda long and gruelling fight, so they might not be as quick as usual. Lilith /does/ react, though, gets almost immediately incapacitated and Jack holds her in front of him, now the VH can't risk shooing him because they might hit her instead. All of this stems from the player's actions, and are a consequence for it.
Maya dies because Ava didn't listen to her mentor, which lead to Maya being in a standoff with the twins, where she made the kind of un-smart decision to bring the guy with siren-sapping powers closer towards herself, and got herself dusted, instead of going for the girl holding Ava a full arm's length away from her. Didn't Maya have a gun in this level? Or could she not have just phasegrasped Ava back to her, out of Tyreen's hand, like, do what she did to Troy, but with Ava?
Meanwhile, the VH is... just standing there? the scene plays out after they return from a Vault, you have to walk up to Maya for it to play, but, they're just not actually in the cutscene - unlike with Roland, where it plays from their POV, and are directly spoken to. There is no agency, the VH is inexplicably yeeted from the world to give space for this setpiece, it doesn't come as a result of anything the player does, and instead serves to empower, or pass the torch onto, Ava, who was already pretty unlikeable, because the token Whiny Teenage Character is, by definition, difficult to like. Maya's death feels like it's built on contrivance, which is not always a bad thing, but going so far as to ensure Maya made all the worst decisions she could have, and to delete the player character from the universe to ensure there's no player agency is just a little too much.
I put the game down for months after this. I always hate the dumb teenager character that gets people killed but it felt even worse to me in this one even though I was kind of liking her before this. How is a character going to exist in the Borderlands universe and be this dumb about danger? Then the fact that she takes 0 responsibility afterwards and blames everyone else, then we have to comfort her as part of the quest? Absolutely ridiculous. Didn't help that I always play Siren so both of my old PCs were dealt with in horrible ways in this game. I wouldn't mind her death if it was at least a good one like Roland. It also really didn't help that Ava is being built up as Maya's successor so she'll either be the Siren PC or a very important NPC in the next game.
And on the note of always playing Siren, the fact that the character you choose to play doesn't matter in the cutscenes felt even crazier in this game. Why did the twins ignore me the whole time when they want to drain Siren powers? They drain Lilith, drain and kill Maya but just leave me alone the whole time? Why? It'd have been better to just not have a Siren PC like Aurelia in TPS.
But that gets rid of the twins existence to only end Maya's existence then physically nothing else of any value in the game
Great breakdown, but I gotta point out that Troy's powers weren't even really understood at that point IIRC, conveniently it's not known he can sap other sirens besides Tyreen until....it happens.
Speaking of agency, Amara is literally a siren as well. But is conveniently left out of all these scenes even if you choose her.
@@MrLockfree dont even get me started on the prolonged frustration of playing as a siren against villains with the capacity to steal siren powers only to be completely glazed over by the narrative completely
You're good at this video essay thing, but I can't escape the feeling that you're the kind of guy I'd be arguing with on twitter if I was still there
As a certain prisoner in a top secret correctional facility said, "Randy is a being of grease"
God bless Civie
Randy Bobandy
Cue Civvie playing the sound byte of Bubbles saying “Greease-eee-sy”
The algorithm requires engagement.
the problem with maya's death is how little grace is given to her, she's a fan favourite character, with a supposed budding romance with a separate fan favourite character and she doesn't go down with a fight, she dies getting run up on by 3 annoying little nerds, evaporates, and is unceremoniously shat out of the story for solely plot progression. It's not that her death couldn't have happened, its that it was handled incredibly poorly.
It was a cheap death for the sake of shock value and trying to artificially make the twins come across as threatening. It lacks the viceral weight of Rolands death especially given that in that scene Roland's death came right after you gave Angel a mercy killing. That whole secquence is played comepletely straight right down to Jack straight up begging you not kill Angel. Like there's genuine weight and soul to that moment that Bl3 as whole just doesn't have.
Bro, stop being intellectually dishonest with your own self and admit that you just wanna GOON hard.
One correction is that maya was confirmed to be aroace by devs but other than that I agree
The other thing that really bothered me is that Ava causes Maya's death by ignoring instructions to NOT be in the same place as Maya, then blames you for her death afterwards. Combine that with the moment the game teaches you about optional objectives to give you the option to console her is ridiculous.
Beyond hating Ava, it just feels like the game punishes you for continuing the story.
@@operate170 I think it just made Maya look stupid and incompetent, not being able to control her piss poor excuse of an apprentice. And then Ava mouths off to Lilith(? I think. Somebody) right afterwards like it wasn’t entirely her fault
I do find it entertaining in the bl3 segment when hes talking about how unique the guns are, he uses 3 examples of guns that are from bl2
Even familiar guns work better in Borderlands 3 though. They finally feel modern, more of them are hitscan instead of projectile, and they really pack a punch when they shoot projectiles.
@@MiraihiI’d say I did have fun with the guns more in Borderlands 3, they just had more OOPMH to it yknow?
@@NEEDLESALAD Right. Many talents compliment the guns better and in a more fun way too.
@@MiraihiAGREED!!! especially with one of my favorites: The Hellwalker!!
It just gives off that type of feeling of power that makes you wanna shred through a whole level on the first try, it’s THAT good. Not to mention a total life saver from what I experienced, shreds through enemies like PAPER and makes boss fights more fun :]
@@NEEDLESALAD Some characters in previous games felt very underpowered too. But Gearbox did a really great job of making every single vault hunter in BL3 strong in its own way in the following two years after the release. I remember looking forward to patchnotes.
"What if every character was claptrap?"
This encapsulates most of what made the comedy stale or insufferable in the later games. I like claptrap, but his humour was intentionally obnoxious, and even in the second game, he got old very fast. Borderlands 3 decided it was a good idea to give EVERYONE this quirky XD lul random loud ADHD humour that was already tiring with claptrap alone.
Claptrap worked because the humor was slightly self aware, and every other character ragged on him for being annoying. Even in the second game, with characters like Tiny Tina or Mr Torgue, there were generally enough characters to balance it out, or just having a slightly different brand of humor. Bl3 really did just lose it with everyone being claptrap and ignored why claptrap was funny in the first place, which was him being cringe and pathetic, with every other character making fun of it.
@@Cardinalsqr the worst part was tannis. from the anti-social quirky genius character, she became an insufferable ADHD kid with a mouth diarrhea and apparently sexual attraction to mine carts.
to me this was probably the game's lowest point
@@lior414 That’s very true. She feels like female Rick Sanchez. Tbh I just tuned her out immediately when she started talking so I didn’t even remember lol. At least her VA isn’t that bad so her voice isn’t as grating as it could have been.
i think it was more trying to recreate Tiny Tina than claptap but point still stands
@@ince55ant Not really. Most characters had a self deprecating awkward humor that Tina just didn't have.
I hate the Borderlands 3 villains because they are young people written by a 65 year old who thinks that UA-cam is “old timey silent films, like the keystone cops” or something.
They're a HUGE step down from Handsome Jack, for sure.
@@LuznoLindohe admittedly was a hard act to follow. Still tho this description of the bad guys of 3 is the most accurate I've ever read
tbf if they were written by any of the young writers, we have today they wouldn't be any better.
@sinjin8576 Dude they didnt have to come up with anything new. Finish the pre sequel cliff-hanger. what the fuck is the watcher and what war was he referring to? why is he the only eridian that can communicate with humans? what else does he need to tell the vault hunters?
@@PoeticInsanity the ones in the pre sequel are guardians, modeled after eridians, the red being in the pre sequel is the only true eridian we have seen
The more lore borderlands got the worse borderlands got.
I tapped out at the second game which was a 50/50 split between yelling Reddit memes from a year before it came out at me in an annoying voice and then wanting me to take it’s characters seriously and be sad when bad things happened to them. I could not do it.
