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Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel
PC (Steam)
The DLC-quel
4/5 stars
“Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel” (“TPS”) is a filler game released two years after “Borderlands 2” which takes place between the original “Borderlands” and its sequel, hence the cleverly tongue-in-cheek title. “TPS” is not, however, “Borderlands 3,” nor is it meant to be considered the third game in the series. Unfortunately for ‘Borderlands’ fans everywhere, that means that Gearbox has simultaneously produced the best ‘Borderlands’ title to date, while intentionally gimping it.
Presentation
“TPS” doesn’t really offer anything new presentation-wise over “Borderlands 2.” Indeed, “TPS” is built in the exact same engine as “Borderlands 2” and should really be thought of more as a stand-alone DLC for the second game in the series (much like “Far Cry: Blood Dragon” was a stand-alone DLC for “Far Cry 3”) than a full blown sequel.
As a stand-alone DLC for “Borderlands 2,” “TPS” still has the refined cell-shaded graphics and refined voice-acting talent, alongside less-desirable elements such as a limited color pallet, hard-to-see enemies that tend to get lost in the environments, a less-than-stellar original soundtrack, and a few instances where quests would glitch out and refuse to progress until quitting to the title screen and reloading the save.
Story
True to its title, “TPS” takes place between “Borderlands” and “Borderlands 2.” While the paper-thin story of “Borderlands” was retconned and worked into the series’ canon as a prologue for “Borderlands 2,” “TPS” is a fleshed out look at what the villains of the sequel were up to between the two games, revealing the series of events that led Handsome Jack from a low-level Hyperion employee out to save the inhabitants of Elpis, the planet Pandora’s icy moon, to a scheming psychopath with a chip on his shoulder.
Jack himself is not playable, but the cast of characters in “TPS” includes a lot of familiar faces for ‘Borderlands’ veterans. The default four characters are Nisha, the Lawbringer, who was also Jack’s girlfriend, and who gets killed by the Vault Hunters in “Borderlands 2”; Wilhelm the cyborg assassin… who was also killed by the Vault Hunters in “Borderlands 2”; Athena the ex-Atlas soldier from “The Lost Armory of General Knoxx” DLC in “Borderlands”; and the extra-annoying CL4P-TP (Claptrap) robot that annoyed the characters in “Borderlands 2” with his inability to do anything right. The two extra DLC characters, who, unfortunately, replaced story-based DLC for half of the game’s Season Pass, are Jack’s Body Double, who was also-also killed by the Vault Hunters in “Borderlands 2”; and Aurelia Hammerlock, the cold and noble sister of “Borderlands 2’s” supporting cast member, Sir Hammerlock. Nobody in our co-op group used the DLC characters, but the core cast gets a lot of great personality and character development throughout the course of the game.
“TPS,” as I mentioned, takes place on Elpis, an atmosphere-free, low-gravity moon orbiting the planet Pandora, where the other ‘Borderlands’ games take place. Part of the game also spans the giant Hyperion corporate space station in orbit around Pandora, but most of the important and interesting stuff happens on the moon. Because Elpis is separated from Pandora by vast amounts of empty space, the writing team decided to make the place analogous to Australia, which is separated from the rest of the Earth’s inhabitants by vast amounts of ocean. Instead of the ‘Land Down-Under,’ Elpis is the ‘Land Up-Over,’ inhabited by gaggles of goofy Australian stereotypes with ridiculous accents.
The core narrative, naturally, revolves around corporate sabotage within Hyperion, when a group of armed Dahl corporate mercenaries lead by the incredibly butch General Zarpedon take over the Hyperion space station and start firing its orbital laser at the surface of Eplis, which is inhabited by colonists, regardless of its hostility to human life. Jack, in his obsessive desire to save the lives threatened by Zarpedon, slowly deviates from folk hero down the path of corruption, as he is seduced by the ease by which things get accomplished when morals aren’t around to get in the way, and possibly by whacked-out alien technology.
The DLC stories in “TPS” are decidedly bare on the ground. Instead of four DLC stories in its season pass, “TPS” only features two, and one of them is an incredibly half-assed arena called the “Holodome Onslought,” which is just as boring as any other arena DLC in any other contemporary FPS.
The other DLC story, “The Claptastic Voyage” is much more substantial and sees our heroes delving into CL4P-TP’s robotic psyche in search of some hidden Hyperion source code, which contains all the schematic for the company’s most destructive weapons. Throughout “The Claptastic Voyage,” CL4P-TP receives unprecedented character development for the ‘Borderlands’ franchise. Being the bumbling character he is, this entire story is couched in humor, but never comes across as frivolous or as a throw-away bit of fluff. By the end, players of “The Claptastic Voyage” will experience all of the events leading up to Handsome Jack scrapping the entire CL4P-TP product line, which serves as an epic epilogue for “TPS” and a beautiful setup for “Borderlands 2.”
