#gonna try to out run my writers anxiety like tina trying to run away from gayle in bobs burgers season 10 episode 15 and no i wont elaborate

[princessmishaps]

maybe today is the day i finally write something again i actually feel inspired for once

[cruddyborderlandstheories]

Interview Analysis

alright i’ve been sitting on this for FAR too long. let’s get s t a r t e d

Danny Homan: Yeah, so uh. The Calypso Twins have managed to create a cult called the Children of the Vault and in doing so they’ve kind of done something that people thought was impossible on Pandora. They unified the Bandit clans, y’know, You saw in Borderlands 2 the bandit clans were just a disparate group of maniacs who were mostly just killing each other if they weren’t being killed by you or by Hyperion. But the Calypso Twins have done the impossible and they’ve unified the bandits in pursuit of the Vault and they’ve kind of organized them and made them kind of like follow their every beck and call. It’s kind of a strange phenomenon that we’ve never really seen in the Borderlands universe and, uh, as you maybe saw with the video there’s a lot of new fun to be had with a cult of bandits. They don’t always kind of obey, right?

Tell us something we don’t know, right? Mostly just wanna talk about “they’ve unified the bandits in pursuit of the Vault”. Despite the fact we know there’s more than 1 Vault in bl3, he says ‘The’ Vault. I have talked about this before, but I’ll go over it quickly here. I think the Twins have knowledge about a Vault they really want- something called the “Great Vault”. I think it’s the red Vault we see in their stained glass portraits, the Vault we see on their black and white mural. I think they’ve basically formed a religion, not just around themselves, but this Vault as well. Probably by promising these bandits that the Vault will bring them back towards a more stable existence with a supply of food/money/guns. I imagine Tyreen has some bullshit excuse for not bringing them directly to the big boy, probably like ‘we need to harness the power of the other Vaults first before we can face that one’.

I personally thought that maybe the cult was formed after the twins had already opened the red Vault, but that wouldn’t make sense of them leading the cultists to it. Unless the Great Vault is not the red Vault we see in their art. Also possible... 

Moving on

Danny Homan: I mean, Handsome Jack is amazing, y’know, what can you say? And I think the answer is that you don’t try to mimic something that got past success, you try to create something different and new and just as a writer, the Calypso Twins are a hell of a lot of fun. I mean, you have this sibling dynamic, which I don’t know if you have any brothers or sisters but like for those of us that do, you understand that kind of crazy close relationship that’s like, quasi-competitive, quasi-cooperative and, throughout the course of the game they just, their relationship and how it kind of changes and warps is I think just really exciting and really entertaining.

So, one of the main reasons I think Ty and Troy are gonna end up trying to kill each other. Besides the fact they’re also villains. 

Idk, even in some of the trailer shots Troy doesn’t seem happy around Tyreen. (He might just have resting bitch anxiety face tho lmao.) Despite that, you can see that when they shake forearms when Lily lost her powers, Troy pulls away from her grip pretty roughly. And I know we all want them to have a strong sibling dynamic, especially with how the Hammerlock sibs are, but bottom line is that these guys are the villains. They’re competing against Handsome Jack in the eyes of the players- the guy who killed Bloodwing and Roland and made Tiny Tina cry. They’re gonna have to do some pretty despicable things, and betraying someone who trusted you like a sibling does would definitely do it for me. No forgiveness there.

I do think it’s interesting that he mentions competitiveness and being cooperative. From what we know rn I can see the whole cooperative thing being that Troy is the brains behind the whole operation while Tyreen is the muscle. Tyreen keeps Troy alive and Troy helps her run the cult. I have no idea what the competitiveness is but I’m really hoping it’s going to relate to being streamers with views and shit. “Hey, Ty, 13 bandits sacrificed themselves for me in the past hour alone.” [Ty looks up, covered in blood] “Oh, that’s cute. I’m at 48, nerd, get on my level.” “You killing them doesn’t count.” “... Nobody will know the difference, shut up.”

