#not bl3 or the story

[ms-nishakadam]

I think I angered a Troy/Borderlands 3 stan...

RIP to the Borderlands franchise (2009 - 2014)

It's been great...

[skeleslime-phantom]

Borderlands 4 trailer shows the vault hunters are all human...

Ngl, very boring to me.

[borderlandsmostwanted]

can we have a sir hammerlock appreciation post pls ... and try 2 avoid mentioning wainlock bc as much as i love it i think alistair can and does and should be allowed to stand on his own merit and not merely because he's in relationship with a white man

Actually Hammerlock has been one of my all time faves since 2, so I'm happy to oblige!

He's extremely funny right out of the gate. I love claptrap but I'm sorry electrocuting him so he would shut the fuck up was honestly a top tier bit. Also his little march out for his intro cutscene..iconic.

I can forgive him being British for the fact that it makes his bullymong quest 10x funnier.

This is only a little embarrassing but as a child playing this game for the first time after I got to sanctuary and found Hammerlock I would do fuck all except hang out with him. Like I wouldn't even do his quests I literally just stood around him to try and engage conversation. Yes I was dumb...but I was also committed. I know a lot of his idle lines now.

And, you know this goes without saying, but LOOK AT HIS DESIGN

Gearbox can't improve beyond this. This is peak and they will never reach such heights again.

I of course could go on but I'll stop here to let others reblog with additions, lest I rant all day

[empyreansentinel]

hey chat do we think we're going back to elpis in BL4.

[the-jade-jester27]

Doing a quest in borderlands 3 that requires me to kill myself for a gun which will prob be under level for reasons but man am I a sucker for a talking gun

[way-too-cool-raybot]

I'm almost certain I've said this before but while we are talking about how the Borderlands fandom hates Ava for being A Child Who Has Emotions And Thoughts can we also talk about how her one Main Game side quest literally bullies her

[marimachaa]

bl3 is not a bad game but the side missions are way too drawn out and boring. even the character you're playing as expresses boredom.. at least amara does afaik. the game mechanics are super fun and probably the best out of all the games, but the things i'm meant to be paying attention to are lacking ..

[doom-dreaming]

not to completely whiplash back to borderlands for a second, BUT. I'm continuing my nail art retrospectives on my sideblog and thinking about how fun it would be to do nail art for Atlas-redesign TFTBL Rhys and THAT got me thinking about how I'm disappointed in BL3 again.

Rhys was one of the least egregious character mistakes in that game, in my opinion, but they still kinda fucked him up, huh. Atlas Rhys at the end of Tales had become genuinely more confident in himself and his companions. He'd Gone Through Some Shit and come out the other side different. Yeah, he was still a himbo and a doofus and made bad jokes and thought he was cooler than he is, but there was actual character growth. And then in BL3 they downgraded him back into being an overly-nervous, in-over-his-head, scared of a papercut comic relief character (in a game OVERFULL of comic relief, for the record. depending on your version of comedy) instead of acknowledging the depth he'd had. I guess that's my main complaint about BL3, the character work felt pretty one-dimensional for 90% of the characters. And I know I'm asking a lot from a franchise like Borderlands but the issue is they CAN do it and HAVE done it before and then failed to keep doing it

idk. I'm stirring up dormant opinions about games I haven't played in at least 4 years. also the aesthetics of his Atlas stuff were better in Tales. and he didn't have a mustache.

[handsome-john]

I've been seeing a lot of posts randomly about stories starting in the beginning or middle of a trans character's transition and it just occurred to me that the only mainstream story that's done this is Borderlands 3

[blazeball]

i wanna play bl3 i wanna see fl4k [sniffles and cries and lays down softly on the ground. closes my eyes. comically explodes]

[love-for-donuts69]

Oh fuck yes

Here's a bunch of crude/silly arts and memes with them (again) Please, enjoy... if you can TW for blood

[spockasmr]

so #sad that the writing for bl3 was so heinously bad bc the game is quite fun. lovely art direction. splendid soundtrack. great gameplay. anyway

[katagawajr]

BORDERLANDS 4- the lore so far

a post compiling all the tidbits from the trailers/descriptions, about everything we know about the story (so far).

wanted to make this post because i may be borderlands' biggest hater, but this new stuff looks really intriguing so far! call me optimistic but i'm definitely interested for now...

(speculation/theorizing involved here. i'm not actually 100% knowledgeable on all the lore but this is just what i'm gathering from it. if it turns out to be true then i called it here first <3)

so here's the timeline we know so far:

-> At the end of Borderlands 3, Elpis is crashing into Pandora. To save everyone (on both places), Lilith flies up and teleports Elpis away. Presumably, just like Sanctuary in BL2, she can't exactly control where it goes.

-> Where it happens to go is the planet of Kairos: a planet hidden in space- it's insinuated that the "protective barrier" surrounding the planet (made of glass?) turned it invisible. Or at least undetectable.

-> This "revealed" Kairos to the universe. Elpis presumably has been pulled in and is now orbiting Kairos.

-> Kairos is currently being controlled by "The Timekeeper." The Timekeeper is not a PERSON, but rather an Eridian Guardian. AKA... A Vault Monster.

-> This is explicitly stated in one of Nyriad's diary entries from BL3. She mentions the Timekeeper by name as an "Eridian Creation," in the likes of Graveward (BL3) and the Traveller (TFTBL). It's also obvious by the images above that it isn't Human- it has robotic limbs, floats, and seemingly harnesses/is connected to the Vault Gate behind it.

