-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
Borderlands 3 is Quietly a Solid Next Gen Launch Title
- Thread starter cb1115
- Start date
Problematic? I mean the writing is quite bad but never really problematic, the game is inclusive to a fault if you listen to the usual suspects, plenty of lgbt characters, a non binary one, etcetera
I should have made this thread 2 weeks ago, but finally, people have caught on!
I passed on the game when it initially launched and looking back I am glad I did. The next gen update makes it smooth, crisp and responsive and for me, it's a fantastic game through and through.
I passed on the game when it initially launched and looking back I am glad I did. The next gen update makes it smooth, crisp and responsive and for me, it's a fantastic game through and through.
The word problematic is not a synonym for non-inclusive. You can call shit writing problematic. We've had this societal trend of reshaping the word to only mean something racist or sexist or otherwise non-inclusive. Not sure why.
I felt like a lot of the side quests in the main game were also better writing than the main story quest. It's like the writing team had some talent but the people who were in charge of the primary story were trash.
Performance, I wanna say, shoots for 120fps(not sure how well it holds it) I personally enjoy playing in performance mode and am not good at noting drops in that territory.
In your case quality should be fine.
Thanks, that's what I was guessing it would do. Quality it is, then!
... once I sit down and finish TPS, that is.
The minimap looks like it's turning at 30fps when in quality mode and so that's weird and distracting. Other than that quality mode frame rate feels pretty good but performance mode still feels better. If the minimap wasn't so jerky I might play quality mode. But too distracting for me.
I think it's unfair to say the story is terrible, or as bad as the OP describes. You might not like the style or writing, but Borderlands 3 and the borderlands series in general has a lot going for it's narrative. One pleasant feature is the inclusion of lots of minority and otherwise less commonly featured characters, which is nice to see.
But other than that, the writing is actually for the most part, pretty good. Individual quest narratives are rarely predictable, and follow a diverse range of characters. The overaching plot in Borderlands 3, I'm personally not all that fond of, but I would say whether Borderlands 3's story is worth your time more likely depends on your sense of humour. I like it personally, and I find the series much more interesting, narratively speaking, than many big games like your Assassins Creeds, Call of Duties and whatnot.
It features a lot of interesting themes too. One quest might be about but stalian the unicorn made of diamonds, but another will feature themes of loss and trauma. Borderlands 3 takes much more risks with its narrative than titles like those, and I think there are areas where it falls short, but others where it pays off.
In any case, I'd say pay attention to the narrative and make a decision whether you enjoy it, yourself. Don't just stick a podcast on and disregard it.
I also recently started reading a literary analysis of the first two games, which is pretty interesting. I've linked it below.
But other than that, the writing is actually for the most part, pretty good. Individual quest narratives are rarely predictable, and follow a diverse range of characters. The overaching plot in Borderlands 3, I'm personally not all that fond of, but I would say whether Borderlands 3's story is worth your time more likely depends on your sense of humour. I like it personally, and I find the series much more interesting, narratively speaking, than many big games like your Assassins Creeds, Call of Duties and whatnot.
It features a lot of interesting themes too. One quest might be about but stalian the unicorn made of diamonds, but another will feature themes of loss and trauma. Borderlands 3 takes much more risks with its narrative than titles like those, and I think there are areas where it falls short, but others where it pays off.
In any case, I'd say pay attention to the narrative and make a decision whether you enjoy it, yourself. Don't just stick a podcast on and disregard it.
I also recently started reading a literary analysis of the first two games, which is pretty interesting. I've linked it below.
Ain'T No Place For A Hero: Borderlands Pop Classics #8: Amazon.co.uk: Tremblay, Kaitlin: 9781770413641: Books
Buy Ain'T No Place For A Hero: Borderlands Pop Classics #8 by Tremblay, Kaitlin (ISBN: 9781770413641) from Amazon's Book Store. Everyday low prices and free delivery on eligible orders.
www.amazon.co.uk
So this "next-gen update" really seems to outperform the PC version that significantly, huh?
I wonder if the PC side could get a performance update then. I'm really curious as to how the consoles are managing 120fps.
