A bunch of Borderlands 4 coverage has surfaced from the internet’s soup pot like the bones of that beloved pet hamster you thought had escaped through the scullery. Quickly now, before your darling children see, let’s sift through the remains in search of News. Well now! It turns out they’re keeping the jokes to a relative minimum in this one. So says Taylor Clark, Borderlands 4’s lead writer, in a chat about the game’s lush dystopian setting.
It’s been interesting, perhaps a little depressing to see the Borderlands school of humour degrade over the years from a moderate strength into a definite weakness. Ah, I remember how much we used to love Claptrap. I remember how delighted we all were by the Wimoweh trailer. I was, anyway. This was back in 2012, when I still enjoyed video games.
Specific hits and misses aside, I guess the basic problem is that you can only do this vein of post-post-ironic, meme-shot chucklefuckery once or twice before it becomes nauseating. There are seven Borderlands games, including spin-offs. I think that is probably four too many – if you’ve played the second, I’d skip straight to Tales From The Borderlands.
Gearbox are, among other things, trying to level the tone out with Borderlands 4, which launches for PC on 12th September, and will not cost $80, despite or possibly thanks to much commentary to that effect from Gearboss Randy Pitchford.
“Of course, we were aware of the feedback that Borderlands 3 got, and we took all the valid criticism on board,” Clark said of the humour in an interview with VGC. “We’re creating an entirely new world, and we want to have a tone that fits the new planet we’re on. Pandora was like the Wild West, this new planet is a totalitarian world, so having everybody making jokes every minute wouldn’t feel totally right.”
That last sentence is, well, it’s sort of a Pandora’s box, isn’t it. Many thoughts, all of them massively obnoxious. On the one hand, humour may be the best antidote to tyranny, on the other, clowns can make great demagogues. It’s hard to comment without knowing more about Borderlands 4’s idea of totalitarianism. I guess I need to play it now.
There’s also the problem of this being Borderlands’ “Simpson’s era”, in Clark’s words, although I think he’s actually referring to the “Simpsons did it” joke from South Park.
“We’re in the writers’ room, and somebody will have an idea on how to finish a mission, and someone will be like, ‘We did that in Borderlands’,” he told the site. “We’re always trying not to repeat ourselves; that’s why our villains are so different. We’re always trying to keep it fresh.”
If you never played any of the older Borderlands, 1) I’d be sincerely interested to get your impressions of the 2009 game, and 2) Borderlands 4 is going to be a “fresh start”, continuing the events of Borderlands 3 “with a very different kind of villain than we’ve had before”. According to Clark: “You don’t need to have played all the old games to understand it, but you have something that rewards people who are coming from Borderlands 3 and also people who want to jump in, with no experience.”
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