That is becuase it become a parody of itself
Thing become for money, not for laughing about money
Which is an exact example of itself.
@@ElectricheadPt1 When I got it it was still the era of having discs over downloads by a wide margin and I remember carting it around to a few friends houses. I ended up playing that beginning first hour or so with Claptrap in the icy area like 3-4 times to the point I never want to do that again. The game got a lot better past that part, but it really began to grate how long you were trapped listening to a character monologue before a door opened.
I think I just played way too much of Borderlands 1 to really enjoy it. Of course I bounced off BL3 fairly fast too.
So, just like Aliens and Metroid.
It was legit fine till 3, I liked the lot of 1,2, Pre sequel, and tales. The cliffhanger of pre sequel was awesome
The worst part about borderlands is that the gameplay got better and better meaning you had to listen to more of the dialogue and "jokes" which are almost always based on memes that were played out by the time each game dropped
I don't know about gameplay got better.
@@beneil2it did
@@GangreneSerenity I play doom(2016) & Doom Eternal kido.
Congratulations on playing Doom....but he said the gameplay in Borderlands got better which it did @@beneil2
@@beneil2 irrelevant statement go watch under the mayo.
It always bothers me how rarely people bring up Gearbox using funds for Aliens: Colonial Marines to create Borderlands 2 when discussing the franchise.
Wait so Gearbox took funding meant for colonial marines and used it for borderlands 2?
@@c0smic_eve great choice tbh.
I actually meant to do this, and couldn't find a good spot that wouldn't break flow. Good point tho
@@KBash I think it could’ve fit in when you was talking about Randy’s “quirks”
@@masondarden2423 that's fair. I sprinkled them through anyhow. I think I was worried it would've gotten too meta for the subject at hand, but ye, I can do better
Absolutely wild seeing a dude with the humor of Reddit incarnate, criticize borderlands for its Reddit humor
shows you how bad it is
@@newlandpencilnut4754 it’s really not that bad he choose to focus on the small cringey parts of bl2 and not the large amazing part of it yet never talks about how horrible bl3s story and wrighting and said that a gun in bl3 that is from a copy of a mission in the second game that calls you a bitch perfect
Sometimes I think about how this video game enabled randy pitchford to get away with dropping a flash drive full of sexual material of a dubious legal nature in a medieval times parking lot which he claimed was actually magic trick research videos
felix the cat let his "creator" get away with only 9 months for nonpermissionably a 14 year old to then go back to work like nothing happened
Once they started making all the side people over the top and zany with no substance killed it
Did they ever NOT?
@@VascovanZellerit kinda flanderizes the longer it goes on. It went from "well that guys just a little off in the head" to "lolomgsorandom"
@@VascovanZellerBorderlands 2 had a good balance. There was serious shit going on along with all the goofy stuff, there were some more serious characters thrown in with all the over the top goofballs but then 3 made everything and everyone a joke with a bunch of outdated memes and jokes.
@@VascovanZelleri mean if you compare the craziest character in one and then look at the least crazy from 3 there is a noticeable upping in the crazy over time, at least in 2 they had some serious moments mixed in with the crazier characters but by three its just "lol look at the mid 2000nds funny and then move on to the next scene"
After the presequel its just empty the twins dont really do anything after you meet them and maya is gone nothing of substance for their existence happene
My biggest complaint with BL3, aside from the ear-gougingly cringe levels of the dialogue, is that Tyreen hurt and killed characters that people REALLY liked, but we didn’t get to revel in our victory like we did with Jack. She barely even goes *POOF*, really kinda pisses in the face of the player’s revenge and struggle
Now imagine
The better timeline, where, when troy went mad with power, he actually killed tyreen and became the primary villain, a character with an actual arc, and the more tolerable of the two, ending with a moment of silence before you dome him
@@V2ULTRAKill I swear I thought that was where the story was going. I hate the idea that the devs may have changed it to keep Tyreen as the main bad guy for the sake of appealing to the "girl power" demographic even though the story was being held up fine with Lilith and the other female leads.
@@V2ULTRAKill That would’ve been a bit better. Hell I was expecting a Eridian being showing up during his boss fight, and just crush both of them like bugs. Basically a God showing up to kill two wannabes who THINK they are gods. I think I’m reaching since I feel introducing a God similar to Beerus would’ve been amazing with how powerful sirens can get.
That and Ava getting the powers that Tyreen stole from Lilith. Which to me instead of making Ava reflect on her failings causing Maya's death vindicates her. It can be argued that its a fine attitude for a future vault hunter but at least give me the option to slap some sense into the brat
I mean come on.
"Tyreen the destroyer"
I feel like originally the boss was called "the desTROYer
I have to give Rhys a crumb of credit when he becomes CEO of Atlas. He revives a dead corporation and tries to be an ethical corpo, too bad BL3 is so horrendously awful that the arc falls flat on its face.
The only thing I remember about it is that you can shame him into shaving his mustache
@@harmoendeserved
Rys lives in a galaxy where megacorps basically supplanted governments as ruling bodies. Sure, being a CEO of a sci fi megacorp is morally murky, but it still remains a position where people can theoretically do good. It's like Eddard Stark being a fuedal lord. A good guy stuck in a job that's fundamentally hard to be moral in.
@@TheThing4444 it's moreso about the writers for BL3 making Rhys a useless whimpering coward when he had already gone through a substantial character arc
@@tosho_2979 That's true. Rhys isn't like a Vault Hunter tier badass even by the end of the game, but he really should have been more respectable.
I think Typhon gets overlooked a lot, seen as a joke character only. While he is quippy, - and who isn't in these games - there's a genuine through-line of family that isn't realized until we get to talk to him. He did his best to raise two Siren children, staying strong for them after his wife dies, and keeping them safe from a universe that only wants to use them and celebrate them as tools, not people. But the children get restless, as all children do, and flee their father, leaving the planet entirely.
And what happens after that? Something worse than Typhon's fear of the children being used in corporate warfare - his daughter turns out to be a sociopathic narcissist with superpowers who will stop at nothing less than owning the universe and possesses the means to do so.
And caught in her shadow eternally is her brother Troy, who is told he should be loved by all, told he should want more, told he should sacrifice anyone to get what "he" wants. He didn't want any of that for himself - Tyreen did.
When it comes to Troy running solo, he shows a dorkier side, and also seems to have some kind of genuine care for the COV, and deep down realizes the Tyreen is a bully and something is wrong with what they're doing, but he can't find it in him to go against her because of their unique power sharing, so he ultimately drinks Tyreen's kool-aid and becomes the monster she wanted him to be, which almost kills her too.
There's a genuinely good family drama in there, shoved into the locker of hidden audiotapes and subtext which Borderlands historically fumbles due to its constant, agonizing fear of ever appearing genuine.
I do agree to some extend, but I really wish it actually amounted to anything meaningful. The setpieces are all in place but the story delivers no real payoff.
I really liked the parts when Troy was coming into his own, having those internal battles with his sister and all that and even having his own charismatic monologue moments.
I really wish he didn't just kinda fall off and die just for the story to move on and not care.
I wish they would've taken this family dynamic somewhere where it is more than a nice lore dig
@@kchnbrn yeah. It should’ve amounted to Tyreen dying in place of Troy, making him the final boss and a bigger threat.
@shcdemolisher this exactly man. I said this the moment he died for me the first time. The setup was so subtle and kept building, only to be thrown away. It's a shame really.
@@ravenatorful Yeah. It did have the bones of a good story, but it wasn't able to be materialized. As for who is responsible for making that not happen... I don't know who to look at.
Something my friend pointed out to me, Troy and Tyreen aren't even like, full adults right? They're teens aren't they? If he was right, it kinda makes more sense, considering they're kids
I really liked the Presequel. I like how Wilhelm's voice can become more robotic as you upgrade him.