Danny Homan: Yeah, I mean. Again, you know it kind of all goes back to the fact that they don’t quite look like bandits, there’s something kind of strange going on there. I don’t want to spoil too much of it but no, when you head to Pandora there’s...the greatest underused resources are the bandits themselves, right? They’re an army that were prisoners that were left by the corporations, they’ve kind of become the worst versions of themselves, and the Calypso Twins are smart, they’re savvy, right? They saw this opportunity to maybe galvanize the bandits into a cult and create an army of their own, and the Livescreams, and Let’s Flays, and these kinds of things; they’re a way of amping up their followers and kind of creating this cult machine that kind of attracts more and more followers. It increases their strength.

holy shit okay there’s a lot here and y’all know what I’m about to say: “Holy fuck I hope this is hinting they’re related to Atlas somehow”

okay now that we’ve gotten that out of the way:

“They don’t quite look like bandits” With their coats and Troy’s super high-tech implants, yeah, they certainly look like corporate assholes sent to ‘masquerade’ as bandit leaders. I could see them ending up being Maliwan and/or getting ganked by Maliwan halfway through then Katagawa ends up being the big ol baddie, especially with his VA’s tweet. (But I’m still not letting the Atlas thing die. Not yet :3c)

They could also simply be from a richer family name, I guess? We know Typhon got a shitload of money from Atlas to give them the Vault key/Vault location, so it's possible they’re doing all this to continue/rekindle the family tradition of Vault hunting and then decided to be super efficient about it.

Related to that is the line “When you head to Pandora” which makes me think the Calypsos are off-worlders who came to Pandora specifically because they knew they’d be able to start their cult there. A planet where there have been 2 Vaults already opened? You’re saying there’s a Vault Key already on world? All the people there are crazed after their corporations left them to die? AND they were worshipping the Firehawk/Sirens for a while? This sounds like the perfect place!

Danny Homan: Sure. I mean, part of it is in the name, the Children of the Vault right? There’s this belief that the Vaults are inherently theirs. They own the Vaults, maybe that it’s their birthright for example. A lot of it really goes back to the fact that the bandits were mistreated, they were left by Dahl Corporation, and they’ve kind of been left ot their own devices on Pandora just to survive the best they can and so the Calypso Twins come along and they recognize that thing: people need a purpose, even if it’s a terrible, maniacal, murder-soaked purpose, people need something to believe in and they need people to believe in them and that’s kind of what the Calypsos have provided. They’ve kind of gone “oh bandits, everyone calls you animals, everyone calls you trash... but we see there’s something, there’s something in you, there’s something we can elevate your murder to. Murder in our name.”

hoooo this is a doozy

So the idea that the cultists are the true owners of the Vaults. I mean, it makes sense. The owner of Dahl didn’t come down and excavate and find all this shit by himself, the workers did. They’re the real owners of these Vaults. They were the ones who put in the work, not whatever big man stepped over them and took the rewards. 

What I don’t understand is ‘it’s their birthright’ in reference to the bandits. I guess we could go metaphorical and say ‘birthright’ as in their new life as a bandit, but... that feels weird. I think this stuff is actually a reference to the twins just as much as its a reference to the Pandoran bandits. (coughAtlascough) I mean, if the twins have some sort of connections to the Vaults like everyone and their mother is theorizing (be it corporation, their ancestor being Typhon, them being Vault monsters/aliens/demons/whatever), then it makes sense that Vaults would be their ‘birthright’. Like, logically. “My dad/grandfather/whatever found the first Vault ever so, technically, they’re mine by blood!” “I’ve been looking for these Vaults for longer than you’ve been alive, human, they’re mine!” “I was created to find/open/help fight the monster inside these Vaults, so they’re mine!” etc etc. 

