Borderlands 1 as a self-parody

Recently, I've found myself playing the original Borderlands, just because I happened to own the entire series due to it being very cheap on a sale a while back, and I just kinda wanted to play a game I felt I wouldn't have to put much thought into, something I wouldn't really have to think too much about when playing, if not just so I can have something to fill the time after I'm too tired from work to really focus on anything. I wasn't really expecting to think very highly of it, in part because the bad humour I've heard about this franchise for years sounded quite annoying. I wasn't expecting much gameplay-wise either, while I've enjoyed some of Gearboxes' earlier shooters, primarily the Half-Life expansions Opposing Force and Blue Shift, I didn't really know much about the game other than it's a kinda generic-looking "open world" FPS with the gimmick of collecting loads of loot, and some RPG mechanics tied to this such as levelling and skill trees. While I'd say that, overall I was somewhat right in my assumption, I ended up having a lot more thoughts on it than I thought I would. So many thoughts that I ended up creating a website to write an article about it (and anything else I'll want to write about in the future.) The game's not entirely what I expected it to be, something I'll cover later, and while I wouldn't call Borderlands 1 "good", I'd certainly describe it as "interesting", especially when viewed through a very specific lens, which I'll present throughout this article.

The main viewpoint I'll be exploring is the idea of Borderlands 1 as a self-parody. I want to make it clear that I'm not suggesting this is what Borderlands 1 is really intended to be, it's pretty undeniable it isn't, the game's spawned 3 more mainline games, with a fourth to come soon, and 3 spinoffs. Borderlands 1 clearly is not intended to be a parody of itself, it's not meant to be some meta-critique of itself and similar triple A titles, otherwise Gearbox would not have jumped on the chance to make the game into a franchise. However, even if unintentionally, I still think that Borderlands 1 is so bad in some aspects, but overall very "interesting" that it can be viewed through this kinda hyper specific lens, and somehow "work." in isolation. I'm not expecting anyone to be convinced of this view by the end of the article, as I don't really view the game only though this lens myself, but I think it's a perspective worth presenting, at least for the critique the game creates as a result of this lens.

what is Borderlands?

When you first boot up Borderlands you're met with this title screen. The well-known Claptrap lies down in a deactivated state, and activates once you press Enter and he gets up, to be just a little obnoxious in the background as you look through settings or the different play options (singleplayer, multiplayer, LAN game etc.) I think the first positive thing I can say about the game is that I generally like its art style, the thick outlines and hand-drawn textures are very appealing to me, it's not everyone's cup of tea, but it's certainly mine, and I'm rather fond of it. I think the title screen somewhat sets the tone for what this game is really like. Knowing what I did about the Borderlands series, I expected it to be a very loud, in-your-face style of triple A game, with a very handhold-y linear story and obnoxious humour that doesn't want to leave you alone. However, this title screen, very notably, is very grey. It's kind of sad, desaturated, abandoned. A strong sense of overwhelming loneliness, with only one present character. He's not obnoxious enough to be downright terrible, but he isn't funny or interesting enough to be likeable either. I think this is an interesting microcosm for what the game is like as a whole, far from what I really expected. It's a very lonely, desolate game with few characters and little humour, all obnoxious when it's there, but not there enough to be "in-your-face" as I'd expected it to be. Perhaps this is because the most popular game in the series is Borderlands 2, which kinda ditches this game's lonely vibe, in favour of more prominent characters and much more of the game's crude humour, at least from what I've seen of it, as I haven't played it at this current time.

The game itself is an FPS that has some RPG elements to it; it's an FPS first and an "RPG" second. The main unique aspect to it as an FPS is the ridiculous amount of loot and alternative weapons you can find throughout the game, while the variety isn't actually loads of "unique" weapons, a lot of them can re-appear with a lot of different buffs and debuffs, one shotgun may have increased damage and decreased fire rate, and the next one of the same type you find may have more bullets shot at once but a slower reload time. There's more buffs of course, but the majority of them are loosely based around these kinda simple stat changes. There's another layer to this to the uniqueness of weapons, as some can have an elemental effect tied to it, being corrosive, shock, explosive, and fire. This adds some more depth to the system as some elements are better at dealing with certain enemies, although generally I found that a weapon with significantly higher raw damage is almost always preferable to a weapon with okay damage and some special elemental effect, so I'd argue the system is a fun addition when you get a fancy new weapon with a cool elemental effect as a little bonus, but generally it's rarely preferable to a weapon that just deals a lot of damage. The game also has a levelling system, and this is fixed across enemies, so they don't really scale with you (until you get to the New Game++ mode "Playthrough 2.5" but that's understandable due to how high your level would be at this point) and are instead fixed at certain areas. I personally really like this, as it does make some areas late game and makes exploring and doing side quests more rewarding as you can soon feel stronger than enemies in the current area, instead of not making any real progress as enemies are always as strong as you. You can be stronger than them, and they can be stronger than you. You can also acquire skill points as you level up which you can use to gain buffs and unique abilities off a skill tree. There's four unique classes each with their own skills and special abilities (and each class is also a unique character but this only changes the grunts you make) so there's some variety in builds and how one could go about playing the game, but once again it's not very well-developed. I'd argue these are the only real implementations of "RPG" elements to the game, the "role-playing" factor barely exists due to the focus on the FPS-like gameplay and lack of much choice throughout it, and also generally poor narrative and character-writing, it's more of an FPS with some RPG game mechanics appropriated to it, than a real blend of the two genres. Overall I'd say the gameplay is pretty "okay," there's some depth to the loot system to have it require some thought when playing the game, but not enough to make it that great a system. Otherwise the game's maps are generally well-designed, despite mostly linear shooting segments, there's a lot of variety with paths you can take, Gearbox of course at this point had some experience designing FPS levels so this is somewhat to be expected.