I don't think it is. Horrible writing aside the very core of the story is flawed even for borderlands standards. Characters act out of... well, character and do dumb stuff all through the game just to keep the plot moving. How the story goes is rooted on a series of convenient things that just happen to ugh, happen at the exact time you're ready for them. e.g.
mayas dumb sacrifice, opening the vaults, tannis revealing shes a siren, the timing of the destroyer awakening/nekrotafeyo self destructing. on top of stupid shit like not killing lilith and ava when they could, *twice*, doing nothing with the siblings potential rivalry, and how the entire eridians subplot have zero influence in the story and its just a completely useless end-game fetch quest
its just not well thought on top of not being well written. they had a good hook from TPS and completely dropped it for.... whatever they did in BL3
So my brother and I played 7 hours last night, fucking great game. Coincidentally we both got our PS5s today!
I know cross play doesn't come until next year, but it's cross play between PS4 and PS5 currently working? I want to give my friend my PS4, but I was going to tell him to buy Borderlands 3 if I do lol.
I know cross play doesn't come until next year, but it's cross play between PS4 and PS5 currently working? I want to give my friend my PS4, but I was going to tell him to buy Borderlands 3 if I do lol.
I have to disagree. The gunplay is quite fun but the UI and dialogue is so alarmingly bad that it actively hurts the enjoyment of the game.
What version of the game do you all recommend? I see standard, Deluxe, and Mega-Ulta-Uber-Gold-Plated Deluxe.
Is the Season Pass content worth getting a more expensive package for?
Is the Season Pass content worth getting a more expensive package for?
The only good Borderlands game was the first one. Gearbox is a shit tier developer and the first Borderlands was a fluke they've been milking since.
Yes. The first season pass, that is. Havent tested the second yet, still waiting to know what the second part actually is before seeing if i want it or not
I really wish someone else would make a Borderlands-like. I played maybe 50 hours coop of Borderlands 2 with friends and had a blast, despite everything that's not directly the gameplay being trash. Destiny and the like don't do it, since the classes and RPG trappings don't seem as prevalent. I really don't understand how an entire studio as well as publishers and whatever other collaborators can be okay putting out games with such awful writing.
I really enjoyed base Borderlands 2. I had moved on and didn't really get to the expansions by the time they came out, but BL2 was one of my favorites of the generation. YMMV, of course.
Okay so base + first season pass edition is safe to go with? Just confirming since the season pass is generally more expensive than the base game at this point.
I bought this because it was cheap and I wanted to see how FPS games could be on the Dual Sense and I haven't been disappointed, I've really enjoyed my time with it so far.
I agree with the OP however: it's definitely a podcast game. Maybe I am too old and not the target audience but the dialogue is terrible.
I agree with the OP however: it's definitely a podcast game. Maybe I am too old and not the target audience but the dialogue is terrible.
It's more a combination of the PC version not running particularly well and the next gen consoles being faster than most people's rig to begin with.
That said I've gone back to playing at "performance mode" with 100 FoV since resolution mode starts dropping pretty often once you get to the big fights with shit flying everywhere. The aliasing is hideous though unfortuNeely.
I wish I hadn't listened to this thread and saved my self $20. The rubberbanding in online co-op makes the game unplayable and I would never want to play something like this solo. We are in the same house too and can play all other co-op games just fine.
Yup I like it. I've been playing it solo exclusively. The gunplay and exploration feels good and the game looks good. The 60 FPS aren't super stable but good enough.
I prefer playing this in 120fps 1080p on ps5 than 4k ...the smoothness it makes in a fps like this is just way too good to not have even at 1080p
I really enjoyed it myself, not sure why the series had such a huge backlash after all the praise it was getting before but I quite enjoyed my PC playthrough. Then again I only play through them once and that's it, maybe if I dove more into them and for longer I'd be sick of them too. Was tempted to get it again for PS5 but kinda snapped out of it lol. It does look really nice though on PS5 from what I saw.
Dang and I thought Era had a hate boner for the game! Yeah I've seen some videos here and there (like the one you posted OP) and it looks great! Even better than the BL2 X360 -> PS4 conversion.
I still need to go through the 3rd and 4th DLCs so when I get my PS5 next year I'm looking forward to finishing up the content on there with these benefits.