You're wrong about one thing. Maya dying is bullshit not for the reasons stated but because Ava is responsible at least partly, thus making the Tiny Tina equivalent not merely annoying but actively detrimental.
That's why her death specifically felt narratively worse than Roland's.
Gollum is annoying and detrimental to the party in LoTR, but I wouldn't go so far as to call him poorly written or mishandled tbh
@@KBash Except LotR was not trying to make Gollum likeable, and even when it tried to make us feel simpathy for Gollum, it did a better job than B3 did with Ava.
@@KBash We aren't supposed to be rooting for Gollum, though, unlike with Ava
@@KBash That wasn't just missing the point, you took it and threw it away entirely now
@@DevonDekhranGollum still has a whole ass fanbase which I highly doubt would be as big as it is if he was a woman.
Like you can dislike Ava without coming across like you’re always furious about women CEOs.
The irony of taking swipes at Borderland's "comedy" in one sentence, and then making an "anime conventions stinky" joke the very next sentence was not lost on me.
They are smelly though. The worst was a sonic convention I stumbled into.
@@Synthpopper how does one "stumble" into a convention for fucking Sonic.
You were there! Dont hide what you are!
@Synthpopper As someone who went to AX for years, it didn't smell bad. There were a few of what I'll call THOSE GUYS. They were gross but 99.9% of people were well adjusted and normal.
@@Synthpopper 100 percent. I was at Nerdcon like 6 years ago, it was so bad my nephew couldn't wait in line for concessions, he walked off with his Dad while I waited. It should have been illegal. You would just walk into to it every now and then while checking stuff out.
Im not stinky tho :(
the video is kinda nice until half an hour in
yeah it's around that time that I realized this guy didn't know wtf he was talking about
Why? (I am at the beginning and don't wanna be disappointed later)
@@rubykanima he starts just insulting 2 and saying it was never good
As much as I love long form essay videos, this guy is really coming off as someone that just likes the sound of his own voice. We get it, borderlands is juvenile and you're above it. Only reason I lasted about 40 minutes is cuz I was distracted by something else or I'm sure I wouldn't have lasted more than 15 minutes.
Facts he's always had that kind of attitude but now it's clear he's got no regard for his own audience and on top of that he constantly projects his white guilt in this vid which honestly made me unsubscribe - being snarky and acting as if pointing to his own skin color and going "haha lacking melanin is bad" is not a good look for any UA-camr
Dude is completely tone deaf as to why People hated Maya's death. Its not what the twins did, its how the situation was handled: Immaturely, inconsequentially for Ava's direct involvement, and lack of pay off.
Ava being a child excuse could work if the adults treated her like one and reprimanded her for errors; like getting Maya killed by refusing to listen to her. Instead the MCs just took her insults like shes right, and they are wrong.
Completely lazy analyses and lack of empathy from Kbash here.
Yuppp
I doubt I’ll make it 30 mins lol… don’t even know the game but the complaining is just the weakest salt ever
@@NightRogue77bro who asked?
@@JowoeBunchaNumbers dunno, who asked you?
cry 😂
Boarderlands may be a mess but with friends its senseless fun. Perfect for turning your brain off and trying to get the number to get higher and higher. I met one of my oldest friends on it while we were kids
V much so. Got me through the series even
I personally enjoyed the games solo. Don't know why some folks keep insisting that the only way to enjoy Borderlands is to play co-op.
My childhood best friend introduced me to the franchise, we would pull all nighters playing co-op on his ps3
Couch co-op is way better than a random player playing with you online. Borderlands is just boring when you play solo@@acedias12
The “villains” in borderlands 3 aren’t bad because they are annoying and they killed main character. Jack was brimming with charm and oozing charisma and that’s the only way to make a character like that work. They aren’t like Joffrey or Ramsey where they are so annoying it helps vilify them.
Tyreen and Troy are bad because they had no real follow through, just went through the motions, “be the bad guy”. They even hint at some conflict between Tyreen and Troy which would have been very interesting, but no, the villains felt rushed and boring
you know borderlands 3 can be better if there do evil powerful Aliens that kill off the Aliens that make the Vault instead footleg forbidden siren's cults. (or is it Silent Hill , Dead Space?)
The opening cutscene of the first game killed Borderlands. I miss the halcyon days when I just had a blank screen with nothing on it, the true, purest Borderlands experience.
😂 what
Borderlands was really better when it was a niche and extremely obscure tech demo with totally different aesthetics. Becoming a buyable product you could experience outside of a few tech shows or by being an employee really sucked the charm out.
I was fully willing to listen until you called Maya a bland character to play as
Maya sucks
We talking first playtrough or op10?
Maya's action skill is not inherently interesting, especially during the first 30 levels. I am a Maya main, it is not until you get higher in levels and get more gear that things get crazy. Other VH's have more interesting action skills off rip, well except axton and gaige but you know.
You being in college when BL2 came out makes a lot of sense, because lemme tell ya, as a 13/14 year old, Tiny Tina was VERY funny.
Was. That is.
I was almost 30 when it came out and I found her very funny too. I have a dark sense of humor too. This has nothing to do with age, some things are funny and some things aint. His issues with Tina's style has nothing to do with the humor.
Has nothing to do with age, that game came out in like 2012/2013, that was just the style of humor at the time. Looking back with hindsight you can say "lol cringe reddit humor" but back then it was cool to see jokes like that in AAA games
I’ll be honest; Tina always felt like Kbash’s long lost sister. He’s even acting embarrassed over her being as kbashcore of a character as Tatsu.
What game is Tatsu a character in? I’m not up to speed on kbash lore
@@shantanubhatia7873 xenoblade x
@@pockystyx4087 thanks!
I have never both loved and hated a game series quite in the same way I do with Borderlands.
this review has a certain attitude that makes me want to forget you exist
It's the sanctimonious reddit presentation
It’s funny how this dude can say Tyreen and Troy aren’t “only” cringe, but then turns around and says Tiny Tina is only cringe and questions why people like her
It’s mind boggling
At least it makes sense for Tina since she's supposed to be part psycho and was only saved by Roland taking care of her. The pyscho mask on her head showcasing it being kept at bay (she even talks a little like one too minus the murderous one liners).
The twins don't have that kind of depth other than streamer culture.
But yeh Tiny Tina is cringe.
Tiny Tina is insanely cringe he is right.
@@GinkgoPete both the twins and Tina are cringe
Tiny Tina was always cringe and I genuinely don't understand what people liked about her.
I passively listened to about 2 hours of this video, ignoring a lot of small inaccuracies or small trite comments I didn't appreciate. But your tirade about Maya's death being "because she's a pretty woman" is fucking ridiculous.
Yes. Villains are villains. They kill people.
In Borderlands, there are times when even our heroes are downright villainous outside of their typical morale apathy.
The issue with Maya's death isn't that we didn't get a big dramatic "coping with their loss" moment.
There are a variety of issues with it.
But the one that sticks out to me is that Maya wasn't just some random schmuck with a gun like Roland or Mordecai.
Sirens are a rare breed of person in the Borderlands universe and that rarity isn't something that's been taken for granted before. Sirens have always been shown to be incredibly hardy beings, only being killed off by Vault Monsters, Jack's Eridian infused machinery, or another Siren.
The Twins' powers *were* foreshadowed earlier on in them siphoning off Lilith. But, in that context, there was an understanding that they were capable of stealing that power and using it for themselves but they weren't outright dusting people just from a single touch.
The issue with the messy lore of Sirens is only further complicated later with the "bequeathing" of Siren powers onto Ava and Tannis because there's so little build-up to these things happening. They foreshadowed them, yes. But foreshadowing alone does not justify something happening.
Someone winding up their fist foreshadows a punch but that does not justify the punch being thrown.