This is only the foundation of what Borderlands really is, what really makes Borderlands notable is probably its style and sense of humour. As I've mentioned before the game has a very distinctive art style, and is very integral to the franchises' identity. I think a lot of people also know Borderlands for having a very poor, crude sense of humour. This game isn't very in-your-face with it, as Borderlands 2 might be from what I hear about it, and the humour is generally a bit more in the background. It's only present enough so that after a particularly well-designed section of combat, you see some crude environmental prop that reminds you that you are in fact, playing Borderlands and not a good game.

The disappointed sigh I let out after a pretty well designed fight through some caves, just to be reminded the boss I was here to kill is a little person called "King Wee Wee" was, a very big, dejected sigh.

I think this one's pretty funny actually

Overall the humour's not very good in my opinion, but mostly pretty harmless. Mostly. It ranges from some cruder, yet not that bad, stuff like the default max level being 69, to some humour that is kinda just a little offensive and cruel (feel free to skip the parentheses due to its coverage of the distasteful content it covers, but as some examples the game has an entire sub-type of enemy called "midgets" and one of, if not the only, enemy of colour is just one of the white enemies but set on fire. Perhaps if this weren't the only dark skinned enemy, the only other dark skinned character at all being one of the playable ones, this could just be written off as another edgy joke but considering it's the only enemy it comes off as a bit too edgy, even for the time, while perhaps the former is just a product of its time and a crude joke with Borderlands' edgy irony, I think the latter is pretty bad, even with the excuse of trying to use edgy ironic humour.) On the plus side, I'd argue it is very subdued in this game, but it is still undeniably part of what Borderlands is kind of known for, alongside its "looter shooter" gameplay.

So, it appears that Borderlands is just a generic FPS with some light RPG elements, a few mechanics that are good ideas - although not necessarily well implemented - and some kinda crude humour with a decent art style. There's not much to really talk about here, so what do I feel makes it so interesting? What was it about this game that motivated me to start this website in the first place, just because I had so many thoughts about it, that I simply needed to write them out somewhere? While I lightly touched upon the game's artistic presentation, I think the answer lies in how the game generally presents itself, from the art direction, to how it presents its "story", its characters, the atmosphere it creates, how combat is presented, how quests are presented and on and on, the way the game presents its story and general everything to the player, is what makes it such an interesting game. Not to say it's presented well, hell, I'd argue some of it is presented so poorly, yet it's so interesting, that it's what makes the game feel like it could work as a self-parody, and why I think this a viewpoint about the game that's worth discussing, especially with the conclusions about what analysing the game as a self-parody can be drawn from it.

Presentation and parody

I think one of the key aspects to Borderlands' presentation is its story, which barely exists in the first place, but is then so poorly communicated and handled that it really does loop around to being interesting enough that it can work as some bizarre meta-commentary. At its core, the story is quite simple, you play as a vault hunter who comes to the planet of Pandora in search of "the vault" which is rumoured to harbour unimaginable riches. This is barely explained in the game's opening cutscene, where a character called Marcus kind of sets up the story, and then proceeds to barely exist as a character beyond this. It's also not really made clear that you're character's even travelled to this planet, as they just arrive in a bus to an empty town, where they're immediately wirelessly contacted by some freaky ghost lady who's never given any development or justification throughout the course of this game (she'll be explained in the second game though, but in isolation she's a pretty nothing character.) She exists just to motivate the player to actually perform the main quest, but even then its a real struggle to understand the player character's motivations for anything other than being commanded to by some ghost lady; there's no actual justification for why you'd want to hunt the vault in the story, you just turn up to the desolate town of Fyrestone and are immediately told to just go do the main quest because that's what you should do.

