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Hoping, praying, BEGGING for even the tiniest glimpse of Fiona and Rhys tonight, or any other Tales characters. Athena, Janey, and Tim from TPS too, I want them back, I NEED them back

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I just realised I never posted this here so here we go, exactly how I remember episode 5 going

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Well there it is, we're getting confirmed news at the game awards WITH gameplay!

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So this just got posted.

Either this is VERY poorly timed or we're gonna get something at the game awards next week.

My expectations are low for my own sanity but I would love for it to be actually an amazing trailer. In the normal Borderlands art style preferably.

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I hope vault hunters actually exist in cutscenes in Borderlands 4.

BL3 had kind of a weird disconnect where you'd go from being the main character and the one making things happen, to just not existing. Tyreen would go from taunting the player characters to just forgetting they were ever there.

I know certain ones like the Maya one could be explained as "oh you were in the vault when it happened" (even if I don't like that explanation), but then cutscenes like the one after you kill Troy just have you cease to exist. I think a lot of the problems with that could've been solved if most of the cutscenes were in first person, like the one in Jakobs manor was, or if they had the canon vault hunter models actually shown trying to do something if it wasn't in first person.

TLDR: I just hope the vault hunters actually are present in cutscenes in Borderlands 4.

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Tales from the Borderlands: Zer0 Sum released November 25th 2014

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I mean at least they can potentially get a lot of money at the end of it???

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I hope Fiona still has General Pollux's eye. I just think that'd be hilarious.

Whatever people she's with come across an old sealed Atlas facility with a retina scanner, they're all brainstorming ways that they can get inside when Fiona just perks up suddenly, reaches into her pocket and pulls out a small container with a perfectly preserved eye inside, while the others just stare at her in varying degrees of horror, and all they hear is "Greetings, General Pollux" as the door successfully slides open.

Bonus points if Athena is there and they get into a mini argument about Athena telling her to throw that thing away because it's weird and everyone else gets to discover she's been carrying it around for YEARS.

(I mean, it's Borderlands they probably have a way to preserve the eye forever right?)

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You know what? At this point I am fully on board the Vallory is a Flynt theory/headcanon. I know it's been around for a WHILE but I really only thought about it when playing BL3 earlier and hearing Zane's mention of his sister.

"my sister always loved a good explosion"

Vallory's main weapon being a rocket launcher, plus her being "The Queenpin" that lead a group of bandits, being acknowledged as intimidating or a threat by other characters including vault hunters.

And with August looking kinda similar to Zane, yeah I'd believe that they're Flynts.

Is it right or wrong? No idea, but it's a fun theory and I think Zane would like to have a drink in the Purple Skag with August sometime. He'd probably be excited that his nephew ran a bar.

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I'm glad they didn't overuse him but honestly I kinda wish we had seen a bit more of Katagawa Jr. That whole part of the game where the vault hunters were helping Rhys deal with him and helping stop the Maliwan invasion was one of my favourite parts of BL3.

I would've also loved Naoko to be part of the confrontation in some way and to learn more about how she was different from him but that's just wishful thinking. Either way I hope we do get to see more about Naoko at some point.

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Speaking of AI Jack I wonder at what point he was created. Like when in Jacks life was it, what memories does he have?

We know it's obviously after the events of the Pre-sequel and before Angel dies, he comments on Nisha's hat in his office in Tales so it also has to be after he gifts Lynchwood to Nisha which I believe was for their anniversary (?), so it's gotta be at least a year after Pre-sequel. He has a decent amount of items in his office on the same shelf as the hat that he's aware of as well so there must've been time to collect all those too.

There's probably some other information that narrows it down but I can't remember it right now, either way it's interesting to think about.

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I see where you're coming from and that's an absolutely valid point! I really like how you choose to look at it, I think the viewpoint just depends more on how you determine AI Jacks separation from the original.

The way I view it is that AI Jack is less of just an AI given Jack's memories but more a complete download of Jack's brain taken at a specific point in time (Like how the Head. Case side mission works in bl3, where they are both that same person but from the moment of upload they can become different).

Where that point in time is I think it's debatable but we know that it is after he gifts Lynchwood to Nisha, so where my feelings of it still being poetic justice comes from is that, based solely on my personal viewpoint, this would still be the Jack who killed Felicity even if it wasn't the Jack who summoned the Warrior.

