I think I’m done with Borderlands 3. Which is too bad because the gameplay is solid–it’s just everything else that sucks. OK, that’s not fair. The graphics are better than ever. I have always loved the cell-shaded look, and that hasn’t changed. I didn’t dig Amara when I first started because while she’s a siren, she’s a brawler. She felt very underpowered in the first couple hours. I tried all the characters as I like to do knowing I’d probably go with Amara. I had played as the siren in both of the first two games, and I was dedicated to the class. Still. Two of the other classes looked interesting, and I touched on this in my last post. I did eventually try Moze and the other guy. Zero? No, that was from the last game. Zane! That’s his name. I was definitely unimpressed by him. Moze and her Iron Bear are badass, but since Ian is playing that character, not for this go around. I may go back to Fl4k, but Amara has gotten better now that I’m Level 10 or so.
It was a mentality change. She’s a brawler, which means she’s meant to be played melee. Melee is not my forte. Oh, and apparently she’s good with elements. Which makes sense, but I haven’t been pumping that tree because I’m all about the health regen, I don’t love any of her ults, but I’ve been mostly using the ground pound. In the last game, I used the hold the enemy in the air and shoot them to death, but it’s just not as useful when there a a million enemies swarming you. For the first few hours, I played by hanging back and shooting, which is my usual M.O. That’s not how she’s meant to be played. She’s a get in there and smash them in the face kind of gal. I was already meleeing more than I ever have, but it wasn’t enough. By the way, I did switch melee to C instead of V. It’s better, but it’s still awkward.
I’m blathering about all this other stuff because I don’t want to talk about what I knew was going to happen, but I had hoped against hope that it wouldn’t. In fact, let’s talk about Scholar of the First Sin so I don’t have to talk about it for a few more minutes. I plugged in the old laptop the other day just to see what characters I had rolled up in SotFS. Imagine my chagrin when I realized that I didn’t have it installed on that machine. I can reinstall it, of course, but it’ll be tricky. First, I have almost no memory left. Second, I’m switching the power cord from my new machine back and forth every time I want to use the old machine. I can probably find the old power cord, but will it work? I don’t know. I’m really hard on my power cords.
I went to my desktop, did all the updating it needed, and checked out my characters there. I have several, and three of them are in NG+ and beyond. I was specifically looking at the gestures I had because I should have gotten the gestures achievement. Sure enough, I had all the gestures on the first character I checked, but not the achievement. This one is easy. There are 20 of them, and there are three ways to get them. The first are the default ones. Had those, of course. All but one of the rest are given by NPCs. The final one is Praise The Sun, which you get at the Altar of Sunlight. I was pretty sure I had all the gestures on more than one character, so what the fuck? I Googled it, of course, and the best explanation is that if you get the last gesture while offline, it doesn’t count. Steam offline, I mean. I play most of the games offline most of the time, so that’s probably what happened to me.
I’m mad. I won’t lie. It’s also probably what happened with the Infusion achievement in DS III. I was offline when it happened, and when I realized it, I went back online. Nothing. I tried three more times on that character, and still nothing. It was only when I did it with a different character, online, that I managed to make it pop. I guess I can understand why it wouldn’t pop when you’re offline, but I don’t understand why it wouldn’t register once you went online. Anyway, I’m not happy about having to do the gestures one if I decide to not-plat SotFS, but so be it.
The thing is, I can probably cobble together the not-plat fairly easily. I have to get all the magicks achievements, and the reason I don’t have them is because they all have one ridiculous requirement in addition to buying all of the other spells in that category. And in SotFS, they include everything in the DLCs, which makes sense, I guess. Hm. Anyway, for the pyromancy, the ridiculousness is that you have to follow Navlan’s quest and he’ll gift you with Forbidden Sun. It’s not hard, it’s just arduous. Plus, you have to turn in some of the boss souls for other pyromancies. I have a character who has Forbidden Sun, so I just have to make sure I have all the boss souls. *sigh* What makes it difficult is that one of the pyromancies is made by giving Nadalia’s soul to Straid. Why is that a big deal, you may ask. Because her soul is made of twelve fragments, and they’re not easy to get.
For the hexes achievement, you have to defeat Darklurker, and I skip him whenever I can because just getting to him is such a pain in the ass. I have beaten him, however, so I just have to find the character I did it with. The only achievement that is going to be a pain in the ass is getting Benhart of Jugo’s sword. You have to keep him alive for three of the fights you summon him for, and then find him in the memory so he’ll give it to you. The hack is to use the Bonfire Ascetic at one of the boss fights (probably Prowling Magus and Congregation because they’re easy) to resurrect everyone at the next NG level. I can never manage to keep him alive for three fights. Prowling Magus? Easy. But, not as easy on NG+, not because of the boss, but because Freya, the main boss of the area, shows up on the run up to this boss. Also, the run there is pretty annoying. I usually kill everything ahead of time, then run back and summon Benhart so he has a better chance to make it to the fight. Also, one suggestion is to use the ring that draws aggro for the boss fights. Might do that for the Giant Lord boss fight because that’s also an easy fight.
The fact that I’m planning this out means I’m close to not-platting. I’m fighting it, though. I’m sick, and I’m sad, and I’m not sure if I want to be in that mentality again. Then again, all the magicks ones are mostly grinding. That’s something I can do fairly easily. I haven’t played SotFS in quite some time, though. I know I’m going to not-plat it at some point. I’m just not ready to do it right now.