The whole “people need a purpose, people need something to believe in, they need people to believe in them” uh, yeah, I think that’s about the twins just as much as it is about the bandits. I’m wondering if they’re telling the bandits they’re going to help save the universe by following the cult. By telling them, yeah, murder in our name, we’re gods, this is what the universe needs. This is going to bring justice to you for what the corporations did. etc

Danny Homan: Pandora is one of a kind. It’s this place where insanity seems to be kind of the de facto personality trait that someone needs to survive. Whether you’re a hero or a villain. When you take that aspect of Pandora, how do you bring it to the other planets in the borderlands, right? I think for me that comes down to the fact that the borderlands have kind of been this staging ground for different corporations, it’s like the wild west. It’s a gold rush kind of area. Every place you go has its kind of own different brand of insanity. Madness and insanity and this fact that this is kind of a dark galaxy, right? It’s a place where the governments have fallen, and corporations have kind of taken their place. They’re basically arms dealers with some new-yous and some other technology kind of thrown in so wherever you go in the Borderlands universe there’s that kind of unifying factor of: humanity hasn’t done so great, and there’s only a few people that are what you would call [decent].

Not really much I have to say here, although I do think it’s interesting he mentions New-Us considering they’re not canon and it’s been stated several times that they aren’t by both word of god and by some 'non-canon' posters in TPS. I wonder what that’s supposed to mean. God, I hope they don’t decide to make them canon this game. That would destroy literally all tension story-wise.

Danny Homan: Promethea is rad. It’s the home of Atlas Corporation, it was the site of some of the first Eridian discoveries, so Atlas Corporation discovered Eridian ruins and that was kind of what sparked the borderlands kind of wild west trip to Pandora. There’s just some fun stuff, we’ve never experienced this kind of city in the Borderlands franchise, we had an opportunity in Borderlands 2 but the city is rad, there’s so much fun humour with service bots that you might have seen from the videos. Playing in the city gives you that other side: you have Pandora, you have the wild west, and then you have “what’s insane about a city?” Pretty much everything.

Ah Promethea. Mostly stuff here we already know, tho I have a few questions. 

First, lemme copy and paste something I posted in the dev questions and answers for the bl discord server: is that Eridium growing out of the ground on Promethea and if so does that confirm the Vault there was already opened? And if that is true then does that mean that Gortys was wrong when she said she was created as Atlas's last ditch attempt to open a Vault, or was the Vault on Promethea not opened by Atlas (she references Hyperion opening the 1st Pandoran Vault so we know she was in production still after "those Hyperion guys" open a Vault so it's not like her info is out of date regarding Promethea)? If that's so, did Typhon open it even though he said he sold the key/location to Atlas? Also why is nobody mining Promethea's purple rocks when Pandora was clearly very lucrative for Hyperion? Was Atlas keeping the Eridium secret on Promethea so they could do tests and shit like Hyperion did on Pandora a few years later? Tell me your secrets!!! And if the Vault did open on Promethea, why is there no Eridium scar??)

yeah, lots of questions for Promethea. And one more: are the swamp lands we see in the trailers apart of that planet? I was under the assumption they are because of the way Promethea is described in BL1, plus the outskirts of the city definitely have that swampy feel, but we don’t actually see any of that. Tho Typhon does say: “... Quazmarian Quarry and I fell through some brittle rock” so maybe the other bits of Promethea are more rocky than I originally believed. I do think we’re going to visit that area. I mean, that’s where the Vault supposedly is, according to ya boy Typhon, so...

u can see from orbit a significant portion of it definitely does have city lights around. though we can’t actually see which parts are land and which are water, so who’s to say for sure. And, to be fair, the lights seem to be changing/wavering so I would even so far to say that it’s some sort of shield (to keep the rocks in orbit from smashing into cities constantly and/or prevent Maliwan attacks)... but that’s just a guess.

Danny Homan: The siege moustache, yeah. Funny side story: part of the reason he has a moustache is because of me. I was going through a very strange social experiment and I was just curious how my co-workers would react if I grew a moustache, and it was a very fascinating week of people - when you grow a moustache people just come up to you and insult you, which is kind of a fascinating thing. When we were thinking about Promethea and Rhys, he’s besieged by Maliwan Corporation and he’s kind of been pushed back into one little area. We thought: “okay, well what is he gonna do to kind of rally his troops and make them believe him?” And it’s a siege moustache.

well at least he’s not the Calypso twins, rallying people and making them believe in their leader because of murder so he’s got that going for him. Excited to see just how many more people insult Rhys over the course of the game. I am fucking ecstatic to see what Fiona is going to say.