just met and already asking me to save Claptrap, a fate worse than death

Furthermore the opening town of Fyrestone only has two NPCs in it, Claptrap and Dr Zed, and it fails to create any real vibe that this is an actual town with people in it (Zed will go on to relocate later on anyway making it feel like even less of a town.) He's somewhat of an important character being the guy who sells you meds, but that's only through vending machines, and all your weapons and such are bought from vending machines too, so there's not much character there either. Hell, Zed barely even talks to you despite being the primary quest-giver at the start of the game, dropping a few lines of dialogue here and there and otherwise giving you quests entirely through a little text box when you talk to him, which provides a small amount of context to why you'd want to do any quest.

This stays the same throughout the game, whether its a main or side quest, they're all given out through little textboxes and characters barely speak to you, rarely one will randomly call you and provide almost nothing of worth, just saying a few lines that loosely relate to the situation, but don't really drive the story further. Some of the NPCs aren't even voiced characters, just default models with no lines (somewhat excusable for a few of the NPCs but the guy who leads you to the first major boss is one of these default NPCs and it's just a bit upsetting considering he seems to be a bit more important than he's really treated as.) Quests often being just moving from point A to B, with some combat in between, no quest ever really feels unique or meaningful, especially as you're just given so little story and context for any of them, it often feels like you're only motivation for doing anything is simply that a quest marker told you to. The game's story is so bland and poorly communicated that the game feels like everything you do you just do because you're told to, the main quest happens because a random undeveloped character tells you to, and everything else happens because more random undeveloped characters mark a spot on your map for you to go to.

It's this aimlessness to the story and quests that really start to cement the feeling of this game as a self-parody. When the story is literally just moving from quest marker to quest marker, it really starts to feel like it's some commentary on the poor writing of triple A titles that has permeated the medium in recent years. There's nothing interesting being said, if anything is being said at all, and the world does not feel alive, it feels like it's just a collection of gameplay segments sewn together with no justification between them except the bare minimum. This begins somewhat of a parody, of itself and some other triple A titles in general, it calls itself an "RPG" but there is no real story or characterisation that allows you satisfy the feeling of "role-playing", it's gameplay section after gameplay section with nothing to make any of it feel impactful through its poorly written story. Perhaps at the time this may not have worked as that great of a commentary, but at least in the modern era of triple A gaming it seems to begin to work, as many triple A games continue to fail or be looked down upon due to lack of good writing, and lazily made gameplay, especially with "open world" games such as Borderlands typically featuring a multitude of repetitive content from aimless side quests to pointless collectables with little well-written justification or care put into any of them. Not the case for every triple A title in recent years of course, but it does reflect a growing sentiment and critique of many triple A titles that have been released recently, and Borderlands 1 takes this lack of story to justify repetitive content to an extreme degree. Inr reality, of course this just means that Borderlands 1 is just a poorly written game with little to justify its action, but it's taken to such an extreme, that it begins to feel like parody, even if it's an unintentional result of the game's writing being lazy and uninteresting.

I think the poor presentation of the story is the main point that really backs this argument, and anything else in how the story is presented just kind of confounds the general "vibe" of the game not feeling quite right. As mentioned before, the game has a desolate atmosphere and very few characters. It's a really lonely game, the colour scheme mostly sporting various shades of grey, and any other colour is significantly desaturated. This generally desolate atmosphere does add to the extremity of the game's presentation and thus the view of it as a parody, it's such an empty world that it really is just a selection of gameplay sections connecting to other gameplay sections, there's nothing to do but walk from one camp of enemies with annoying voice lines to the next camp, to grind those levels and grind out that loot. There's some elements of environmental storytelling, some quite good even, but it's rare and only localised to specific sections. It could be argued that at their core most "open world" triple A titles are essentially the same, but with an actual story and writing to justify all of it, and due to how poor the writing is in Borderlands 1 it's very noticable, and the atmosphere exacerbates the issue is, as its loneliness and desloateness draws so much attention to the lack of story and writing.

Overall I really like how this game looks. I think the atmosphere it creates is really good and well done. And of course, this really does draw attention to the poor writing.

