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I always thought the playable characters in TPS were really well designed and I wish I could play them in BL2, nonsensical story be damned.
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Apr 15, 2019 06:39
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Dirt Road Junglist posted:Co-signed. If New Game+ isn't an actual + to enemy tactics/AI/density (or actual new content) and not just cranking up their HP, I usually won't bother. Honestly the BL games were always the most fun in situations where you were massively outnumbered and dodging from cover to cover trying to rapidly reduce enemy numbers. Density is the key to difficulty (I think) and enemies really just need enough health to not get instantly chumped, they don't need to be balanced around, "If you have X, Y, and Z damage boosters than this enemy basically has a 'normal' amount of health from your perspective."
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Apr 18, 2019 03:05
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The question of "does it matter" is valid but when you consider the in-your-face nature of game's -hetero- characters you'd almost have to include gay characters. I mean this is where I just show a gif of Moxxi.
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Apr 20, 2019 07:34
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BL2 always feels like a game that succeeded literally in spite of itself. There were lots of terrible choices made in the mechanics, writing, and quest design. I guess the fact that there are so few multi-player RPG/adventure games is probably it's secret sauce. I'll never understand why the community was so obsessed with Jack though or why there have been so many articles written about Jack as a complex villain. He starts the game as a creepy, mildly funny sociopath and the more the game tries to humanize him the less I believe it. I feel like the writers are constantly trying to say, 'Look! He's complex!' and I just keep making the grimace emoji.
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Apr 20, 2019 17:21
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John Murdoch posted:Did it ever really try to humanize him though? It tries to explain why he's doing what he's doing, yes. If he just wanted to control Pandora for Reasons than it would be standard fare. Instead it constantly tells you that he just wants to end bandit rule on Pandora. It brings in this whole thing about his daughter. TPS tries to explain 'why' he's so angry at the BL vault hunters. The game's constant litany about his motivations is absolutely an attempt to humanize him and the fact that he's a psychopath makes all of them sort of moot.
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Apr 20, 2019 17:42
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Elephant Ambush posted:I never got the impression that Jack actually cared about Angel at all. It was all pretend to dodge criticism and all he cared about was how he could use her to his own ends. When she dies he doesn't care about losing his daughter, he cares about losing a powerful tool/resource and pretends he cares about her as a daughter/person because it makes him sound more righteous and he hides behind that fake righteousness to further his own gains like everything else he says and does. Attempts to humanize him always fell flat on me and I'll never buy it. He's the worst kind of abusive father/boyfriend ever. He's incapable of feeling empathy or putting himself in someone else's shoes for even a nanosecond and everyone else is just a toy to him. I agree. It's exactly what I'm talking about. The game has literal repeating lines of dialogue where Jack pleads with you not to kill his daughter and brings it up lots of times afterward to justify himself or dismiss you. That is literally the game attempting to be complex, despite the fact that this is a looter shooter on rails and I have no choice but to do exactly what the story wants me to do. Whether Jack is genuine or not is irrelevant because the game wants me to think about what he's saying. Cease to Hope posted:I checked out of taking BL2's story completely by the time Jack drops out of the rafters to instantly kill Roland, so I wasn't interested in any questions about whether Jack's pain is performance, self-delusion, selfishness, or genuine grief for Angel's sake. Jack - and everyone else - is too cartoonish to take that seriously. This is exactly how I feel. I stopped paying attention to the story at that point. Not only is it shallow and stupid but the writers keep hammering away at buttons that are supposed to make me the player feel... pity? Empathy? Something? And I just don't even care enough to bother at this point. "Pay attention to Jack, he's important!" is like the subtext of the whole game and I just don't want to, I want to shoot more robots and poo poo, and instead it's a constant voiceover. "Jack as evil powerhungry comedian" was way more fun than, "Jack as enraged psychopath and/or grieving misunderstood father" and I've never felt my mind leave a story so fast as when that shift happens.
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Apr 20, 2019 19:50
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I wonder if the company even gives a poo poo about the kind of stuff Randy says.
