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| Probably more interesting than Handsome Jack... Probably. |
Spoiler Alert! The following post contains spoilers of Borderlands The PreSequel!
The game starts us right in the middle of things with the invasion of Helios Station. A Dahl corporation army is taking over all the right spots just so they can control the Eye of Helios, an inbuilt Superweapon, and then use it against Elpis to ultimately destroy the Natural, and Inhabited, Satellite.
Simple Plan, no? Pretty quickly they get control and you are transported down to the Moons Surface using a Cannon and a Cargo container you're hidng in. Jack, the subject of our story, remains on the space station to try to do his part in helping the players from on high.
Australian Lesbians and Scavengers (Scavs for Short) ensue, and the Vault Hunters are sent on a handful of tasks to regain control of Helios.
The game seems to drag in the start. The players end up bounding (literally) across a lava and ice covered surface to reach structures of broken down battleships to reclaim Vehicle Digistructs, AI Intelligences, and a Robotics Factory before returning to Helios and doing your part to push back the incursion and reclaim the eye of Helios, then get to the task of finding the Vault on the Moon as is the original task.
The subject of Jack is a pretty quick (de?)evolution into what he is known as today. As soon as you reach the games main Hub Town, Concordia, you see that he's a trusting sort of fella, and someone who does not expect to be backstabbed. Unfortunately for him, getting literally shot in the back flings him into the spiral that is a life of mistrust and calculated anger against almost every single person alive.
The problem I find is that, while the moulding of Jack into Handsome Jack is the main subject of the story, it pulls away from the other characters too much. And while it does a rather good job of rounding off his attitude pretty well, I still want to know more about these other characters. Which, sadly, isn't a particularly large cast.
The main problem I have though is a lack of climatic events that change your attitude. Halfway through Borderlands 2, I had a change of heart. I felt a little lackadaisicle at first, feeling Handsome Jack was all bark and no bite. But that quickly changed. And not once, but twice.
Here, there weren't really any changes of heart. And I don't know whether it was because I hadn't thought about what was going on, or because they weren't strong enough to actually make me feel something.
It first happened with Skipper, a computer AI that was commandeered for the purpose of creating a Robotic Army from a computer Tech who felt he needed a girlfriend, and could only get one through his floating computer chair. He was also a boss fight, by the way.
Skipper was happy to have been taken away from him and be put to more use than faking a relationship, so much so that she changed her name to Felicity to symbolise her freedom. She was so happy and excited to lead her new life.
Come the time where the players are in the factory. They're walking through, clearing Scavs and Torks to reach the computer system to insert Felicity. All the while Felicity is coming to the slow realisation that she doesn't want to be plugged into a machine and reduced to simple combat components. While pleading for her life by providing the alternative of Copying her intelligence and reducing that, Jack took time as the priority and put forth the order, which threw Felicity into Rampancy, accompanied by her new experimental body as a Constructor. It was a pretty obvious eventaulity that the player would win that fight, and she would become akin to a bloated Dalek, but I don't know why it didn't hit me so hard.
The second climatic twist was the Eye of Helios. Being a Space Station, you easily think "Oh yeah, it's a giant laser the station powers". But there are little hints plonked down that it isn't just any Laser. Apparently the kind of power it's generating is actually something that a giant laser couldn't accomplish.
Turns out it's the Eye of the Destroyer, the Vault Monster at the end of the first Borderlands Game. That was a cool twist. The Destroyer in Borderlands 1 turned out to be a pretty lame boss in the first game and felt it was essentially left as a note in history, so it was good to see that it made not one, but two appearances in the game. A side mission a little earlier on has the players search for a secret laboratory and find a genetic recreation of it, though much smaller and dismissed by Jack as being useless and thusly executed.
Though Jack should've been a bit more careful with that since Moxxi and Co ended up betraying him and destroying the eye. Sure, he tried to get it back together so he could use it again, but telling a Vault Hunter to use a laser on it after it'd just been soldered back together is just a terrible idea in itself.
The more I think about it, the more I wonder whether it really was complacency in knowing what the future holds, or even sleep deprivation since I did a few stints in the middle of the night, that left me feeling unenthused about the events. The cries of Felicity as her character was torn down to minimal instinctual programming; the roar of the Destroyer as it was pumped with poison to the point of exploding; the anger of betrayal towards Jack and the utter disbelief that they would turn on him: the Hero, a title he claims at every instance.
I do hope that the DLC's make more use of other characters though. Sure, Jack was the big focus on the game, but there is more to the game than the focus on one character. Because there are only a few other new characters that appear, Janey Springs and Nurse Nina, that expand the cast since every other character met through side missions are either recycled from other iterations, or are one shot jokes of Humour. Like Captain Chef, a pioneer and discoverer of worlds who claims the Moon twice in the name of his King by saluting the Royal flag while you hoist it and fend off locals.
Who I'm really excited for is the Mysterious Guardian, though. He makes two appearances, once at the beginning of the game when he defends Zarpedon from being attacked, and in a Teaser clip after the Credits when he defends Athena from the firing line and provides words of forboding, which put a little tingle in my pants for the next game, which a small part of me wishes it would be a Shared World MMO, like Destiny, only immensely more Interesting, though I highly doubt it.
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