During last week’s podcast I chose the Borderlands series as my “guilty pleasure” games. The series as a whole is pretty irreverent, the characters are exaggerated, and the games repeatedly present unabashedly non-serious and goofy situations. In many ways, the series reminds me of classic cheesy horror movies- bad, but in the most entertaining and enjoyable sort of a way. And, at least in the case of Borderlands, it takes a lot of talent and creativity to make something so wonderfully “bad.” Given all of this, Borderlands: The Pre-sequel was absolutely on my must play list.
The “Pre-Sequel” draws its name from the game’s setting” between the events of the first game and the second game, and even within the first few hours of gameplay, BL:PS plays quite a bit with this notion of being between two major narratives. Characters from both games pop up 
consistently, as if developers are winking at the player throughout the game. Remember this guy, or when that event happened? Certainly, some of this nodding to other games is welcome- for instance, being witness to Jack’s transformation from average worker at the start of this game to the super villain he becomes for Borderlands 2. Jack starts the second game as fairly irrationally and exaggeratedly evil; seeing him as an average Joe with a terrible boss in this game (and playing through the events knowing where his character ends up) has been quite entertaining.
At the same time, some of this reads as little more than unimportant (and generally uninteresting) fan service. At one stage you arrive in Moxxi’s bar, and are sent to ask the “other vault hunters” (i.e. the characters from the first game) for assistance. The quest consists of walking over to them, being told they’re on vacation (because the narrative has already established via previous games that they’re not involved in these events), and then walking back to continue the story proper. In this case encountering the previous characters adds nothing to either the gameplay or the narrative. Indeed, it creates one of the most basic and (in my opinion) most lazy types of quests: walk five feet over and talk to that person, then come back and talk to me again.
Mechanically, the game plays more like DLC for Borderlands 2 than as its own unique game. Combat, movement, skill trees, quest structures, UI and HUD, none of these are substantially changed. BL:PS does introduce a new resource, but ultimately it has little impact on the game. Because this Borderlands game is set on the moon, oxygen is presented as a crucial resource that you must conserve and use carefully. You can boost how much oxygen you can carry at one time through various item upgrades, and you can regenerate oxygen in combat through environmental elements or canisters of oxygen dropped by enemies. You can also expend some of your oxygen supply to boost your jumps. While this has the potential to be an interesting new twist, any sense of complexity or risk has been minimized by the over-abundance of oxygen canisters and environmental boosts. In my play through I never came close to running out of oxygen, and conversations with other players suggest that well into the second playthrough this continues to be a non-issue.
Finally, for all its apparent silliness and frivolity, it is worth noting that in this outing Borderlands gives us two strong female main characters 
(out of four), one of whom appears to be a minority character (Nisha). The series as a whole has consistently made steps toward more diversity in its characters and representations, and while one could certainly argue for more, these are great steps to see. Indeed, TheMarySue.Com recently posted a screenshot of a character (my personal favorite- Mr. Torgue) denouncing the concept of the “friend zone”. Mr. Torgue has also, in past games, been used to lampoon the “fake nerd” trope and has been given amazing dialogue like “NOTHING IS MORE BADASS THAN TREATING A WOMAN WITH RESPECT” (caps certainly original).
Overall Borderlands: Pre-Sequel doesn’t do much new, either from a narrative or mechanics perspective. However, if you enjoyed the other games in the series, you’ll find a lot to love about the Pre-Sequel. All of the things I loved, particularly about the second game, are back in spades, making this yet another guilty pleasure.