I love thinking about the way AI Jack differs from normal Jack (flesh Jack??? Idk that sounds wrong) I just personally view that it's less that AI Jack was built to do Jack's bidding, and more than that IS Jack up until his brain stopped being uploaded to it. (Probably somewhere before borderlands 2)

So in the Pre-sequel Jack had Felicity assimilated into the constructor, which essentially killed her and basically generates all future Loaderbots, which in turn is his undoing when one of those Loaderbots goes rogue, starts helping the Tales crew and saves Rhys from the AI version of Jack up on Helios which eventually leads to his death when Rhys rips his cybernetics out.

So I'd like to think that for every Loaderbot that turns against it's programming there's a little bit of Felicity's original code that made its way in there as a final act of rebellion. I think there'd be some poetic justice in that.

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So in the Pre-sequel Jack had Felicity assimilated into the constructor, which essentially killed her and basically generates all future Loaderbots, which in turn is his undoing when one of those Loaderbots goes rogue, starts helping the Tales crew and saves Rhys from the AI version of Jack up on Helios which eventually leads to his death when Rhys rips his cybernetics out.

So I'd like to think that for every Loaderbot that turns against it's programming there's a little bit of Felicity's original code that made its way in there as a final act of rebellion. I think there'd be some poetic justice in that.

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Okay so I know they aren't the most popular characters, likely due to not much being known about them, but I genuinely think there was some real potential and mystery in both Felix and Vallory's backstories.

To start with we know that Felix was extremely smart, being able to bypass Hyperion's biometric security, hack into their systems and change his information, and made one of a kind things like Fiona's elemental derringer (or Sasha's healing pocket watch before it got retconned to be that stupid crystal). He was crafty, he was intelligent, and there was some mystery in his backstory teased in Tales.

The first time we find out that he had a past Fiona and Sasha didn't know about is in Hollowpoint, when Fiona finds a picture of a younger Felix with a woman that neither her nor Sasha recognise, but with Fiona remarking that they seem happy.

It's surrounded by multiple empty bottles, and since neither of the girls have ever seen the photo before it's fairly easy to assume it brings up painful memories. The photo has a crease down the middle which would probably indicate that it was something he carried around with him, folded up in his pocket instead of just being hidden away in a drawer somewhere.

Now there's a chance it could be a younger Vallory sure but considering how it's never elaborated on I don't think that's something that can be said for certain. Either way the pair are dressed in outfits that seem similar to each other, which would probably mean that they weren't just emotionally close with each other but probably worked together as well.

Now regardless of whether or not that woman in the picture is Vallory, we know that Felix and Vallory DID have prior history together. He clearly is afraid of what she can do, she's been well aware of both Fiona and Sasha for most of their lives despite them never hearing about her before which would likely indicate she'd been keeping tabs on Felix. On the contrary, Felix was completely unaware of what was going on in Vallory's life, that August was her son until the vault key deal was already in progress, which would mean he likely wanted absolutely nothing to do with Vallory and tried to stay far out of her life, potentially even trying to hide from her to protect both himself and Fiona and Sasha.

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Now then, onto Vallory. Vallory is introduced as the Queenpin, she's a feared crime boss that has some connections at Hyperion and plenty of bandits at her disposal. She's tactical and cruel and is one of the main antagonists for the Tales crew.

Regarding her relationship to Felix, she clearly holds a grudge against him for some prior reason that isn't explained. Sure she's mad about the vault key deal but she goes out of her way to tear Felix out of the photo she finds of him, Fiona, and Sasha.

She also seems to focus far more on Fiona, directing her questions at her, taunting her, and referring to her as the leader of the Tales group. She's callous and cruel and can stab either Sasha or Vaughn to deliberately to fuck with Fiona and make her agree to her terms.

She has connections at Hyperion. At first it seems like it's just Vasquez she knows but then Finch is able to walk around Helios freely without having to blend in so it seems likely she has more. When this started it isn't clear, whether it was while Jack was alive or after his death. We know Hyperion had dealings with some criminals on Pandora before, like with turning people over for experimentation, so it's possible she had a hand in that or something similar.

But where I think it gets really interesting is when Fiona confronts her during episode 5. While talking about the Traveller she says "it's bigger than any I've ever seen" which would seemingly point to her being someone involved with vault hunting in the past or at the very least involved with someone else who was vault hunting. Sure she could have seen the Warrior from a distance when Jack awakened it but that's not really enough to mention the Traveller being bigger than any vault monster she's ever seen.