Maya's death was predictable, expected with how closely they were following the template of Borderlands 2. But how it was carried out was vastly different than how it was portrayed in the second game.
We're not even talking about THE PLAYER CHARACTER being present for the entirety of Maya's death but being basically catatonic. Roland's death was an immediate consequence of Angel's death, the player was passive in that moment because Jack ambushed them and then immediately sedated Lilith.
The Twins ambushed Ava, held her captive as leverage over Maya who attempted to take the male Twin as a hostage (all while the player characters[s] are present), only for her life to be stolen by a previous unexplored side of the Twins' powers. Even THEY comment on never seeing their powers work that way before.
There's a lot of things in play but it boils down to WHO they chose to kill (one of the SUPPOSEDLY most powerful characters in the universe), HOW they did it, and the LACK of player agency.
It is so much deeper than "oh no, they kill pretty lady." Fuck you.
yeah i feel like this guy just has never really leaned into the whole "what's the narrative repercussions of this event?" and instead pulled shit out of his ass with the reasoning being "because i can" and its so bad of a take that i cant see this video as anything more than "im insufferable cause i dont find anything funny/find any of the characters important to the story as a whole"
This. Maya's death felt insulting because it was contrived, unearned and meaningless. The Calypso twins didn't give a shit about her and killed her by accident, she died like a chump to an asspull power, and the player characters presumably just stood there twiddling their thumbs while it happened. Then everyone basically forgets about her immediately, and Ava never actually gets proper character development or does anything meaningful afterward to properly pay it off narratively. Maya's death should have been a much bigger deal.
I am so happy someone saved me the trouble of writing out a comment I watched this video in the background while playing Civ V and rolled my eyes at a couple of instances like when he complains about Tina talking like a black person which is like... You know that accents have nothing to do with race right, it has to do with who you grew up around, your environment, so no it isn't racist to have a white character speak in that cadence in fact its more racist to gatekeep an entire accent for 1 race.
And also all of his snide comments on colonialism and corporatism and capitalism and blah, blah, blah, but after hearing how he boiled down the outrage around Maya's death, yeah I'm done with this video bro sounds like ethanisonline honestly.
His argument about people being mad about Maya just being, "Duuuuh you are just mad that they took out a character you liked duuuuh." is reminiscent of people who justify Joel's death in Tlou2 like yeah we knew that he was most likely going to get taken out, most gamers expected that so we wouldn't have been outraged if they did it in a good way, but having the seasoned survivor in an apocalypse who has made enemies with most likely 3 quarters of the earths population, BLINDLY trusting a room full of combat ready people with his real name. Yeah, eye rolling. It is a very bad acting facetious type of argument to have.
@@pintolerance785 I WAS ALSO WATCHING THE VIDEO WHILE PLAYING CIV LOL, i think the worst takes this guy has is anything related to maya, shes a siren, and they killed her off like a side character, and thats why the community was outraged, yet he ignored it like it was childish for the community to be outraged over a bullshit death
Yeah I’m not reading all that but you need to get a life. It’s just a game why does it have you by the balls?
This entire video is a clinic on 'trying too hard'
I think the negative reaction to the characters and plot points of BL3 as compared to BL2 is related to how each game executed certain plot threads.
Writing isn’t just related to the cringey one liners and jokes that each BL game is notoriously guilty of - and if I were to go back to BL2, I know for a fact that I’d feel embarrassed by lots of the dialogue, but that’s not really the point. Rather, the scripting of certain sequences is crucial to how fans reacted to character deaths - primarily Roland’s death in BL2, and Maya’s in BL3. I don’t want to go super in depth right now, but I know as a player of both games that I was way, way more invested in the events leading up to and the aftermath of Roland’s death than I was for Maya’s death. That doesn’t make either death more or less impactful, but think about the events surrounding each of their deaths, and you’ll realize that one game sold us on a character’s death, and the other game did not.
Side note - one of the reasons that I did not like the writing in BL3 is due to how heavily flanderized certain characters were - the two obvious choices that come to mind are Rhys and Vaughn. I did like the cult leader villains tho! Kind of funny that even after watching a majority of the video and jumping in to write this comment that their names slipped my mind again. I also remember enjoying the planet towards the end of the game where you meet the villains’ father - I thought his character was a breath of fresh air, and he helped bring some serious heart to the final hours of BL3. Kind of… underwhelming death, though? Like he gets thrown into a wall and just dies? That’s all I remember off the top of my head at least.
Ugh, now I have the craving to play some of BL3 again, that’s never a good thing. At least the gameplay is good.
That was probably the most disingenuous and reductive take I've ever heard on Maya's death, which is a staggering accomplishment.
Don't engage with any of the actual arguments against it, don't even pretend some people might have genuine and innocuous grievances with the writing and execution, no just strawman your way through that entire segment so egregiously that I'm not even sure why you mentioned the controversy, because you really just didn't actually.
Honestly his whole video is full of bad takes, he has a few points like with the bad humour starting with 2 but he misses the point on why people dislike 3 but then goes into why 3 is bad which is the exact same reasons who he claims the anti woke crowd dislike the crowd but acts disingenuous as if there problems were only women and not you know... A fun story which it is not. It's a fun game with fun side quests but it's main story is full of cheap shock value and unfunny characters.
Yeah, this whole "People are mad Maya died because 'my waifu nooo'" makes me think he's never actually looked at why people might be upset about it
@@utes5532 I said this years ago when Maya's death was the most bullshit writing that I have ever seen. Even when her struggling she could of easily fought back including the hold what that wanna-be playboy star model (Troy) grip by a harsh elbow slam to the chest. The way that gearbox handle it WAS the problem on how she died and make's matter worse there is hardly any grief about it after a short cutscene that plays. It feels like they didn't give two shits about a main vault hunter that players spend hours on in the previous game like I did and turned it into a cheap laugh. Matter of fact most of the vault hunters from the 2nd mainline game doesn't even even get seen once like WTF?!
@@utes5532 Yeah. Like I don’t thirst for Maya. I played as Maya for dozens upon dozens of hours and formed an attachment. Of course her being fridged and forgotten is going to upset me.
His faux outrage about midgets and any minority joke not aimed at white people is pretty cringe too...
Holy hot cow the amount of crying and whinging in this video would give Randy a run for his money.
The real problem with Borderlands 3's story is that I just wanted them the shut the fuck up the entire way through. The dialogue just drains the life out of me. It's almost like Tyreens powers are real and they're affecting me through the screen.
Calling Half Life: Blue Shift and Opposing Force “DLCs” instead of “Expansions” feels so weird to me lol
Especially when they clearly were NOT a downloadable content.
Oh heck no - go to PC store and get that new CD with that Expansion or Addon!
Blue shift was so boring. Opposing force on the other hand was pretty good.
Blue Shift genuinely felt like It had no pourpose. You are playing as the least fit for the job guy compared to the three games yet it's the easiest one by far. @@ChronicSensei
@@goldengoldy0197 Oh I know that, It literally takes 2 hours to beat.
script flub, mb
"They were playing with fire and cooking with gass" is such a good line
borderlands didn't get old, the people making it got stupid.
Borderlands 2 is still a gem imo
The only good thing to come from this video is the comment section.
Spoilers for borderlands 3 and rant below.
