Well, beat it beat it.
Honestly? Even with the big step down in writing and some of the bugs or UI issues, I think this is the best the Borderlands gameplay has ever been. It was just so fucking FUN to play. I had a blast the whole damn time in the combat and the improvements they made to everything surrounding it was fantastic. I honestly do not think an FPS has had better bosses. There are so few duds and so many of them were just super fun. Gun variety, the character's ability trees, a whole host of other stuff was great.
As far as the story and writing goes, I think my main feeling is frustration. There is a really good story and really good characters in there trying to get out but the writers just couldn't get there. When you reach the end and everything is sorta revealed, it was a great moment or plot point...but up until that point it didn't really earn it? Like, I might just write up a huge post or essay about what the game did to miss the mark with what it was trying to do. Because there were so many things they just didn't go hard enough into or leaned on enough to make the moments of character as impactful as they could have been. The Calypsos as streamers could have dovetailed so beautifully with their backstory and the idea of family, showing how they get people to love them so much they would die for them, making commentary on how die-hard people in parasocial relationships with entertainers are, making the Calypsos almost vindictive in their treatment of the Children of the Vault.
God. I wish I could like...fucking take the whole game and just workshop it and rewrite it and re-release it. Tyreen and Troy showed moments of what they could have been, some parts where greatness could be found, but the writers either tried too hard to make Tyreen a Jack 2 without letting the parts of her identity that naturally came forward at the end happen or didn't commit enough to the gimmick of either streamer or cult leader. They didn't commit fully to the streamer aspects, so they felt shallow and the jokes weren't as strong.
I will say that from Eden 6 on I think the game feels like it's written by different writers. I thought it was much better from that point on, but that the good parts didn't hit hard because everything up til then hadn't been earned with good set up.
Still. I still like the Calypsos even if I'm disappointed they were not allowed to be better characters. I love that somehow, in some way, Borderlands still remains one of the most progressive video games as far as representation is concerned. I love it even if the Vault Hunter being a non-entity hurts a lot of the game because of contrived circumstances only happening to move plot forward and not naturally or taking into consideration that I am literally standing right there. I kill every boss and yet somehow they can't even animate my character getting kicked off a building or stuck in a Vault to explain why I did nothing when certain events happen.
But also the music slaps.