PC and console games

Developer: Gearbox Software	Graphics:
Publisher: 2K	Sound:
Year: 2009	Difficulty:
Genre: FPS RPG (OMG)	Lastability:
Number of players: 1 à 4 simultaneous	Rating:	7/10

I had a brilliant idea for an introduction, but I used it for Shadowlands. Go and read that page, I’ll wait for you…

We are gathered here today to celebrate the union between Diablo (1997), particularly its randomly generated loot collection function, and a 3D shooting game. Borderlands wasn’t the first candidate; that honour belonged to Hellgate: London (2007), a transposition of Diablo into a post-apocalyptic universe. It was an ambitious game … published by Electronic Arts. So you know the story: premature release, riddled with bugs, critical and commercial failure, bankruptcy of the development studio. The title was judged disappointing compared to its promises, tedious (hello bullet sponges and recycled environments) and already afflicted with a subscription system that was a precursor to today’s games-as-a-service. Not to mention the confusing interface and intrusive tutorials… A textbook case that seems to have committed every imaginable blunder.

Borderlands is the corrected copy, which solidified the looter shooter subgenre (collect and shoot). Numerous expansions and spin-off games followed in its footsteps, establishing the series as a proper franchise. I have an ambivalent opinion about it: great memories, but also a growing unease about its evolution and the impact it has had on the video game industry. I could have expressed these grievances on the World of Warcraft page (I don’t rule out doing so later) and castigated the influence of the MMORPG on contemporary games: the excessive focus on multiplayer, addiction stratagems, microtransactions, insipid copy-pasted quests that have become an immutable norm. But I was fortunate enough to stop playing WoW before becoming jaded, and I ended up attributing these flaws to looter shooters, rightly or wrongly.

Borderlands is recognised for its Mad Max atmosphere: desert landscapes, big off-road vehicles, and violent anarchy. The game offers four playable characters with distinct styles (classes), all coming with customisable talent trees and a wide choice of equipment, as in role-playing games. Not forgetting the guns, which number in the millions thanks to procedural generation (fundamentally, variations of eight types) organised by rarity according to a colour code borrowed from WoW and Diablo 2 (2000). It’s a great way to blow off steam with friends, in cooperative mode (throughout the entire campaign, not just arenas or deathmatches), but somewhat less captivating solo, where the kinship with MMOs quickly becomes apparent.

Before spreading my bitterness, I wanted to compliment Gearbox studio for the overall visual atmosphere: the desolate and dusty landscapes, the western aesthetic accentuated by cel-shading, which reminded me of Wild Arms 3 (PlayStation 2, 2002). This technique, adopted late in development, could serve equally well to hide a lack of resources or to distinguish itself from the announced competitor: Rage (2011). The famous introduction scene on the bus had also left its mark on me. However, it would appear that, like the game mechanics, this graphic style was heavily “inspired” by other works (have a look at Codehunters and compare).

I suspect other influences, which I couldn’t attribute with certainty to cinema or comic books. When important characters are introduced by a frozen full-screen image; they’re often seen in a dynamic pose, their name written in enormous letters, accompanied by a punchy phrase. I associate this style with Guy Ritchie’s first two films, but a film buff will correct me (or a comics enthusiast).

Beyond the visuals, the game owes much of its strong identity to its colourful and battered characters (Claptrap, Dr Zed, T. K. Baha, Patricia Tannis…) who exercise a presence, despite a storyline carved with a pruning knife from a frog’s collarbone. The story takes place on the planet Pandora (subtle mythological reference), you are a “vault hunter” in search of … the vault, supposedly containing a treasure. There are no heroes in this game. The players, like most of the protagonists, are disillusioned criminals, ready to do anything to survive. Humour does invite itself in, however, sometimes dark, sometimes crude, or frankly salacious, but it worked on me (I must admit that the “The Secret Armory of General Knoxx” expansion made me laugh quite a bit).

This accomplished atmosphere is due, in my opinion, partly to the abandonment of randomly generated environments (present in Hellgate), and to a lesser extent, to the remarkable voice acting (even though the majority of missions are still presented through pages of text). Moreover, short spoken lines can be heard absolutely all the time, including during action phases, and I miss three quarters of them because I’ve kept the game in English and I need to read the subtitles calmly to understand… That said, a French dub does exist.

On the other hand, I’m more uncompromising about ergonomics, particularly key customisation. In this department, Borderlands fails royally. Why offer the choice of key to display the map, for example, without allowing it to be closed using that same key (instead of the imposed escape key)? As it happens, I use the “Backspace” key, and my gaming position (both feet up on a table, set at a right angle to my desk) doesn’t give me access to the left half of the keyboard. I have to contort myself every time I want to exit a menu! I got around the problem with an Autohotkey macro, which also allows me to assign two actions to one key (“Enter” to reload and open doors). Not ideal, but effective.