-> The Timekeeper is described as a dictator obsessed with Perfect Order, furthering the idea that this hidden planet was in a perfect state of "Order," with only the Timekeeper + its "synthetic" army. Remnants of whatever Eridian Society created it, and hid it away, for whatever reason.

-> Elpis crashing into Kairos, and breaking the barrier, has enraged the Timekeeper, who's planet is now visible to the galaxy. And a big hole in the ceiling of it's house. Damn.

-> It's confirmed there's a few years' time-skip between the crashing of Elpis and the start of the game. The SCAVS of Elpis (and bandits of Pandora most likely, however they hitched a ride) have now made their way to the surface of Kairos and are causing mayhem. They seem way more mechanical in nature than the last time we saw Elpis, but similar vibes. Very tech-y, robotic, etc. -> These bandits become their own faction known as "The Rippers," and their leader is a robot lady named Callis.

-> Queen Callis is shown in the trailer to ALSO be not human (robot? something else? Kairos's influence, or Elpis tech? who knows.) But apparently she also has the power to control the bandits, through their masks. She puts the masks on them and their eyes turn red, matching hers. So it's possible she's just mind controlling every bandit.

-> Anyways, it's a "robo-bandit" VS. "synthetic Eridian" civil war deal. The Timekeeper appears to be attempting to subjugate the entire planet again, especially based on all the "break free" wording of the teaser descriptions. Whether you're fighting WITH Callis's army or just as a third party, it appears the Vault Hunters are from Elpis (or, were on Elpis when it got yoinked at the very least). And they're trying to escape this planet. -> The last description does mention "cast of characters, new AND old," so it remains to be seen in what capacity old characters are involved. It IS a time-skip, so maybe Sanctuary finally tracked down Lilith's whereabouts and she's stranded on Elpis. Maybe Ava is an adult now and leading the Crimson Raiders. Maybe the whole "Timekeeper" business means there will be timeline fuckery- pulling alternate timeline versions of old characters, bringing back dead ones, who knows.

-> (I'M PERSONALLY INCLINED TO BELIEVE that Sasha and Fiona will also play a role in this game? Because New Tales called specific attention to Sasha being in a different part of the galaxy unable to be found (hidden planet? wink wink?), and Fiona's talk of Sasha's anahatium pocketwatch, with the etched phrase "TIME HEALS ALL WOUNDS.")

-> (Who knows if that is true, or what that really means. Just speculation here. I miss Sasha and Fiona, and they've been hyped up with BL3 Echoes, New Tales stuff, and even their own book. Give us the two best Borderlands characters back please.)

-> Last thing as an aside, it DOES show that we will be getting a Siren VH again. So she either needs to have Steele's unknown power, the Leech power, or some secret third thing. Maybe she isn't a real siren at all. The device on her arm could either be a way to REPLICATE a siren's power (like Anu, making her a "fake siren") or possibly as a way to enhance/contain the Leech power, like Tyreen alludes to in BL3. Interested to find out.

TLDR: we're finally getting the Eridian War plotline! They didn't forget guys! AND it directly involves Elpis, like the game where we first learned about the Eridian War!

Synthetic "Eridian" army led by a Vault Guardian/Monster, THE TIMEKEEPER, vs. the robotic bandit army, the Rippers, led by QUEEN CALLIS. Time-skip again (intrigued to see how long this time. It's canonically been at LEAST two years since BL3.) New + Old characters. New Eridian planet, like Nekrotafeyo. 4 New VH's, either FROM Elpis, or wayward travelers who accidentally crashed onto Kairos.

“Early 2025” gameplay reveal, unspecified 2025 release date.

[curlyparmesan]

Return to me Fl4k

There is so much left to hunt

I won't let you go

So are we just ignoring this or what?

[c0ntr0l-c0re-angel]

Going off of what my dear friend said in the previous post, I also think there's a complicated problem with sirens. Further into the series, they're taken waaay too seriously, and not seriously enough at the same time. In the comics, there's this one siren who can control fauna on pandora. Cool as shit, she shows up to do something, and is just. gone. Granted the comics have mixed reviews, but even simple things with sirens like that can be cool.

There's certain logs in the post game of bl3 that treat one of the old sirens as if she has the power of a god. Lilith, after bl2 is also kinda treated this way.

They seem to go back and forth between trying to have her portrayed as human, but then put her up on a pedestal. They give her the credit for killing jack. No credit to Roland, or the vault hunters [not to mention the problems that Doglin mentioned before about not being willing to move past the bl1 vault hunters and on to the bl2 ones]. and treat her as the soul savior of the planet.

I like some of the mystery and subtle complexities of the first game, and i will say bl1 has definitely grown on me as I've grown with the series. Lilith's powers, along with the vault, is treated like myth more than fact. It leaves us with something to imagine, yes, Lilith is special, but she's human, even if she's more. She's something human, or close to it, WITH powers. She isn't just her powers. [Although her attributing her powers as a part of herself as a person is different, and a character thing opposed to story. Which I like.]

Either way I don't know how to wrap this up well, but sirens are obviously an important part of the lore. But they're using them as a story and world building crutch WAAAY too hard. To the point where it's robbing some of these really amazing women of the full individuality and creativity they could get as people with really cool powers.