I still need to go through the 3rd and 4th DLCs so when I get my PS5 next year I'm looking forward to finishing up the content on there with these benefits.
I respect your opinion but I think most of us can't get past the absolutely insufferable characters that the whole game is plagued with. There are a lot of jokes that land quite well, but there are 10x more that are extremely cringe because the game can't stop for a second trying to outjoke itself. There is a whole collectible substory (tying into the main narrative by the end) that involves a guy who can't stop talking about poop. It got old by the second audiolog.
Add to that the absolute dissonance in pacing with most dialogues being interrupted by gameplay events EXCEPT if you choose to wait every time for each interaction to conclude before advancing ever so slightly, in an otherwise very fast-paced game, and the amateurish (framing, editing, etc...) cutscenes and it makes for a very unpleasant narrative experience, even if there is in fact some gold hidden in the pile of dirt.
I guess it can be a lot more fun if you dig this specific brand of humor, nothing wrong this that.
I'dd like to add that I'm currently playing (coop, PS5) through the DLCs for the first time and kudos for making the entire theme of one expansion a gay wedding. The general inclusivity of the game is its one redeeming quality, regarding writing, themes and characters, for sure.
EDIT: And, regarding the thread's premise, I agree that the next-gen version is stellar. It's a very pretty-looking game and it runs flawlessly now. I won't forgive the performance issues and bugs at launch, but now it's a cool fluid fast experience. It has some huge flaws but it's very solid, so if you want a cheap game for your brand-new systems and you haven't played this, you can't really go wrong with it (even better with friends).
Last edited:
I don't disagree that some of the major plot points are poor though, and the main antagonist especially so. But I like most of the writing within each individual quest, the moment to moment stuff, personally.
Also the DLC you're playing right now, and the western one are especially good. The overarching plot there isn't anything amazing, but it's pretty decent I think. I do think in general the narrative never 'adds up', folks do stuff that doesn't make sense, their motivations are never really clear and whatnot. But still, I think some of the quests are pretty interesting.
I play co-op almost everyday and have none of these issues and I'm playing with someone on the opposite coast from me in the US. Not sure why you're having this problem, but you might want to reset your modem and make sure you're getting good speed on both consoles.
I ain't gonna knock someone for their opinion, but BL3's writing is really bad. Some could argue that BL2's meme/reference filled dialogue was already poor, but at least that game had some genuinely well written moments with consistent characterization and well developed relationships.
BL3 rips so much off from BL2 - even the villain, but does it so much worse. The serious moments fall apart from the slightest bit of scrutiny - they make absolutely no sense. The ending is complete nonsense as well. The whole story... 25 hours, so it's not short, with an INSANE amount of dialogue, yet character arcs are close to non existant. Because every character is too busy trying to be funny and incredibly quirky every. single. sentence.
It's really fucking jarring. BL2, there was still a sense that people are just weird in general because they live in a shitty world, but in BL3, everyone is just weird... just because. And the amount of toilet humor? It's ridiculous. I actually don't mind toilet humor at all, in the right dosage it can be absolutely hilarious. But the amount of times BL3 pulls a "turdfarmer" , "lol poop, fart" or whatever joke is just embarassing honestly. The side quests are legitimately bette rwritten and more interesting, the main story is just a complete mess.
(seriously, every time there was a toilet joke, this is the only pic that I could think of)
As I said above, the dlc's are a BIG improvement, though none of them come close to the Tiny TIna DLC of BL2 which was a genuinely masterclass in videogame writing and gameplay being married.
Spent 2 hours trying to fix it. Wish PSN had refunds. We play online co-op games all the time. Googling around only resulted in finding other people with the same problem.
What do you mean by rubber banding? The scaling is optional if that's what you mean, just choose "co-epitive" or whatever it's called instead of "cooperative". If you mean your stability, that's definitely something on your end I think because I haven't seen any mentions of bad online I think.
How does it work on PS5 if I have the physical version? I know I can upgrade it, but I read reports that because it's a PS4 disc the PS5 tries to install/download patches for the PS4 version everytime I insert the disc, which sounds incredibly annoying. The alternative being having to have both PS4 and PS5 versions installed, thus taking up double the space?
Is this still the case?
Is this still the case?