Back to Borderlands 3. Sigh. I maxed out the Health Regen skill, and I have a shield that if it’s full, regens health at an incredible rate. If it’s depleted, melee attack (damage) and speed increase. It’s pretty badass. I’ve realized that having a shield with only the highest amount of protection is not necessarily the best way to go. It’s my instinct to go defense as much as possible, but health regen is more important than total shield protection.
I’ve put it off long enough. I cleaned up all the side quests on Pandora and then headed to the ship so we could take off. I’m inside the ship and walk towards the front of the garage to join Lilith when the door slams shut. Of course. The Thompson Twins* have shown up. My heart sinks because I know what’s about to happen, and I can only hope it’s not as bad as it looked in the trailer.
Well. It wasn’t as bad. It was worse. You have to understand that I hated the twins (at least the female one as she was the only one I’d met so far) with all my heart up to this point. Yes, I know that’s the point. Yes, I know they’re evil and bad and blah, blah, blah. But, what happened crossed a line for me. Just a reminder, hipster racism is still racism, and it’s doubly gross because the person doing it is hiding behind the ‘I’m just being ironic’ bullshit that is ‘hipster’. The reason I bring this up is because what happened next falls in the same category. I’ll try to describe it simply without showing my utter distaste.
The female twin and Lilith clash while the male twin prances around, flexes, and records. Did I mention that the twins live broadcast everything they do? Ian and I agreed they’re like PewDiePie and JackSepticEye rolled in one. Anyway, I get that they’re supposed to be obnoxious and in-your-face and they are the ultimate evil. I get they’re also supposed to be lampooning online culture (but still in a stale way), but to me, it feels more like they’re glorifying the culture. It’s hard to do satire correctly, and it takes a very delicate hand. Gearbox and delicate do NOT exist in the same universe. Somehow, the male twin attacks Lilith or something, and she turns her attention to him. After she thoroughly wipes the floor with him, the female twin suddenly comes behind her, grabs her by the throat, and, yeah, the thing from the trailer happens.
Worst, the female twin is ranting the whole time about how she’s a god and her brother is a parasite and how she can take anyone’s powers as Lilith’s tattoos started fading away. You know, she reminds me of our current president to a certain extent, and I fucking hate narcissists. I have no time or patience for them, which is why I loathed Handsome Jack as well. I don’t find any of it funny or charming in an offbeat kind of way, and still, I would take Handsome Jack any day over this terrible duo.
Look. They did the NPCs wrong in BL2 as well. They *spoilers* killed Roland and made me kill Mordecai’s bird, Bloodwing *unspoilered* which is pretty fucked up. But, in the case of the former, it was quick and off-screen (if I remember correctly). As to the latter, it sucked balls, but it was also a hard boss fight so at least there was some heft to it. In this case, it just felt gratuitous. Not only did Tylenol (female twin, now her name) take Lilith’s powers, she and her brother (Ibuprofen, just to be thematically consistent) taunted and humiliated Lilith as it was happening. It felt gross, exploitative, and like a violation. I got the feeling that the devs got off on it, which is just disgusting. I’m not saying they did or didn’t, but that it was conveyed in such a way that made it feel like they did.
Here’s the other thing. There was no reason for it to be done that isn’t cynical. One, Lilith is stronger than the twins put together, which she demonstrated in the fight leading up to the terrible moment. The devs had to do the ‘move your face to meet my fist’ thing in order to have her fall into their hands and lose her powers. There was no way they could have Lilith at full strength traipsing through the game because it would show just how ineffectual the Thompson Twins really are. Before all this, there’s a mission in where I got to fight side by side with Lilith, and it was glorious. It made me remember how much I loved her and why she was such a great character. So, they had to nerf her and decided to do it in the worst way possible. It’s very girlfriend-in-the-refrigerator, and it enraged me. Not irritated me. Not pissed me off. Enraged me. Infuriated me. And repulsed me.
Of course, the twins left her alive and on the ground before leaving, saying the scrubs could take care of her. Of course they couldn’t kill her in the first act–they’re saving that for later. And, of course, before the scrubs can attack Lilith, Ellie tells me to take the lift and help Lilith. Um, why couldn’t I do that before? Because plot reasons. Regardless, I went out and fucked shit up. I was so furious, I didn’t care if i died in the process. I raced in, relying on my shield’s regen/melee and speed boost to keep me alive as I punched the shit out of the scrubs. I shot them, too, but I was brazen as I plowed my way through them, ground-pounding them, making them explode. I had to second-wind twice, but I didn’t give a shit about that. I just killed all the assholes and helped Lilith into the ship.
On the ship, the Thompson Twins show up on the screen and display the video of Lilith losing her power. It was very revenge-porn-y, and I had to turn my character away so I didn’t have to watch it. It was bad enough listening to Tylenol brag and sputter all the time, but if this is a common refrain, no. The whole thing left a very bad taste in my mouth, and, of course, it wasn’t mentioned (in the few reviews I read). Some did mention that the humor was old and tired, and one mentioned the egregious use of ‘bitch’, but no one specifically mentioned this incident. I have my theories, but I’m not going to get to them in this post.
I wanted to like BL3; I really did. The gunplay is better than ever, but that’s probably not going to be enough to bring me back.
*My instant nickname for them because I hate them so much. Not that I hate the Thompson Twins, but that I refuse to name the twins in this game.