The problem i have with borderlands 3's story as a whole can be boiled down to one thing: Lilith fucking sucks as a character since 2, and they try to push her as some "super badass strong leader" type when she constantly jobs, makes terrible decisions and gets off Scott free and is celebrated for being great by the other characters. Lilith enabled a blood cult of psychos in her name, Lilith is a big reason why Jack is crazy, Lilith wanted to firing squad Athena for no go reason even after she explained herself and go the sympathy of the other vault hunters, Lilith got Roland killed by outright disobeying his (and angel's) order to stay behind, she is the reason Jack was able to wake the warrior, she jobs in a downright comical way to the twins, decides arbitrarily that Ava should be the next leader even though literally any other character would be better at the job and then has her "this Girl is on Fire" TM big heroic suicide death (that is teased to not even be real). I'm fine with Lilith being a fuckup character, but they act like she is an untouchable kween girlboss who everyone just loves. Randy tries to gaslight you into loving his favorite character. It feels insulting. Why do no one call her out for her bullshit, not even once?
The Twins are more of a disappointment than anything else. Especially Troy. During the game they set up a bit of drama between the two, Tyreen is obviously the leader and Troy plays second fiddle, and you can tell it kinda bugs him. He slowly gets more and more powerful as the game goes on, and It is set up perfectly for a twist betrayal, but instead he fights you solo for some reason, dies, and Tyreen turns into a big dumb vault monster.
Maya's death doesn't really bother me personally, but it just exists to set up Ava as a character. Ava then proceeds to just be an annoying teenager and actually do nothing.
tl;dr, the story of borderlands 3 deserves all the hate it gets. It's not just bad like the other borderlands games, its fucking insulting. The gag fake out ending is better than the real one.
So You're the target audience for borderlands 3, makes sense
>Milenial writer explaining how bl3 story is actually good
Lol what? He said it's fine at best
Right, the guy who thinks the series' humor was always consistently bad and cringe worthy, makes sense.
@@yaboi9742 that shit made me so salty, it was never the funniest game of all time but parts 1 and 2 and ore sequel make me laugh at least every 5 minutes, 3 made me laugh once the whole game if that. It's hard to quantify but it's true, the games before 3 were simply better written and it's easy to see the change since 3 has different writers
Pretty bad take on the B3 story; Maya getting Fridge'd and instantly forgotten was a poor execution on a tired trope and pretending as if the only critics are simps or the anti-woke was a bit frustrating. You can just be invested in the characters through having grown up with B2 or be given hope for stories in the setting by Tales 1. The plot of B3 was 'okay' from a theoretical mechanical standpoint but managed to spit in the face of fans with its execution
How is it frustrating when it’s mostly true?
You can annoyed by it and move on but declaring that BL3 killed your family and is the worst thing imaginable very much makes it clear that you need therapy and not digital women to make your life better.
@@jman2856 Consooome and Consooome, never question, just consooooome...
@@jman2856 "mostly true"? How can you measure it? How could you be sure they aren't a vocal minority? These are pretty bad faith assumptions you're making, borderline disrespectful
I second this. Borderlands 2's writing was miles above 1 & 3's. When I played that game, I actually felt something. I'm a conservative, but I can respect a well written story even if it expresses themes and ideas I might disagree with, so long as it's willing to explore those ideas on grounded terms. I can enjoy a story with "diverse" characters in it, so long as they, y'know, treat the characters like they're people instead of just people-shaped ideologies?
BL3's story was, in my opinion, a dodgy mess that decided Lilith was suddenly much more important than she ever was in the franchise leading up to that entry. It absolutely fell for the "strong female characters" and "diversity for its own sake" tropes that we've been seeing Hollywood try and mostly fail to execute on repeatedly for the past decade. It failed to make me care about its characters as people, and in my opinion cheapened a lot of the characters we already had. If Gearbox wants to incorporate themes like that into their stories more heavily, fine, but maybe they could take notes on shows like Invincible or movies like Into/Across the Spiderverse? Watching Gearbox and its fanboys try to invalidate criticisms of the story/clunky political pandering extant in 3's writing is just sad.
@jman2856 Uh... I never finished BL2, never played as maya, and never really cared for any of the playable siren characters. Mostly because I prefer playing snipers, while the sirens seem to appeal to witchy emo chick players, and that got really annoying a long time ago.
... Borderlands 3 was still atrociously written, including that scene, and you're an absolute child for dragging out the "go to therapy incel" argument, literally justifying my argument that this game really is the woke trash KBash pretends it isnt, when femin@zi rhetoric like that is all anyone can say in defense of this garbage.
this guy gonna end up in a list in few years
Truly one of the most difficult to watch videos I have ever seen in my life
Trash.
It's going so well and then his college education shows up
@@Psycorde Spot on.
@Psycorde god damn dude, perfect way to put it.
He honestly had a lot of good points in there, and was genuinely funny at times, but then ruined it with chugging the blue coolaide a little too hard by the end... MUCH LIKE BORDERLANDS ITSELF.
a 3 hour retrospective on a franchise where you couldn't be bothered to even play all the content is crazy. and your humor is just as cringy as the games, if not more so.
I remember first playing BL1 as a preteen at my dentists office on those old game console setups they had. Why the fuck did they have that at the kids dentist I do not know
it was probably for the dentists themselves, my dentist occassionally plays games like solitare or zumas revenge on their work pcs, almost everyone in an office enviorment is gonna do that, they were just more creative, or maybe im thinking too hard and thry want to make going to the dentist less painful
@@yaboi8940 I mean it wasn't in like an actual office, I should have said like Waiting room or something.
Bruh I was playing the toy story game at the dentist
@cruddyhorse was your dentist Zed??
@@rashaadpratt2011 hahaha, guess so, never thought of that!
"twin stick shooter" is a different genre lol, more like vampire survivors but with aiming
i hate how old what you just said makes me feel.
riiiight, i meant to say "dual analog" mb
@@KBash I see what you did there. Lmao.
@@just_matt214Ikr.... "like Vampire Survivors...." - I think of Smash TV
you could of just said hotline miami
Stop acting so smug and pretentious, dude.
You act like a contrarian as well. I love The Pre-Sequel but you only seem to point out the good in it and ignore it's flaws. And for Borderlands 3, you acted as if the fan's points about the story were dramatic. The villains were cringe and Maya's death was poorly executed. You CAN have villains being like influencers without making them cringe (or at least not that annoying and while recognizing their cringe), and you CAN kill a beloved character if its death is respected and makes sense at all. The problems are in the execution, not in the ideas, just like most ideas in game design and writing. Once again, it almost seems like you saw those "BL3 is woke" comments and decided to be contrary to the points the game's audience complains as if those anti-woke people are the only fans of the franchise.
Wut
It's really disgusting. Another smug smile while plays offended and I lose it
Pre-Sequel is a really good time if you're not suffering through series burnout, which occurs if you try to play it right after 1, 2 and maybe even 3.
It's pretty funny for me, cuz I played TPS first, then felt series burnout when playing bl2
>Complains about Reddit humor
>Uses Reddit humor
He said it. He called Borderlands 2 the beginning of the end.
How 😂
@@BigBadWolf30 Watch the video.
I like to think the Pre-Sequel was. If it was advertised and funded properly the series would probably be a lot different in tone, humor, and overall quality writing wise than it is now.
The fact that it flopped isn’t the main culprit but it certainly contributed.
Chipping away at this, I'm seeing the issue and the reasoning for the dislike bar. You're working way too hard to be a complete contrarian lmfao.
Maya's death for example. Killing off a character isn't an objectively bad thing, but what good comes from it? How does it improve the story? Joffrey's death completely shifts the power balances in Game of Thrones and creates some of the best moments of the entire series from the court cases to the Viper and the Mountain fight. Maya's death only tells us that the villains aren't messing around and they're actually really powerful! Except they aren't because we effortlessly dust Troy a few chapters later and much of Tyreen's power aftewards comes from the plot mcguffin powering her up.
You also conflate concepts and act like the story is great and everyone is just insanely whiny for having issues with it. Rallying all the bandits together as Pandora's ultimate resource IS a good concept, but the execution? Just as you said; annoying joke after annoying joke with 99% of the characters and dialogue existing to please nobody and annoy everybody. It's not a good story when every single character exists to be annoying and spew garbage jokes.