The game features different vehicles (heavily armed) for traversing long distances and assisting in combat. I’ve noticed that many players found the driving awkward because the steering is linked to the camera, but this didn’t bother me (I play on PC, with a mouse). The vehicles certainly had a tendency to flip over, get stuck, or more generally, kill us. This is less the case in the 2019 remaster, and I almost regret it, because these accidents reminded me of my best moments in Hunter! I still suspect the existence of a perverse algorithm that systematically makes my character exit from the wrong side. Try the experiment by parking along a cliff, and see…

Concerning character movement and weapon handling, I’ve heard it said that these have aged poorly, but I find nothing to criticise (it’s true that I have little taste for modern games). If I had one criticism, it would concern the weapon sounds, which feel somewhat weak. Still, they’re more varied and don’t feel as much like toys as in Borderlands 2 (particularly the big magnums, which belong to a distinct category from automatic pistols).

I do have two unpleasant episodes to relate: those bloody machine gun guard towers, which spray me at long range continuously and make the camera shake, while I try vainly to aim at them, and the enemies who constantly reappear behind my back. You’ll think of me when visiting the area called Old Haven…

Being a prototype, one realises (after having played the sequels) that certain mechanics weren’t yet mature. The talent trees lack depth, one observes shortcomings in balancing (between weapons, specialisations, the relative level of enemies…), and multiple technical annoyances: that notorious memory leak on PC, bugs in certain missions, in the names and statistics displayed on certain weapons, and notably that “required level” indicator which strangely decreases when the weapon is equipped, and which must have confused an entire generation of players.

Where Borderlands undeniably shows its age is in the rigid and procedural manner in which it’s structured. For example, each new area is opened in the same way by a Claptrap unit, and the same bounty board awaits us, offering the same stereotypical missions (weapon components to collect, Claptrap in distress to repair…), which often send us towards regions we’ve just left (a way of artificially increasing the lifespan). In contrast, in Borderlands 2, the side missions are story-driven and amusing. Special mention to Claptrap’s incessant interruptions to inform me that the person I’m currently talking to has a mission for me…

This is the salient point. Borderlands marks for me the beginning of this generalised mania for wanting to copy MMOs and multiply mini-objectives (or “points of interest” on a map) in most big-budget games, notably “open worlds”. The franchise is also symptomatic of a flaw in the gaming industry (and cinema) which consists of reproducing a tried-and-tested formula to the point of indigestion. The worst thing is that years later, these practices are still acclaimed by the majority of players. Personally, I would never feel neurotic enough to run around fields for weeks, searching for 900 nuts and 120 mass-produced shrines (ooh! someone’s spilling the tea!).

Outside of MMO standards, Borderlands also borrows liberally from the role-playing game genre. A good idea, which has unfortunately contributed, through its success, to imposing new “trends” in video games, which we can no longer escape from now. The fact remains that certain grafts haven’t taken well, in my opinion:

The different types of damage:

Such as elemental damage (fire, acid, electric, explosive) and the matching resistances (elemental creatures are immune to their own element). It annoys me to be forced to equip a weapon of each type to be sure of wounding the adversary; the rhythm suffers. And these resistances aren’t limited to elements. For example, Brick has a “rocket launcher” specialisation, effective against certain toughs, not against others. It’s inconsistent and frustrating to have to pull out the little submachine gun when a bare-chested bandit decides to be insensitive to my rockets!

The deliberate throttling of the game to integrate “role-playing” progression:

In Borderlands, weapons are inaccurate by design. An algorithm accentuates bullet dispersion, but each weapon class has an experience bar: the more one uses it, the more it gains in “proficiency” and the less this artificial constraint is felt. I don’t appreciate this system. Opting for the melee character, I only draw a weapon occasionally to take down flying targets. This is again the beginnings of a practice that has become commonplace, consisting of intentionally restricting a game’s functionalities simply to incorporate experience bars or talent trees (Dying Light and Serious Sam 4 have indulged in this, amongst so many others). This is linked to the desire to increase the game’s lifespan, or worse, through conformism. I think on the contrary that an action game should offer the best gaming conditions from the start, and provide all the planned movement abilities to intensify the first impression. Incidentally, the player’s ability to aim, in a shooting game, should be rewarded rather than the hours spent stupidly filling bars…

Restarting the game after having finished it, whilst keeping one’s level and equipment:

Commonly called New game Plus (Playthrough 2 and Playthrough 2.5 in Borderlands). This is an artifice used for a very long time in arcade games (Ghosts ‘n’ Goblins in 1985), shoot’em ups, and certain role-playing games (Chrono Trigger in 1995, but I doubt that was the first). I understand the appeal of restarting a game one loves, while benefiting from increased difficulty, alternative endings or additional loot, but this must be implemented with care and moderation. It’s often a feature added at the last minute, poorly balanced, and which leaves a bitter taste (Lichdom: Battlemage is an eloquent example).