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May 2, 2019 02:47
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internet celebrity posted:They know that no voice actors will work for them so new characters are out of the question. Let me tell you about this brilliant idea for a characer who is just all T2V memes.
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May 7, 2019 23:39
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Megazver posted:Even she didn't claim he's a rapist, just that he's an 'emotional abuser'. But ultimately we still agree he told his then-girlfriend to stay in the hotel room and left to meet an actress who, it turns out, didn't want to trade phone numbers? I mean like, is this supposed to be better than the accusation?
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May 30, 2019 21:37
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After playing every second of Borderlands content I am still not entirely sure what a Vaulthunter or a Vault is even supposed to be. Of all the Vaults the BL franchise has given us, most turned out to be MacGuffins or fabrications. The only one I can think of that was real was at the end of the Torque expansion. How is Vaulthunting even a profession. Why do people immediately put it aside to get involved in local politics.
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Jun 23, 2019 14:42
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watho posted:It was pretty simple in the first game with the vault being a prison the eridians built to hold a creature capable of ending the world. It remained long after their civilization collapsed and eventually became a legend among humans. A vault hunter is just someone who is looking for the vault. Right but this just raises even more questions. Like, if your profession is "treasure hunter", this implies the existence of treasure. In the first game, I'm willing to accept that there's a gold rush situation and people are specifically trying to look for more Vaults on Pandora. By the second game, you've gone and doubled the number of Vaulthunters, and that's just the ones Jack hasn't managed to kill. "Vaulthunter" has been expanded to be more like the term "adventurer" from Dungeons and Dragons. Also why is the Torgue vault full of normal, modern guns? I mean "don't think about it too much" is totally valid but it really feels like Borderlands characters are more like rebels or guardians than treasure hunters and the fact that the game keeps insisting that both are true at the same time makes my head hurt.
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Jun 23, 2019 18:40
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LAY-ZX posted:- The original Vault was a cache of alien weapons found by Atlas as mentioned Right but what I'm getting at is that at no point has a Vault actually made a Vaulthunter rich. This made sense in the first game. Now it begs why the hell anyone would bother. UNLESS there are or have been other Vaults.
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Jun 24, 2019 00:41
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Yeah to me blands has always been about watching heads explode. I'm sure there's other elements to it but it's always been a beer and pretzels kind of game.
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Aug 13, 2019 21:04
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drrockso20 posted:I'll admit I still find using they as a singular pronoun to be kinda awkward grammatically, but I totally respect someone's wishes regarding their choice of pronoun and will use that choice cause to do otherwise intentionally is to be an utter CHUD This is actually a great example of why this sort of thing is actually cool and good. It is awkward! Until you practice it. Because once you do it enough you realize the whole singular/plural pronoun thing wasn't that big of a deal after all.
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Aug 22, 2019 14:03
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homullus posted:Awful compared to what? Borderlands 1?(!?!) Awful compared to the cooking instructions on a bag of rice.