And lastly, no the other games being annoying doesn't suddenly justify 3 or Wonderland's annoyances. In fact later titles only exemplify the annoying factors. I hated Tina at launch and didn't find anything in TPS to really be funny, but you refuse to mention how every character has to emulate how Jack or Tina talk, you don't bother mentioning there being about 20x more moments where you're forced to stand around and do nothing waiting for dialogue to finish, and you act like this story is somehow good without saying anything good about it WHILE promoting a "no dialogue" mod in the same exact segment.
A lot of reviewers fall into the trap of wanting to simply be contrarians for views, and it seems like your pieces on 3 and Wonderlands are just that, where despite AGREEING with the amount of lambast the games received indirectly, you're forced to defend them with literal nothing statements to "own the chuddies" which is a real fucking stupid reason to defend anything.
There are plenty of criticisms that can be thrown at Borderlands for its cringy humor. There are some youtubers who could make those criticisms, but, uh... not you, bro. Not you.
That moment when you spend time reading comments instead of listening to the video except for the moments referenced in the comments
I hope it saved you some time, this was a waste of 3 hours of my time, he bait and switched me pretty hard with deteriorating sh@t takes.
i'm having hard time getting through this video. AUUGHHH
white guilt core
A bit "pot calling the kettle black" but fine
It's impressive how you can simultaneously praise a game and be a huge buzz kill.
It's impressive how he jeers the humour in Borderlands while sounding like a Borderlands 3 character. 9:28
as a queer person just saying i thought mr. shank and the prison segment of Knoxx was perfectly fine
It’s weird he brought it up. The character is just a guy who is in denial about what he likes/can’t admit it to outsiders
Tbh I kinda wish we got more of Mr. Shank.
it felt more like every possible joke about prison rather than "gay bad" so i don't kinow who he's trying to pander to
for christ sake shank's introduction cutscene has him and chaz in showers
This youtuber feels like he's trying so hard to be pc, and I don't think I can finish the video because of it.@hourly-to-awesome9544
@@mattd5240 That's exactly how I feel.
1:37:38 not that your gonna read this, but your rant reaches the same level of ignorance as the group you're trying to criticize by deliberately ignoring observable aspects of the character's design in order to assume a moral high ground and claim you're above such shallow criticisms. It's as if the character's obviously shoehorned visible traits were intended to serve as an ideological crutch for externally motivated writers to inject surface-level critique into the narrative, rather than taking the time to earn it as the previous story did. It seems redundant to make a point about how you won't stoop to such a level, only to go through hoops and ladders to explain why they objectively fail anyway. You don't have to pretend to see the big picture if you're going to take your glasses off anyway.
(good god this video essay is very contradictory after watching the whole thing)
Thank you for putting how I feel into words.
At least he educates viewers about the evils of cultural appropriation, white privilege, and the many many ways he learned in college how to be a living apology for those and to never step out of his lane. And I need a follow up to find out how Tiny Tina “you can’t talk like that white baby” was racist while…you know…her hero and father figure was Roland. Odd he doesn’t mention that relationship.
Then at 1:02:29 he parodies and makes fun of another culture right in the manner of “you can’t talk like that white baby”!! But apparently since he is mocking and turning white Australian’s into stereotypes it is now OK.
It is quite interesting to read between the lines and see how thought of BL’s and gaming before and after going to college. I wonder if there is a connection……
But seriously, for the first few minutes I was really wondering why this guy didn’t have many more subscribers..
I appreciate you guys using your own collegiate level rhetoric against him, perhaps this level of high brow snobbery to say "no no, this really is woke trash now", might actually get through to him.
And yeah, I do find it funny that KBash criticizes those mad at Maya's death as must be simps for a digital character when it kinda betrays his own attraction for the character, and projection of that attraction.
... That was a poorly written scene... And I'm saying that as someone who finds emo chick character designs generally utterly anxiety inducing, given the last time I tried dating one who looked like that, she was abusive as all hell to me for 2 years, and told me I'm the reason she started smoking and cutting again when I finally tried to break things off. That's... About as close to the exact opposite of attraction towards that character as anyone could feel, lol. The criticism of that scene has literally nothing to do with it coming from h@rny dude bros.
Me: "I don't have time to sit down and watch a movie."
Also me: "KBash shitting on a once-beloved series for nearly three hours? Oh boy!"
Never played a Borderlands game, but I'll watch KBash talk about it for almost three hours
This is so real
ME RN 😂😂😂
this video is really, really bad but I can't stop watching for some reason. kind of like a borderlands game.
@@ataridcso I take it that this “bitch about a youtuber in comment sections” thing is all you have going on, right
I've played them, and find them MID af. I think I missed a lot of the charm because i was playing it with 3 others in coop only, but yeah, I didn't enjoy the game much, only enjoyed time spent with muh buddies
Kbash don't be dissing my boy Axton like that! Axton's skill trees and turret is way better than Roland's skill trees! From dropping 2 turrets to drop a nuke everytime you drop your turret and create barriers around said turret! Compared to Roland's turret it might as well be a minigun on a wobbly stand! Axton ftw!
BUT HE IS A WHITE MALE !
And? 😂 I'm black and gay been in video games since I was age 6 playing super Mario Bros! At this point in my life as long as the character has good gameplay, good personality, and plays a role in the story I don't care what race, gender, sexuality they are!
P.S. I get your trolling/joking but seriously the white hate stuff getting old knock it off please and thank you.😊 😊😊
Axton has always been my choice for Borderlands 2 because I like turrets haha. But I still think he's underpowered. Always struggled even with his best builds.
@@Miraihi Still better than Roland gameplay just saying 😊
@@Chris6570 God bless, you, sir. Anti-white racism is still racism and doesn't help get rid of the larger problem as a whole. I appreciate your level head.
Borderlands 2 is the peak of the series and every entry afterwards was just desperately trying to recapture that magic
I like to think that the pre-sequel did a great job at following it up in both humor and story as well as character and charm. It just didn’t get pushed marketing wise properly and marketing made it look like “another dlc” or as the video put it. “More borderlands 2” when it truly isnt
@@biteingcobra363 yeah I don’t understand the hate for tps. Imo they did recapture the magic. I played bl2 and tps for the first time back to back and had an equally great experience with both. I honestly just wish that tps had more content.
I have the distinct feeling this guy doesn’t like playing borderlands that much ik he said he avoids looter shooter but why make a video about it if you don’t like it, the main dead give away is him saying maya is a boring character while saying stuff like roland died because he was black and maybe not truly put any thought about how he was main reason there is a force that can fight hyperion to begin with, he only formed sanctuary from the rubble of atlas, the forgotten atlas soldiers. Roland had to be the one to die because he of all four og vault hunters was the face of sanctuary and everyone’s friend thats why there is a whole mission devoted to telling everyone in sanctuary. Maya however had such an unceremonious death and the game tries to tell you that the new vault hunters had no way of stopping or helping and yes they wanted to show that ava is a character that can make mistakes but afterwards ava blames everyone else which is annoying
I think you made some good points that actually support the point that Roland was a more interesting character, making it more heartbreaking and important when he's killed off. Maya really didn't get much background in BL3, only on the one planet really. I can't really blame a guy who's new to these games (besides bl1) for not giving a crap about Maya. She doesn't even really get a chance in the midst of BL3's bad pacing.
Yeah this very much feels like a forced review due to the movie causing so much word to spread. He uses bl2 weapons as examples for bl3, claimed he only bought the bl3 dlcs to review them, says Roland was given a statue in bl3 but that came from bl2, and he clearly saw no interest in the stories with the way he shrugs off character development and almost all moments of sincerity within the games. He also mocked people who said tiny Tina’s dlc made them cry, can’t say I cried but the dlc is fairly emotional.