That's not to say I think she was a successful vault hunter or anything, but maybe that she was someone who was able to attempt it and get pretty far, or was allies with someone else that did.

Aside from that Athena seemingly knows her, and Vallory was more than willing to fight Athena before August stopped her. Vallory isn't stupid, she sends in her goons to do her dirty work when she doesn't want to get involved. For her to be willing to fight a literal assassin/vault hunter, even if it was impulsively, she must have some kind of confidence that she could actually get somewhere with that.

Hell she even has the ability to contact the Crimson Raiders and enlist the help of Mordecai and Brick to take out Athena, sure they needed to get her for Lilith but the fact that Vallory even knew that they were going after her and implies that she has some idea of why is impressive.

All in all I think that those two were really interesting characters and I wish we would've gotten more lore about them, why they knew each other, what they did before, and what exactly was going on between them.

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I think the whole thing about Fiona being Felix's favourite is really interesting solely because from her perspective she wasn't. Like at all.

When Felix betrays them and steals the money not only does he talk to her as if this is a lesson he's teaching her, saying that this is the only way to make her understand not to trust anyone, but the last thing he tells her to do is to take care of Sasha. Not to look after herself or to stay safe, but to protect Sasha.

It's also especially interesting with the gifts he gives both of them. Now obviously gifts aren't equivalent to love but the intentions behind it do matter. His gift to Sasha was freedom from harm and from the worst kind of consequence (death), his gift to Fiona was limitations, endangerment, and being forced to stick to his teachings.

Both of Fiona's gifts are a lesson, literally restricting what she can do and putting her at risk so that she sticks by Felix's teaching that she can always talk her way out of more situations than she can shoot her way out of.

He gives her a sleeve pistol sure but he only gives her a single bullet, and then later on when they find his stash she gets an elemental upgrade to the gun and one more bullet. But the upgrade is rigged to burn out after each shot, increasing the risk that Fiona will just get killed by any of the bandits or creatures roaming Pandora. Athena is the one who has to give Fiona bullets and to modify the gun, to remove the elemental burnout which was intentionally added by Felix as "training wheels", despite the fact Fiona has always been a better shot than Sasha, as said by Sasha herself.

And then you get to what he gives Sasha, while at first both Fiona and Sasha think it's just a sentimental pocket watch, it gets revealed that it's literally built to bring Sasha back from the brink of DEATH. And if you go by Debt or Alive, it's a watch containing an ancient alien crystal (god knows where he got that), that is supposed to repeatedly heal any injury Sasha gets and bring her back to life if she dies.

His gift to Fiona was a gun with two bullets that he intentionally rigged to burn out to "teach her" to not use it too much (on Pandora of all places???), and his gift to Sasha was the cure to death itself. No matter how grateful Fiona was that Sasha had that when she needed it there must've been some moment where she realised the difference in the gifts they were given and it probably didn't make her feel great.

Something else interesting is when Vallory says that Fiona was Felix's favourite. Both her and Sasha look shocked. Now I don't think that's because either of them assumed Sasha was the favourite or anything, just more that they had no idea that Fiona was supposedly favoured by him. And why would they? I made a post on here a while back about how Fiona is the only one with a bounty in that family, and that she's the one taking the blame for things more. So considering how she's put in that position why would they ever assume she was the favourite?

He seems to treat them both very differently, with him pushing responsibility onto Fiona, putting her in a position where she is made responsible for taking care of Sasha and prioritising her, with his gifts being lessons that endanger Fiona's life when they're rigged to fail. And his treatment of Sasha being more protective, rushing out of the caravan to get to her when the deal goes wrong leading to him getting shot, making sure she has someone taking care of her, and giving her the ability to defy death and just walk off any injury.

That's not to say he didn't love them both because he did, even if some of the stuff he did was dumb as hell. But I think it raises the question of whether Fiona was the favourite because he loved her more or because she was just the one he thought could take more responsibility and didn't need protecting as much. Someone he didn't have to treat like the child they were as much.

Bearing in mind this isn't to argue that she wasn't the favourite because she was, that much was confirmed by both Felix and Vallory. It's more that I doubt Fiona believes that she is, who would after all that?

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I think the residents of Pandora, especially the native Pandorans, should get to collectively beat the shit out of the next corporate warlord that invades them. As a treat.