Another thing that really adds to this lonely atmosphere is how nonchalant combat feels. I've already covered how the combat plays, but how the combat feels is really different. Animations are stiff so there's little feedback to how enemies react to being shot (which adds to a general feeling of laziness with making sure the finer details feel "right" which perhaps adds to hte commentary we can draw from the this perspective.) Furthermore, no combat encounter feels "special," every combat encounter just kinda starts, and ends. There's no fanfare when it ends, not even for most bosses, and while there is a soundtrack that ramps up in intensity during combat, once it's over it immediately goes back to ambient guitar stings as if nothing of importance just happened. This isn't just in the overworld, but also in story sections like the all linear combat zone(s) that are the precursor to one of the main bosses. Even upon defeating a boss and collecting part of the vault key (which should mark an important part in the progression of the main story) there is still no fanfare, no congratulations except maybe the sarcastic response of a few characters, that suddenly call you with little context as to who they are or why they're even calling you usually. This really intensifies the desolate atmosphere and general hopelessness of the world, making it really feel that anything, a tough boss, a challenging swarm of enemies, isn't anything special. It's rare to feel like you've accomplished anything, especially when a lot of the rewards are worse than some random drop you got off an enemy 3 camps ago. Through the lens of parody, this definitely contributes to the aforementioned commentary by further intensifying the atmosphere, but could also generally add some points on top of it about the meaningfulness of a lot of work in Borderlands-esque games, often having you perform repetitive tasks for very little reward, often making them feel quite meaningless. Another game may have a better story reason to do any of this, which may be enough to make it feel meaningful, but it certainly doesn't help in some triple A "Open World RPG" type games where repetition of similar tasks gives a reward that's very hard to care about, just once again taken to the extreme as you claim your seventh revolver with sub-par damage for a level 25 quest that you'll sell almost immediately.

It's the blend of all these aspects that really sell the idea of "Borderlands 1 as a self parody." While it is mainly the lack of good story or characters and aimlessness to the world that act as a key contributor to the meta-commentary that could be derived from viewing the game as self-parody, the lonely atmosphere adds to this issue and brings more attention to it to an extreme degree, and the general feeling of meaninglessness to the combat and rewards for side quests/exploration certainly add to the game feeling like it works through this lens. As a self-parody, Borderlands provides some meta-commentary on the lack of quality in "Open World" Triple A games as of recent, some notable examples I've heard being criticised for these reasons being the later games of the Assassin's Creed and Far Cry franchises. It also generally provides further critique with the laziness of some aspects, like the stiff animations, present in some newer bigger budget games, a notable example that comes to mind being the infamously bad Back4Blood criticised for its lack of any detail and care put into the world. There's definitely more examples, it's not hard to find people criticising a multitude of triple A games for a variety of reasons that are a product of laziness as of late, but generally the consensus seems to be that a lot of them have little care and love put into them, and Borderlands 1 takes some of those aspects to such an extreme, that it can be seen as being a genuinely good parody of all these recent popular criticisms.

Closing thoughts

Of course, I can't really in good faith entertain the idea that this is what the game was going for. A lot of the meta-commentary drawn from this perspective is mostly applicable to a more modern era of triple A gaming, something a game from 2009 obviously couldn't be attempting to criticise. Furthermore, Gearbox went on to make Borderlands their flagship franchise, it's clear that Borderlands 1 was just a rough start to a series that showed some signs of potential, and this perspective isn't what they were going for. I personally feel this doesn't really matter, as we can still view the game through this lens and interpret some commentary from it, and if nothing else, I just think it's fun to explore art through multiple different lenses, even if one lens is definitely more unconventional. It's just interesting in general to share perspectives and see what commentary we can draw from viewing art through these different lenses.

As for my thoughts on the game outside of this lens, I think it's okay. I wouldn't call it good, as I've mentioned some aspects of it are just kinda bad, and the gameplay isn't devoid of any joy, but it definitely lacks enough depth to really be all that gripping, and generally begins to feel like a repetitive slog. I wouldn't recommend anyone really try to play the game, outside of viewing it through a unique perspective like this there's just not much there, and if anyone really wants to play a Borderlands game, unless you got this in some super cheap bundle with the rest, just play 2 onwards (but personally I'd argue no one should subject themself to any accursed creation with Pitchford's name attached to it.) Despite this, I can't say I wholly hate Borderlands 1, if not just because I still believe it's a very "interesting" game. There's a lot of aspects I really dislike about the game, like the humour and the way that you often get stuck with the same weapons for a while because you're just not getting anything better despite technically progressing, etc. etc. I do think there are moments of genuine "goodness" in the game, some of the environmental storytelling is pretty good, and the level design is generally quite good, but it's too few and far between for me to really say I like the game, or that it's worth playing. I'll leave you with a screenshot of the death of T.K. Baha, a minor character with no real plot relevance dead in a brief moment of a genuinely good visual, but that potential is squandered by the fact it's the death of a character who barely existed, had no impact while he was alive, and his death still has no impact as the characters barely even respond to his death. At the end of the day, borderlands 1 is still Borderlands 1, a poorly written hame with poorly written characters that have little to no impact on anything in the story, and add almost nothing when they do briefly appear to say a few lines of dialogue. Thanks for reading, and I hope you stick around for the next one.