And the shit about them adding midgets so they'd have something to "punch down on". The fuck? It must be insane to constantly be thinking in this way.
Borderlands 1 and 2 wont get old for me as long as my friends and I are still playing. Everything else.. kinda stopped being borderlands lmao
28:33
As a bisexual when I played through the prison sequence I just found it pretty funny. I think most gay people have shared experiences of having first found out they were gay and half denying it half playing into it. Mr Shank seemed to just that but cranked to the usual ridiculous degree of Borderlands
Nobody has an issue with it he's just showing his ideology being pointlessly offended for other people who never asked.
@@YOGI-kb9tgNo, dude. The joke very much comes off as making fun of us. Maybe it wasn’t intentional. But it’s mean spirited at best, harmful at worst. Not a good look. Definitely would make me uncomfortable.
@@Maxdamageplus well grow some tougher skin the games riff on everyone you don't deserve special treatment. There are plenty of gay people who have no problem with it. It's also old when games did more risky stuff so you can't in good faith judge it with modern values.
@@YOGI-kb9tg You can make jokes about sexuality that do not come off as shitty as the one we’re talking about.
Pretty reasonable to be made uncomfortable by a joke that awful.
I don’t know why you’re bringing up that some gay people aren’t bothered by it? Do their opinions negate mine?
@@YOGI-kb9tg I can judge art with modern values. We should look at games in the context they were made, but I don’t have to pretend it’s 2009 when I play Borderlands.
I don’t think you know what bad faith means.
2:08:00 I gotta disagree. Maya is a character people have played for years, 7 years by the time the game came around. I wasn’t massively upset about mayas death, but I know if they killed Zer0, my main and favourite character, I would’ve been upset, especially because mayas death is given so little emotion
Yeah, I think the main problem is the lack of emotion and buildup. Like she didn't really get to be a character for me to like before she died, most of my connection to her came from a previous game. When you want to do something like this in a story, especially to a previously playable character, you first need to give them time to breathe for the players to actually care about them.
But that is also a lot to expect from a Borderlands story excluding the original Tales.
I'm sorry that outro rant was complete nonsense and had nothing to do with Borderlands. Of course long running franchises naturally change overtime and when that happens it can split fanbases but I can enjoy the Borderlands games just as much now, as a 25 year old, as I did when I was 13 years old playing 2 on my xbox 360.
Those complaints about them using the word "midget" or Tina using black slang are flat out dumb dude
I'll always remember my friend telling me the only time he laughed while playing BL3 was when a random brute trash mob screamed upon death "Jokes on you, I was in massive credit card debt." which I can see being funny when it hits you out of nowhere in the middle of combat.
I'M COMING FOR YOU, JEREMY!
These random shouts were pretty funny, as they weren't out of place and could afford to be silly - they're all out of their minds anyway
I don't understand why you needed to virtue signal your white guilt.
Because he's a whiny cynic
People's politics bleeding into their content is completely normal but man his videos just get more and more whiny.
Bro Tiny Tinas DLC in borderlands 2 is amazing.
What stuns me most about Borderlands is its flat refusal to engage with microtransactions and lootboxes. It existed before we had those terms and still fends off investors on this point today. I may not be clamoring for the next Borderlands, but I had loads of fun with it as a Co-op Hangout Game with friends in an era where Non-competitive online games were a dying breed. A game like Borderlands is still rare, especially among those games that offer an equally viable single player experience when you can't convince your friends to buy in with you.
It's been engaging in microtransactions since bl2 homie
They sell skins
@@V2ULTRAKillnot skins so much but heaps of DLC. It's way more evident with BL2. With all the headhunter packs and Gaige, who was functional at launch but shafted into being a DLC character. Gearbox has always been somewhat predatory with content, they just had the respect to actually give you something that could be at least slightly worth the price.
it does get worse and worse after every game, specifically tiny tina's wonderlands, the DLC's are like 5 minutes long each and cost almost as much the full on expansions the other borderlands games got. also at some point, randy asked people if they'd be interested in a full on live service MMO type of game, and the majority voted no ( it was a poll on twitter, u can probably still find it ). but yea, credit with credit is due, they overprice some stuff but at least they don't try to sell you battlepasses, lootboxes, etc. in 2024, that's genuinely something.
@@V2ULTRAKill didn't they also sell golden keys?
That and more coming in Borderlands 4!
Same guy who cringed at CL4P-TP dancing thinks “dry… LiKe A dEsErT” was a good joke
Oh, you like Bojack Horseman, now this video makes sense
how give a fuck about him?
Dude, you have left like 3 different comments just to piss at this dude, and this is the one that makes the least sense.
i just left a comment trashing this video but what? whats wrong with bojack horseman? i mean it fell the f apart after like the middle of season 2 but it was still watchable all the way to the end.. even though it really became grating near the end
@@rrai1999 well bojack horseman have a good ending.
guy has 3 different comments on this video clearly you don't like what you are watching why continue and comment, you know the edit button exists right?
Take a drink every time he has white guilt 🍻💀
No thanks, not trying to die of alchohol poisoning
Sorry
I'm dead
Cant,I'd die .
That bits gettin stale real fast. Im at presequel now in the video
how would you know hes a good boy if he doesn't virtue signal how awear he is at his inherent evilness of being white dont you understand ..the irony of him being so overbearingly 2006 while complaining about a game being of its time is funny as hell tho
This guy does not realize how similar his humor is to the corny "band kid" stuff he complains about, unfortunately.
2:35:27
I cringed so much in this video, more than any line in BL3 has
@@vitzel33Are you sure?
Self-awareness matters
That's probably the meta joke, yeah? And everyone here getting pissy about his humor and not seeing how it's connected to the game series... 🙄
Turns out the real Borderlands were the midgets we met along the way 🥹
I understand "mediocre white guy" is a meme, but usually it's to complain about overpaid executives or inept politicians or whatever. Randomly applying that label to *yourself* for no apparent reason was really weird.
Self hating white people are pretty common.
It's so weird the obsession that some white people have with hating themselves
the way he constantly brings up everyones race and his weird shitting on white people makes me think he might be racist :/
He's a self-loathing woketard.
Gage's borderlands anarchy skill tree got me soooo hooked on BL2, it's insane.
played through that game so many times, then gage comes out and it felt like a brand new game again
32:54 the most beta a man can get lol
You spent several minutes dogging on Tiny Tina. Spent almost no time on Ava. Then criticized people for hating Ava while giving the most surface level description of why people hate her. I wish I could see the analytics for this.
1.1k dislikes, I recommend UA-cam Vanced so you can always see dislikes.
@@hyponauticaltypical large videos over 100k views has the like to dislike ratio at about 100:1, 1k dislikes per ~100k views.
@@Lappasm4nthe extension that shows dislikes is inaccurate tbf, it only shows dislikes from people using the app or sum
I'm shocked at how much Indian/South-East Asian representation Borderlands has (Nisha, Amara, Anu).
It is far more than most AAA games.
Yeah, it's something I do enjoy seeing in Borderlands. Legit never saw a Mexican in a game until I played BL1. Kid me thought it was cool how Mordecai spoke Spanish like my grandparents
@@matthew5278 That's so cool
Yeah, honestly, I dont get why he sh@t on BL1 so much for being supposedly offensive. I'm bi... Gay characters in video games almost werent even a thing back then, and even when they were, they often were tokens (Mass Effect 1 comes to mind, which was practically heralded as some woke masterpiece for even having a token gay character at all XD).
BL1 was weirdly inclusive for the time, and quite frankly, the fact that not a single one of those minorities was above being joked about made it feel all the moreso to me... Moreso than BL3 that feels like it puts women in particular on a pedestal or something, and makes every male character feel like a soyboi ned flanders or an "abusive ex" scott pilgrim villain stereotype.