Danny Homan: Yeah, Handsome Jack is dead.

god bless Danny Homan

seriously, I hope they don’t bring back AI Jack as a way to subvert this. I really really hope they don’t. Let the character RIP. Bringing him back is only going to beat a dead gift horse in the mouth. or whatever

Danny Homan: I don’t want to spoil anything at this moment, you might learn a little more at E3. Man, Tales is such an amazing game, I don’t know, I just love it. Telltale did such an incredible job and all of those characters are just fascinating. Whether its Rhys or Vaughan or Fiona, and yeah, who knows.

I’m hoping it’s Vaughn. I love Vaughn. But confirmation that Fiona is okay and alive and everything would be great, too. Only a few more days, y’all. We can do it

Danny Homan: You know, you’ve gotta write for the person who’s never played the game before and doesn’t know what Pandora is, doesn’t know what a Claptrap is, right? We write for - we had to kind of straddle that line between people who have played every game in the franchise and people who are just experiencing it for the first time. What you quickly learn is that insanity is kind of the rule of law. Claptrap at the beginning of the first missions says, you blow something up and he goes, “Relax, on Pandora it’s really super weird if something's not exploding!” And that’s how we onboard players. Because when you hear that line and you go “okay, that’s a weird thing. Explosions are just par for the course on Pandora.”

this does make me a little worried that the storyline won’t be as in-depth as we’re all hoping it is. I mean i know I get a little crazy with the theories bc i live my life in the wiki, but people new to the series would be like “whu?? huh????”

and i mean, not that i’m saying you shouldn’t play the game if you don’t have at least a little bit of lore knowledge, but I’m really hoping BL3 will fill in the huge gaps we need and if they have to cut things because they won’t make sense to newcomers of the series, that’ll make me sad. i’m talking stuff like revisiting things from TPS, the Destroyer from BL1, etc, etc. I hope they at least have some cutscenes explaining previous events like the beginning of bl2. Although it’d be a lot more difficult cuz the story in bl1 is pretty fuckin simple lol and now they have to summarize 4 games for someone who’s never played them before. ouch.

Danny Homan: You work on - we have quite a few writers and we kind of work on all of the missions together. We kind of have missions that we start with, and characters that we shepherd, but it’s a pretty highly collaborative environment. We have a writers room, we punch up stuff, we play our missions. I’ve always loved Ellie, I just think Ellie is one of the most amazing characters and it’s been such a pleasure to be able to write for her. I’m a southerner at heart, so I’ve been able to sneak in a few: “squish squish Jellyfish” and “in a while crocodile” kind of stuff...

I’m happy Ellie is apparently having a bigger impact in this game than the previous one. Most of her side quests are great and tbh unlike most npcs I don’t get quite as annoyed when I’m going my 50th playthrough and have to do the Ellie stuff. I’m glad she was the one to inherit the Catch-A-Ride stations and not Janey. It seems right

>Would you say that there’s a favourite character [of yours] of the new ones that you have? Danny Homan: Well, we haven’t met all of them yet so it’s kind of hard to weigh in on that. >That’s fair. Danny Homan: I’m excited about the new characters. Borderlands is awesome because there’s so many characters from this franchise and they’re all really rad and fun to work with. As a writer, being able to create new characters is good.

Confirmed we’re going to be seeing more characters than the twins, Lorelei, and Nope girl. And you can bet your ass I’m trusting NONE of them until the game is over lmao

>Are we going to see the final unknown Siren in this story? Danny Homan: *sighs* You’re gonna have to wait and find out, man. >Are new Sirens created when old ones die? Danny Homan: These are all great questions. You might find out some of that in this game. Who knows? >Can existing people become Sirens? Danny Homan: Um, that’s an interesting question. I mean, there’s a lot of ways that someone can become a Siren. It’s not a de facto X-Men kind of thing. There’s some different conditions that kind of arise. Yeah, Sirens are unique and I feel like we like to keep it a little amorphous. What we like the most is when fans kind of create their own myths and stories about how this kind of stuff happens. As a writer we try not to definitively say one thing because there’s a lot possible.

Okaaay so there’s a lot here.