About the only problem I had with “TPS’s” story, which takes roughly 40 hours to get through with minimal grinding, is the fact that parts of it are narrated by the cast of the original “Borderlands” in the past tense, which kind of screws it up as something that late-comers to the series could play between the two games in order to experience the franchise’s series of events in proper chronological order. There aren’t a whole lot of spoilers dropped in “TPS,” so it’s still possible that playing the franchise in chronological order could work, but I simply don’t want to put in the replay time to double check.
Gameplay
My main beefs with the ‘Borderlands’ franchise have always been the level scaling and dependence on random loot. Those are still problems in “TPS” as an extension of “Borderlands 2.” However, some of my more specific complaints about the second game in the series have been addressed… though not quite adequately.
Specifically, I’m talking about the loot drop tables and the difficulty in gearing-up a character. I realize that a lot of ‘Borderlands’ fans love grinding for loot, much like I realize that a lot of old ladies love going to Las Vegas and dumping pennies into slot machines. It doesn’t make either activity an efficient or particularly enjoyable use of time, merely an addictive one. “TPS” still has absolutely horrible drop rates on rare loot. I think my group came across three or four Legendary (orange) loot drops in our playthrough, and struggled with loot drops that rarely exceeded Uncommon (green) in rarity. These were just the loot drops, however. It seems that Gearbox partially fixed the horrible loot system by returning high-quality items to the in-game vending machines as Items of the Day. I managed to purchase a lot of Legendary and Unique (blue, but with special red text) gear from vendors and ended up using purchased gear roughly 90% of the time, as the dropped gear was just flat-out terrible.
Mechanically, “TPS” is nearly identical to “Borderlands 2.” Characters have three skill trees and can spend points on skill perks to give themselves interesting and unique passive or active abilities. Every character has an Action Skill that runs on a cooldown timer. As the member of my team who played as Nisha the Lawbringer, I can definitely confirm that her Showdown Action Skill is fantastic and probably the most powerful out of the lot. Characters have four weapon slots that unlock as they progress through the game and four other item slots that are available from the start. These other items include Grenade Mods, Shields, Class Mods, and the new Oz Kits – which are an intentional misspelling of O2 (oxygen) Kits, which give players the ability to survive in Elpis’ no-atmosphere areas while simultaneously winking and nudging the Australia analogy in the ribs.
Weapons still come in Normal, Fire, Shock, Corrosive, and Explosive types, but in “TPS,” the Slag element from “Borderlands 2” is gone, instead replaced with a Cryo element that can freeze enemies solid. “TPS” also adds a new gun type to the players’ arsenal in the form of lasers, which can shoot a continuous beam (with high recoil), blaster-style bolts, a spread of small beams, or a large railgun-style bolt, all from the same large ammunition pool. I found beam style lasers to be a fantastic addition to the game and indispensable for success.
Aside from the new weapon and element types, “TPS” also adds sections of low gravity to the game world. These are typically in no-atmosphere areas in which Oz Kits come into play. While the gravity on Pandora has always seemed low in previous ‘Borderlands’ games – at least when compared to other FPSes – the low gravity on Elpis allows for some truly acrobatic jumping. Oz Kits not only keep player characters alive without atmosphere via an oxygen meter, but also allow characters to shoot jets of oxygen to propel themselves via a type of double-jump or slam themselves downward toward the moon’s surface in order to damage nearby enemies with the resulting shockwave. I never found the oxygen requirement to be particularly onerous or burdensome, but some limited areas with low gravity and many small, floating platforms are incredibly annoying to navigate, as first-person platforming never tends to work particularly well.
Overall
“Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel” is easily Gearbox’s best entry in the franchise. The narrative is well written and as entertaining as usual, the return of high-quality Items of the Day to vending machines and the new gameplay mechanics make for good (if not quite great) gameplay, and the series’ trademark style is as iconic as ever. It’s just a shame that the entire game feels like an extended DLC for “Borderlands 2” rather than a true sequel that can stand on its own. Here’s hoping the inevitable “Borderlands 3” doesn’t backslide into any bad habits, but instead continues to improve.
Presentation: 4.5/5
Story:
Base Game: 4.5/5
Claptastic Voyage: 4.5/5
Holodome Onslaught: 1/5
Gameplay: 3.5/5
Overall (not an average): 4/5
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