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Sep 9, 2019 19:25
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The most charitable thing one can say about BL2 writing is 'it exists'. Like 'it's fine' is maybe the highest praise I've heard of it. IMHO, it's actively awful. * I've spilled a lot of words already about Jack so I'll just say this: he is among the worst offenders of the game's tonal whiplash. If he had stayed, 'slightly amusing, mostly a huge rear end in a top hat' throughout the game that would be fine. Probably the highlight of the game. * The way the entire original cast is handled runs the gamut from 'okay' (Brick) to dull (Mordekai) and occasionally insulting (Lilith). I dare you to listen to any of the weird, 'Lilith is obsessed with Roland!' voice lines without rolling your eyes. * Memes. Too many memes. * Moxxy going from 'psychotic lady who owns a thunderdome' to whatever running gag she has become is complex at the best of times and terrible at the worst of times. The attempt to turn her away from 'sexy mascot' was a decent enough decision but they've been inconsistent about it. * And again, tonal whiplash. Game can't decide if it wants to be funny or serious and when it tries for serious it hits, 'awkward and overwrought.' All of this is probably forgivable in a game where Number Go Up and that's fine; I don't ask much out of Doom's writing either. But if we're going to talk about the writing in BL2, it is actively bad. It is only passable in the sense that you can pretend it isn't there. Mendrian fucked around with this message at 02:41 on Sep 10, 2019 |
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Sep 10, 2019 02:13
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homullus posted:The writing in BL2 is mediocre at its worst and very good at its best. "Tonal whiplash" is a weird criticism for a game in which the order of scripted voice bits varies a lot, but a villain who has one and a half dimensions instead of one, and cracks wise while still being an awful person you're supposed to fight is not "tonal whiplash." The game declares emphatically over and over that it wants to be almost entirely funny and only occasionally serious, there's no indecision there. Jack begins the game by mocking you and eating chips and goes on to make jokes about a diamond pony named Butt Stallion. Sophomoric, yes, but genuinely funny the first time you hear it and does a pretty good job setting up who he is. Then Roland dies, which is supposed to be emotional, I guess? And the game takes a tonal nose dive at this point. It's meant to raise the stakes and it sort of does, on paper. Jack spends the rest of the game pretending to mourn his dead daughter while constantly reiterating megalomaniacal lust for revenge. Roland's death lacks all gravitas, and we've gone from 'wacky hi-jinx!' to 'you mercy-killed a woman and now I'm apparently supposed to care about a very cardboard character.' I mean like, again, it's fine: it drives the plot forward and raises the stakes and you understand that a new chapter has emerged, but it is played straight as an arrow and is cringey as hell.
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Sep 10, 2019 04:00
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Charles Bukowski posted:I too think its bad writing and an awful tonal shift. Also the voice things with Tina's parents genuinely disturbed me and I wasn't having fun anymore. Yeah also this. The game is full of poo poo like this. homullus posted:I was sold on that sequence being a turning point for Jack's sanity level, and I think the game telegraphed that it was going to be a big deal, given the Jack-placed obstacles in the way of getting there. I get that it didn't move you, but I don't think that's the same thing as bad writing. It worked for me and for a lot of people. My interest in Angel was greater than my interest in Roland at that point. Thanks, and I get that it's definitely my opinion. I think to use your language I would say I'm not really 'sold' on any aspect of BL2 writing, it's all extremely stiff and perfunctory. When it cracks the odd joke this is fine because all it's really doing is saying, 'hey I get that aren't playing this game for the story, also Bonerfarts' and that's cool, but when it starts trying to do social commentary or serious character building it falls flat as a loving board. Which just to restate for the record, is totally just my opinion. And a game of this sort isn't really being played for its writing anyway, but if we're going to talk about it, I'm gonna talk about it.
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Sep 10, 2019 04:49
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Asking, "is the writing bad" is a completely separate question from "does the writing matter." Somebody wanted to talk about the quality of the writing and I posted my opinion on it. It's totally cool to posit that it doesn't matter!
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Sep 10, 2019 18:07
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Since I haven't even played the game yet, obviously I was never "expecting" great writing from the game. "What do you want, Citizen Kane?" is kind of a goalpost shift. Yes, the writing has never been good. That is precisely my point. The game is best when it doesn't try to convince you it's got good writing, e.g., when it's trying to make jokes. It's at it's worst when it's trying to make you care. The comparison to Diablo 3 is apt. I felt the same kind of proxy embarassment for Blizzard's writers. I'll play either one irrespective of the writing as long as it avoids being gross.
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Sep 10, 2019 21:35
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Black Griffon posted:As much as I'm genuinely enjoying this game, I realized I found the words for a feeling I've been having; Watching any scene where characters try to be earnest, serious or emotional feels like stumbling into a forums RP from the early 2000s or watching a really bad high-school play or something. They really should have gone full irreverence instead of trying to make you care. Yeah this. There's a lot of things good and bad that can be said about blands humor. But it's at its worst when it's being earnest and emotional. It's like trying to care about a looney toons character.
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Jan 7, 2020 21:24
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