To start, when Danny is like “iunno man, wait and see” I wanna say that’s almost a guaranteed ‘yes’. I mean, like, if it were the case that it wasn’t going to happen, he could’ve just been like “no, sorry, that doesn’t happen”.

(proof, the next interaction is: >Are we going to see Scooper in this story? Danny Homan: I don’t think so.

Additionally:

>How many tea parties with Tina do we get in Borderlands 3? Danny Homan: *laughs* You’re going to have to wait and see. >There’s a lot of wait and sees going on. Danny Homan: We don’t want to spoil anything!)

So theorizing for the 1st 2 questions?

Final Unknown Siren: we know Steele, Amara, Tyreen, Lilith, Maya, and Angel. Steele died 12 years ago, meaning the ‘final unknown siren’ has to be at most 12. Angel’s dead, too, but the other Siren would be 7, so I don’t think we’ll be meeting her. She’s most likely the mystery mask girl we see in the MoM, and we all have our theories regarding her.

are New Sirens created when Old Sirens die? Well... we kinda already knew that in general, but I get what the interviewer is actually trying to ask. Are Sirens we know going to die in this game? I’m gonna say yeah. I think either Lorelei or Nope girl (Little Blue) are going to get Siren powers one way or another. I wouldn’t be surprised if Maya/Lilith don’t make it through this one. I want to say Lilith will die, since she’s been in almost all the games, but Maya is apparently training some little girl, so she is in the path of d a n g e r. Maybe they’ll both die. Who knows!

As for the “can existing people become Sirens”. I’m gonna say yeah. I think Danny leaves his answer supre vague for a reason. We know Tyreen has the ability to steal Siren powers, so I wouldn’t be surprised if she (or Troy) has the power to gift stolen powers. I also wouldn’t be surprised if the red Vault we see the twins at in their art gave them their ‘Siren’ powers. Maybe a corporation finally found a way to create artificial Sirens (Atlas, I wouldn’t be surprised w/ Troy’s red tattoos and Maliwan has an entire area called ‘Archives’ with a Vault symbol on the door and what look like Siren tattoos sprawled across a building. We also gotta consider Hyperion’s eridium testing... not that they could ever do it, but maybe another corporation could have built off that?) 

In the comics it's shown Lilith gets her tattoos after an older Siren dies in front of her, but maybe Sirens are chosen when they are born and they get their tattoos later in life when their powers are unlocked (by another Siren dying/losing their powers/whatever). We do see a pic of Angel on Jack’s desk without tattoos, so that is plausible, tho people have also mentioned he could’ve photoshopped her tattoos out so nobody would question him.

Anyway. Yeah, there’s probably a lot of ways a person can become a Siren. 

>How much time has passed between BL2 and BL3 narratively? Danny Homan: Roughly the time since BL2 launched, so it’s been about seven years. >So just chronologically accurate to the development time. Danny Homan: Yeah, absolutely.

Shoutout to that one person with the Odyssey theory about how the time between bl2 and bl3 would be 7 years to match development time. right on the mark, my man. People who quote Randy saying it’s about 5 years: claptrap confirms it’s 7 years during his Clapslist board quest activation.

>Is there one Vault Hunter in particular that’s returning that you’re excited for people to see - now that we’re kind of talking about how we can’t talk about a lot of the new ones, is there a returning one you’re particularly excited about? Danny Homan: For Borderlands 2 I played as Maya and we saw her on the ship. She was always my favorite, I love Sirens in general. She’s a great character.

Not much to say here, Maya looks fantastic in bl3 tho. God she looks badass as fuck. Hope she takes over if/when Lilith dies lmao

>Speaking of the ship, it’s interesting that we’re getting this homebase dynamic that’s a spaceship. Are there any pop culture properties that you kind of borrowed from when designing that? I got Firefly-esque vibes when I was watching the presentation. Danny Homan: Yeah, there’s similar kinds of franchises that kind of quasi-sci-fi-west. What I love about Sanctuary [3] is that it is a spaceship but it’s got band-aids on it, you know? It’s a Borderlands spaceship so it’s got broken parts of the ship and it’s kind of got its own charm. It feels very lived-in. So as you walk around you see stairs that have been broken, you see an exhaust pipe that someone has put tin foil over, right? It’s very kitbash put together.

