Borderlands 3 and Expectations in Media

I’ve had the rare chance to revisit a close-to-home world for me. That’s pretty rare when it comes to media. Especially new content, not prequels or remakes or such-and-such. So I was excited for that.

I was 11 when I played the first Borderlands. It was my staple, spending far too much time killing crawmerax (a special boss) for my own good.

But I’m not here to talk about that cause it’s boring. This isn’t a review, nor a condemnation of new things to be made. What it is, however, is a discussion about the frameworks we use to analyze media.

So, first off, I must set the expectations I had for it. I must set the ends I sought for Borderlands 3 to work towards, using whatever means it naturally chooses to get there.

What I expected was what I got, and more, on the gameplay front. Limitless guns brings limitless fun in my case. More complex characters play wonderfully with this new, limitless, tool set of fantastical firearms

What I got, on the story front, was…. not… good.

Granted, I did not expect Breaking Bad, or Witcher, or any other well written work worth it’s weight in gold. But what ends I thought Borderlands 3 would seek is a fun and inventive story with poignant moments littered throughout, as a way to breakup the would-be-stale pacing of wackiness and raunchiness.

What I got, instead, was a mess.

Characters that I loved feel like cardboard. Lilith, Mordecai, and Brick all feel as if their souls have been ripped from them. There is no action, no movement, no powerful dialogue with them.

Their stories have become industrialized.

In Borderlands 3 there is no sense of narrative. Stuff happens ‘just because’ and things happen ‘cause it’s memey.’ The characters mean nothing except as a means to deliver you to the next batch of enemies to incinerate with one of it’s mathematically constructed firearms. The worst part is that there are moments of beautiful simplicity. Grace and Mordecai, Typhon’s logs are all pretty well done, just oozing character. There’s good stuff somewhere within Borderland’s heart. They just need the right writers to bring it out.

So, am I sad about this? Yes. But more importantly, I have to realize the framework, the ends Borderlands 3 sought, has evolved since the series launched.

It feels like it’s only desire is geed. Borderlands 1 felt as if it was a group of college students making a stupid fun game for, well, fun. It makes me feel as if I have been misguided. I fear that is true.

Borderlands 3 is an industrialized mess. It is fun. Foreseen, diagnoseable, calculable, fun. It can be extracted, analyzed, predicted.

This, admittedly over-specific, whining is my focus here because it illustrates exactly how expectations in media work: the expectations of the consumer are never the expectations of the creator. At least, never fully.

To me, Borderlands 1 was art. Past it’s grimy countenance and ridiculousness was some serious motifs about the responsibility of the individual and corporatism in a lawless wasteland.

Borderlands 3 feels like a sequel written by a different author and designed only to be commercial fiction. It lacks any teeth, it doesn’t say anything.

If something as large as Borderlands, with all it’s resources, can fail at saying something, how can I possibly succeed?