By the way, an important warning for Borderlands: at the end of the second campaign (just before the final boss), the level of all enemies adapts to yours. This causes a brutal and irreversible increase in difficulty (especially if, like me, you conducted the entire adventure several levels ahead), which somewhat tarnished my appreciation of the expansions. I strongly advise you to finish them once before starting Playthrough 2.5.

Another unfortunate consequence of this enemy level scaling: the return of the “damage sponge” syndrome encountered in Hellgate. This comes from the fact that the progression curve isn’t entirely mastered by the developers, but delegated to a programme (and often thrown out of kilter with each expansion release).

Everything I’ve just stated has a name: “RPGification”. I wouldn’t have noticed it at the time, the concept was innovative and I was genuinely having fun ogling bars and comparing figures, for hours on end. My concern doesn’t come so much from the contributions of role-playing games as from the uniformisation that resulted from it. When a precursor game achieves success, it’s immediately copied, then watered down. The big studios design their games like financial products, calibrated to please the masses, elevating profitability and risk control at the expense of the spirit of innovation and artistic expression. Later, we’ll observe the same phenomenon with “crafting” (object fabrication by the player), which developers feel obliged to integrate into all their games, to do like everyone else, and because it’s expected by the public in their eyes. Conformism is a strategic choice that can be defended in the short term (after all, as long as people buy…), but is it sustainable in the long term? Tell me, how is Ubisoft faring at the moment?

If the subject interests you; imitation, risk aversion in video games, cargo cult, I warmly encourage you to watch this video.

But we’re missing one component imported from role-playing games, which I distinguish from the others, because it’s emblematic of Borderlands. One couldn’t consider this one as an add-on piece stuck on with chewing gum:

Gratification through loot:

This started from good intentions in Diablo: multiply the rewards to entertain the audience, on the model of casino games. Its incorporation into a shooting game obviously doesn’t do any harm. Today, this system is exploited primarily to increase the retention rate of players who pay a subscription. It’s at the heart of the model of most games-as-a-service (such as Destiny 1 and 2) and perfectly described in this vidéo. This is the source of the unease I mentioned earlier. Well, only part of it. The rest, I’m keeping for the page about its sequel…

For the record, another quirk that’s starting to tire me, but which I can’t reproach Borderlands for either, is the numbers that spring from enemies when you shoot them. I no longer know when this fashion began. I witnessed it for the first time in Secret of Mana (1993), and more discretely in Budokan on Amiga. It was appealing at the beginning, especially in a cartoon game like Champions Online. It gave more impact to multiple and rapid attacks. Then, it became a convention used willy-nilly (even though the option often remains deactivatable). One of my eccentricities: I’m particularly sensitive to the typeface that materialises these numbers, and I remember declining a friend’s invitation to try Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem (2020), because the typography betrayed for me a generic title.

I realise that I’ve rambled more than usual. It’s time to conclude. The “first-person shooter” and “role-playing game” mixture was refreshing, before becoming the edifying illustration of the standardisation that makes me sick today. This observation isn’t new, nor even specific to video games, but one should be attentive to it and resist. I don’t believe that the gaming industry “was better before” (or rather, that it has reached its lowest historical level, but AI is going to help it get there…). I remain, however, dismayed by the success encountered by the infinite duplication of consensual formulas, both in big productions (Far Cry 6…) and in independent games. Just to cite only the last title I bought in 2024, whose reviews were nevertheless dithyrambic, why does Last Epoch exist? It’s a shameless recycling of Path of Exile, devoid of any personality (spilling tea again! my inbox is about to catch fire).

Borderlands had four expansions, and for once, I strongly recommend all of them (including Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot which doesn’t seem to be everyone’s favourite).

A remaster was released in 2019, entitled Borderlands Game of the Year Enhanced. For non-English speakers, remaster means “con”…
Visually, there’s practically no difference (supposedly, better quality textures and improved anti-aliasing). Although note the replacement of the compass at the bottom of the screen with a mini-map, at the top right, as well as automatic collection of ammunition and money. However, the memory leak on PC, well known for years, hasn’t been corrected. And I’ve noticed a new bug: every time I select a mission, a “custom” yellow navigation point appears on my map, and I have to go and remove it. I suppose the mission interface is superimposed on that of the map.
Therefore consider this product if you don’t already own Borderlands, at its sale price (€2.99 in 2025), but absolutely not at its normal price of €29.99.

This way to Borderlands 2!

Where to buy it? Steam