More reasons I’m of the theory that Sanctuary-III has been in operation for longer than BL3. Unfortunately, probably not the case, but I want to believe! We do see those screenshots in the trailer of the ship being infested by rat-like aliens, so I’m sure there will be a quest or two to clean those out. My question is if that happens before we get the ship (we must clean out the ship in order for Ellie to work it and get it in orbit) or it happens while we’re already in-flight and the rats got in through a shuttle ship/fast travel/whatever. Or, alternatively, the infested one we see is a totally different ship and we’re going in for parts/some reason. Like a ship AI or something. that’d be cool. I wonder if Sanc-III has a ship AI... I miss Felicity...

>How much work went into designing the ship’s atmosphere? It feels like a lot of the NPCs had things to say. Is there a lot of writing that goes into that as well? Danny Homan: Yeah, we’ve got a lot of NPCs on board. Our goal as writers is to make it feel like a living breathing place, right? So we spend so much time traveling around the ship being like “what would I want to comment on? That exhaust pipe is leading to nowhere. Let’s comment on that.”

I would not be surprised if we end up collecting NPCs from every planet we visit. We already see Promethea Citizens on board during the Sanc-III demo (which let to me questioning the timeline of that demo, I stand by my theory that it happens after we go to Promethea and after we visit the Monastery planet- that’s why Tannis has the dino corpse (Promethea) and Maya is on-board (Monastery). But, then again, maybe the swamp planet isn’t Promethea. Kinda think it is though. We’ll find out and I’ll update things accordingly.)

>Any one specific narrative beat that you can talk about that you’re really excited for fans to experience in Borderlands 3? Danny Homan: I really like the moment where we first meet the Calypso Twins face-to-hologram. Tyreen says “you’re my most loyal follower you just don’t know it yet” and there’s a lot kind of packed into that line. The Calypso Twins have this kind of strange arrogance where they presume you’re just going to be another one of their followers. There’s some interesting ways that kind of plays out.

asefdrtadfs there’s so much here holy shit. Homan confirming “You’re my most loyal follower, Vault thief, you just don’t know it yet” is super important. I 100% believe the twins know exactly what they’re doing and have an inside man and are letting all this play out. I would also not be surprised if they have a way to see the future ala mystery masked girl’s siren power, but I may be reading into things too much there lol

I also think it's interesting he says “we first meet the Calypso Twins face-to-Hologram”. I wonder what that says for my “the room after Shiv is somewhere we’re going to get info on the sun smashers stealing the key from the RC” theory. Might mean the twins are doing a broadcast on TV to all their cultists, or maybe Mouthpiece is broadcasting. Wouldn’t even be surprised if they’re livestreaming their murder of the HBC people (we find all those corpses, after all). Could explain why Ty says “did you come all this way just to see me? didn’t know you were such a super-fan. well, too bad, you missed the show!”

>Is that going to crop up in the narrative - them trying to kind of pull the player over? Danny Homan: That and also just that kind of sense that entertainers always kind of feel like everyone should be watching them. Everyone should be paying attention to them. >That’s an interesting beat. Danny Homan: Part of the fun of the Calypso Twins is that they are entertainers, right? They’re entertaining you and they’re entertaining the bandits. That’s why the cult exists. They’re kind of - they’re doing terrible things in the name of their cult.

I love this so much. It would be super interesting if we end up teaming up with them at some point to beat a badder enemy (Maliwan, Vault Monsters, Seraphs, Eridians) whatever it may be. Would be really cool if the Watcher pushes for us to join up with them (ALL the Vault Hunters we can get). I wonder if they’ll have quests like Jack (when he asks us to kill ourselves) but instead they ask us to do weird shit on camera for their ECHOnet channel. I’m sure Gearbox will find a way to make it all appear morally gray in the end anyway lol

Actually, where IS the Watcher..? I hope she doesn’t die in Commander Lilith... Maybe she went back to the Eridian homeworld. Oh that’d be interesting. she comes back later on in the game to lead us there/deliver news or smth...