@@hatman4818 I get what you mean with the BL1 stuff, but I don't really see your point with the "putting women on a pedestal" thing in BL3. The game never congratulates them on being women. Same with the thing about the guys, I don't really see them being the "soyboys" or abusive ex. The only thing that comes to mind in terms of having "women being out on a pedestal" was the main cast being mostly composed of women, which could easily be because of the fact that BLs cast probably does make up more women than men (if we're only counting the ones that are still alive)
Maya is more than a controller, she is an elementalist and a slagger (elements and slag specially make a lot of difference), and is a pretty good and fun character to run.
A 2 hour, 45 minute and 9 seconds of yap. Not a single second of actually well written analysis. Impressive honestly, 10/10.
Where's your vid bro?
@AC-hj9tv Bro doesn't know you, don't got to defend his meat. But valid, no video, so my criticism is invalid. I give this reply a 10/10
Lol, I hate that criticism. Don't need to be a 5 star chef to know when food tastes like rat poison.
Besides, TO BE FAIR to KBash, making a 3 hour long video of even semi comprehensible critique, good or not, is an achievement and must have taken an insane number of hours to make. Not everybody has time for that... Which is WHY it is not a valid counter-criticism to say "well if it's so easy why dont you go do it then"... Bro didnt say making this video was easy... He said it was god awful and off base. It is possible to put a ton of effort into something that otherwise contributes nothing to society.
Remember when you covered all of Bioshock in 26 minutes lol
I hope the minorities see all this white guilt bro
Haha
Ya'll dont ever feel guilty. The guilt's never genuine
@@stardoogalaxie9314 Not sure if genuine comment or joke
@@stardoogalaxie9314 What's there to be guilty about?
Touch grass
Blame Randy Pitchford for all the failures.
The only thing that bothered me in Borderlands 3’s story was the twins' relationship. After Troy kills Maya, he becomes less dependent on his sister and starts competing for control over the COV. I thought it would lead to a falling out between the two, but it just leads to him using his sister to charge a Vault key. Tyreen didn't like being a battery, but the moment didn’t feel like Troy physically forced her into doing it. Then the player kills Troy and Tyreen isn’t bothered by it at all for the rest of the game. It's so weird. The twins were a major selling point. Seeing the Troy overtaking Tyreen's place as the main bad guy would have been unexpected and interesting. I've never seen a narrative fizzle out like that. It's like the devs thought making Tyreen furious over her brother's death would have been too similar to Jack's breakdown to Angel's death in BL2
how the fuck did pandora after handsome jack's death allowed maliwan to make fucking cringe twitch streamer teenagers into power figures
they could go to any other planet but no it just had to be pandora back on square one
There's actually a hefty amount of evidence that indicates this is due to massive rewrites of the original plot. Not an excuse for it, but certainly an explanation. It ties together Troy, Ava, and the playable Vault Hunters in a weird soup of original intrigue that got squandered.
@@honkfiend7981 Are there copies of the original plot around?
@@shcdemolisher Not full copies, but given evidence that I've seen over time, I think at least the bones are evident. It all comes down to Maya's death, Tyreen and Troy's power dynamic, and the Vault Hunter's lack of agency.
Literally all of them can be answered via three cutscene, two cut, one in game. The two cut ones are the two cut moments of the aftermath of Maya's death, showing Ava to be a lot more broken up about it, taking the blame on herself, and Lilith relating to her in regards to Roland.
It also shows the Vault Hunters in both cut storyboards, unlike the entire rest of the game. Except for one singular cutscene. The one in Jakobs Manor when Troy phaselocks the player. Literally the only time the Vault Hunter is a direct part of a cutscene, in my memory, and it just so happens to be a cutscene that shows Troy as becoming more independent of Tyreen, unlike the unceremonial offing he got in the final release.
Personally, I think these all suggest 3's story was going to have a far different outcome, with a more sympathetic and well-rounded Ava, Vault Hunters that had a presence in the story, and a more consistent characterization and ending for Troy.
But hey, I might have some tinfoil affixed to hard to me lol
@@honkfiend7981 Wasn't this one of the first games Dulce Bambino worked on?
Damn, the algorithm won't stop recommending "everything you once liked is dead/bad" videos. Get me outta here.
It's true doe
There's nothing wrong with recognizing something you enjoy is flawed or even just bad. People always equate liking something to meaning that thing is good. But sometimes it's okay to admit that you just like a thing that's poorly aged or was never that great in the first place. Like, there are a lot of games that I genuinely love and would play over and over and over again, and I will gladly acknowledge that they're poorly designed or have aged poorly. Other people critiquing the things that you like doesn't mean you can't like them, doesn't mean you're wrong for liking them, it's just good to look at things through a more criticizing lens so that we can learn from the mistakes of past things, and try and make new stuff that's even better
@@the7569 I'm mostly fine with people making critical videos, although I think a decent chunk of these videos are ignorant as hell and ignore so much of the history, making judgement calls with 20/20 hindsight and not appreciating how spoiled they were. But that's sort of besides the point. This site is designed to push whatever it is you seem interested in, and I got stuck in a storm of bad news. I made the previous comment to express this frustrating experience of being bombarded with bad news.
@@coachmcguirk8277 yeah but the way that the algorithm works, the more that you click on videos and interact with them the more it's going to send that stuff to you lol. So by leaving this disgruntled content you've basically just told UA-cam you want more stuff like this. If you want less stuff like this just click the do not recommend to me button and don't interact with the content
@@the7569 I understand, but I mostly watch "game dev" and "making of" content so to me it just feels like bad news is simply more popular - which makes sense, sensationalism sells. It goes beyond gaming as well. "The rise and fall of X!" they tout, about something that ended on a high note. Can't anything just end gracefully anymore... I swear there's this misguided idea that a game or movie that hasn't had a sequel in a while is some kind of tragedy. A work of art with a proud legacy should be left alone. Anyway now I'm rambling.
Holy crap dude! You sent me down a rabbithole with that codehunters comparison! I had no idea it was THAT bad, seems like gearbox's creativity has been bankrupt for WAYYYY longer than we thought, I was just too young to notice.
Ya know, as someone who clearly didnt play BL, BL2, or PS for more than 30 hours each, even admitting that you did not play the DLC, do you really think you are qualified to try and put forward your opinion as objective truth, as you did multiple times in this video?
You were not even aware that the three weapon examples you used to try and support your claim about BL3's legendaries being superior to BL2's legendaries are weapons *from* BL2!
As a 5'10" certified short king myself, I'm aghast at their use of "midget" and DEMAND they use the more empowering term "pocket prince"
Um, 5'10 is an inch over the average for men. Technically you're "tall". I'm 5'9 (the average) and I'd probably ask you to get things on the top shelf for me.
regarding the DLCs, i think you're broadly missing the point of the Western themed one. yes, it is filled to the brim with tropes, but i saw the use of Japanese aesthetics and lingo as somewhat inspired, considering that many Western films were directly inspired by Kurosawa movies. it's to the point where the idea of the American cowboy and the Japanese samurai often have many parallels to each other in fiction.
I didn't play Borderlands 1, so I didn't know Roland was a main character from that game when he was killed off. I can't ever know how I could have felt about it if I was a fan going into 2 blind, but when I did feel it with Maya I felt the intended feeling of loss from seeing my main get killed off. That being said, I though the way she was killed off could have been executed better since it seemed like she died over plot induced idiocy, and separately from all of that The Calypso Twins just bored me as villains from start to finish. Even killing Maya didn't make me think they were getting better as villains, I just continued to be disappointed at how boring they were.
Roland was my main in the first one, and my friend mained Mordecai, so we were both hit pretty hard in 2. I still get kinda teary when I watch the funeral scene with Tina.