Borderlands Game of the Year Enhanced

Borderlands is, for better or for worse, the most 2009 game possibly ever made. It is an abominable Frankenstein's monster of role playing elements and skill trees, needlessly crude humor, film/games/music "references" culture, open world design, rigid mission-based game structure, and an unabashed obsession of gore, violence, and guns. It also manages to thread these seemingly endless and disparate points of inspiration into something cohesive, addicting, and clever enough that it actually appears somewhat effortless in its execution.

In Borderlands, you are the Vault Hunter - a mercenary bounty that is trying to track down the Vault, an ancient dimensional portal filled with enough resources to bring anyone unimaginable wealth and power across the galaxy. To get there, you have to traverse the completely insane and violent Pandora, a planet full of insane bandits, giant insects, flying birds the size of cars, vicious skags and spiderants, a highly-advanced capitalist militia taking everything of value from the planet, and an uncountable number of people trying to mislead you, kill you, manipulate you, and take your findings for their own. You travel across a number of increasingly more dangerous areas, taking down regional scourges and acquiring parts of the key to the Vault to complete your destiny.

While that might sound like a story-filled Godfather-type adventure, it really isn't. Though there are some "twists," your player character does not directly speak with any character, does not have options for dialogue or quest plotlines, and generally experiences the plot as much as you do. The game features a barrage of characters, some friendly and some not, and while I consider the game to have pretty okay writing and world building, the quantity is simply not there, and that will either turn people on or off from what the game is trying to do. This is not Fallout, nor Elder Scrolls - many explanations for why quests are being assigned and how they are being resolved and rewarded by the client are in a flash of text on a HUD menu. Make no mistake, this is a game about shooting things and feeling powerful before literally anything else.

Pandora itself is a cel-shaded wasteland of deserts, mountains, rotting caves, shantyhouses, tented encampments, ghost towns, malfunctioning industrial plants, and gang hideouts. It takes obvious inspiration from Mad Max, but also stuff like Grindhouse and other high-octane mid-00s gorefest flicks, Westerns, slapstick comedy, and of course the chief inspiration for the game's visual direction, the short film Codehunters. What helps sell the place as real is how doggedly commited Gearbox is to making sure you know what Pandora is. Almost every single area is a sunbaked rock face or coastline. The waters are unilaterally polluted. Most private citizens either never come outside or have disfigurations or illnesses. There are no paradise cities, no oases, no bastions of modernized civilization. It is always hostile, all the time, and you'll eventually find comfort in the familiarity. While you poke around, the soundtrack is a really fitting whirlwind of slide guitar, tribal drums, throaty horns, dilapidated strings, and dark ambient. Pandora sounds tired and dying, much like its inhabitants that you'll meet.

Despite the interesting world, the game actually disincentivizes independent exploration outside of a few occasions. While there are literally thousands of weapon chests, lockers, ammo crates, safe boxes, dumpsters, mailboxes, and bodies to loot, every area on a given map was created first and foremost as the backdrop for a quest. In fact, this is so consistently true that you will find yourself actually refusing to poke around an area more than required for the mission, because if you haven't seen a place in the map yet there's a near-100% chance you'll be back later with another quest objective in hand. Instead, those loot vessels described earlier are meant to be stacked along with quest bonuses and rewards to create a non-stop flood of stuff for you to purse through. This makes sense from a setting standpoint, but I can imagine this putting off those who like that aspect of role playing games. For me, the pace of the game is key and this helps mosey along the content at a fun briskness.

The game was branded as a "first person Diablo" and frankly that's the mechanical base of the experience. Enemies explode like pinatas of limbs, glibs, cash, and loot and when you are even a few levels above your opponent you will start to one-shot them and receive a pittance of 1 XP for your troubles. Progression through the game is lightning quick, and they encourage you to always be improving, rifling through new guns in your inventory, and selling the old stuff you don't need. There are a number of mission hubs in the game, and a typical "cycle" of gameplay for BL1 is to accept every mission you have unlocked, go to the area most of them align in, complete them all in one swath, come back and rake in the rewards and loot, sell the surplus loot you don't need or grew out of, and take on more missions again. Initially limited inventory space also means the player will learn to do mental math quickly, as they calculate DPS for a weapon on the ground and evaluate its usefulness. Mercifully, there is a color-coded rarity system to help players quickly determine what they should probably make room for. There's a small HUD preview of the stats for every bit of loot, including the most important one - the resale price. Even the most ardent communist will become a cold-hearted mercenary in no time, selling off old gun favorites for scraps the second they are no longer useful.

The guns, grenades, and shields themselves are randomly generated, allowing for a stupid number of permutations. This gives an extremely literal equipment hierarchy for not only you but every enemy around you, because their gun is yours as soon as you kill them. A very large majority of the stuff you find will have flaws in some form, but every once in a while you will find a total death machine that allows you to ravage another hundred potential replacements. The thrill of finding a replacement to one of your 4 gun slots is really intoxicating, and it helps the player push forward through otherwise tedious portions of the game. Many map sub-areas have at least one hidden chest in them, so looking around a bit or using your ridiculous Halo jump to climb some structures is usually a good use of your time.

In addition to the onslaught of items you'll have, you also level up, and in addition to base stat improvements you'll have skill points to unlock abilities in one of 3 class-specific skill trees. Having played through the game with 3 of 4 of the characters I can say that they are balanced quite well and all feature cool, unique abilities that change how you'll approach both combat and your gun prioritization. Lilith's absurd elemental bonuses will incentivize you to keep those element-charged guns. Roland's ammo replenishment and turret health regen will keep you well armed and alive more often than the others. Mordecai's bonuses for critical hits and snipers will make many encounters trivial for those who can aim. I'd recommend looking at the skill trees for each character beforehand to get an idea how they play, because it's a highly personal choice, even if you end up roughly as strong in the end.

Borderlands makes good use of its excellent controls and gunplay, addictive loot system, and setting to create something that is worth a play for both the Call of Duty folks and the Fallout folks of the world. It is a very competent combination of traditional first person shooters and open world role playing experiences with a unique visual style and memorable world to conquer. Although I still enjoy it a fucking decade after its release, the sequels have revealed that Borderlands' simplicity and accessibility is also its content downfall. To the pessimist, this world may seem empty and overly hostile, with not enough variety to offer. For those who understand the narrow lane this game is trying to pave, you will find a lot to offer here.