Did the Borderlands series receive any controversy over its depiction of 'little people'

[Ronald Nand]

I've been playing Borderlands 2 and I don't like its portrayal of short people (I don't like the term 'little people, it feels patronizing, so I'm using the term short people).

I've only started but the only short people in the game a maniacs whom rush the player, it feels dehumanizing taking a whole group and portraying them as psychopaths. Its not that a few enemies were short people so I feel offended, but these enemies are very common, they are usually always two or more of them with every bandit counter I've faced. I think the portrayal of an enemy becomes an issue when a minority group is a common enemy type, how you portray that enemy portrays that minority as a result.

Another small thing was that I got a quest to kill a 'midget riding a bullymong' the word isn't used all the time but it felt like it was in an insulting manner.

I know that these enemies were common in the first game and I didn't keep up with news about Borderlands when it came out, so maybe this controversy is old.

Am I just being overly sensitive and politically correct here, or have other people raised this issue too?

 

[Mezahmay]

I don't recall any controversy over the midget-class enemies in either Borderlands title. Perhaps I wasn't paying a lot of attention, perhaps you are being a little too PC. Who am I to say? All I can say is that in-game they're functionally the same as the normally proportioned psychos but they have a smaller hit box and squeakier dialogue. They provide a difference in scale even if they don't actually provide much difference in kind and in a game franchise built around "kill shit, get loot" a little enemy variety is rarely a bad thing.

 

[Zhukov]

I've never seen it brought up.

I was kind of expecting someone to say something about it, but yours is the first such post I've seen anywhere.

As for the actual topic, eh, all I have to say is that I found it a bit odd that the writers of the game who actively care about inclusiveness and all that jazz consider midgets to be fair game. I guess everyone has a blind spot.

 

[Diablo2000]

Not really, Borderlands is not trying to be offensive, it does what does for comedy...

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I've only started but the only short people in the game a maniacs whom rush the player, it feels dehumanizing taking a whole group and portraying them as psychopaths.

I don't know if you noticed but everybody is a psychopath in Borderlands.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

Not really, Borderlands is not trying to be offensive, it does what does for comedy...

I would say that in many cases it is trying to be offensive for the purpose of comedy. No matter if it is Mad Moxxi's over the top sexuality, midget enemies, riffing on Academia's obsession with fancy words, an antagonist that uses homophobic insults or the repeated insinuations of sexual violence from bandits, they are all seeking refuge in audacity. Not to mention the fact that the game has no quarrel with the fact that the protagonists are all psychopaths intent on joy-murdering their way into fame and fortune.

The Borderlands series is probably one of those series against which I think accusations of racism, sexism, ableism or any other form of discrimination or shitty portrayal are pretty unwarranted. Simply because Borderlands always seems to know what it is doing in its attempts to create humor either by seeking refuge in audacity or by crossing the line twice.

 

[squid5580]

Hey Salvador is a "short person". And claptrap is a "short robot". So they were represented fairly.

 

[Kopikatsu]

Hey Salvador is a "short person". And claptrap is a "short robot". So they were represented fairly.

Salvador is also a psychopath. Look at his wanted poster. They had to like, staple three other posters onto it to list all of his crimes. Anyway...

Like Johnny said, EVERYBODY in Borderlands is psychotic. That's sort of the point of Borderlands.

 

[Prime_Hunter_H01]

Well its also fair game if the potentially offended party is ok with it.

Spoiler

Though maybe it only defends the 4th dlc pack.

(2:55 for the relevant portion, I know it can be done but I don't know how to time-stamp an embedded video)

 

[briankoontz]

Large enemies use guns, mostly, while small enemies more often blow themselves up or suicide attack, and the "heroes" use amazing powers.

The implication here is that everyone is weaponized to the extent they can be. Small enemies don't have the proper physique to effective wield impressive guns, so they use their own bodies as weapons. Special people are special precisely due to their skills related to killing, with the exception of the villains who are much more well-rounded characters (Handsome Jack and the coerced Angel).

There's nearly nothing anyone is ever shown to do in the game besides killing or being killed. Handsome Jack is the star of the game, with a rich set of off-screen behavior, and Angel has a character arc of sorts. None of this is part of the main game, which is a murder-fest.

It's interesting that the "special" heroes in any game rarely, if ever, team up with "normal" people. Wizards don't hang with muggles. The protagonist of Borderlands and the sequel is a one-man killing machine, ala Commando, killing a whole lot of muggles before finally facing off against the enemy Wizard at the end.

Some poor open-hearted sap runs up to Link and asks if he can help save the world. Link looks at him like he's some kind of dumbass, says "Do you have a Reload Function like I do?", "Are you a stand-in for the player's ego and identity like I am?", "Are you the center of the designer's game, designed to be victorious like I am?" and finally coldly turns away - "Get lost, kid. I'm the rockstar here".

 

[brtt150]

There is so much that is potentially offensive in Borderlands they may as well just call it a day. I'm all for dropping the term midget but there is plenty of other things that could get changed.

 

[hermes]

Well its also fair game if the potentially offended party is ok with it.

Spoiler

Though maybe it only defends the 4th dlc pack.

(2:55 for the relevant portion, I know it can be done but I don't know how to time-stamp an embedded video)

Yeah... I came here to point out the same part of the script. It is likely that they included it in response for some controversy...

 

[omega 616]

Surprisingly no, it is very common to hear "midget" being an insult to people with any form of dwarfism but the only controversial thing I can remember coming up was "is tiny Tina racist?", due to how she speaks being described as "ghetto".

When I first saw "midget" I was surprised they used the word but nothing ever got reported about it. I guess it's like south park, they have poked fun at just about every disability and I don't hear a lot of "did south park go too far this time?" (though, it's not like I keep up to date about what controversial thing happened)

 

[Sizzle Montyjing]

They've been using the term for a while now, it's a bit late to start getting upset about that particular part of the Borderlands series. I've never payed much mind to it, but they don't treat anybody much better, if not worse.
I wouldn't get upset over it, no malicious intent. But hey, at least you've got more of a case than that 'Tiny Tina is raaaaacist' crowd. [Composed of those with a white guilt level topping the scale.]

 

[MerlinCross]

There's also the rare 'Mini Goliaths' which function just like normal ones but scaled down in size. And Weapons. I think they use pistols and maybe SMGs/Shotguns as opposed to their assault rifle brothers and minigun cousins.

 

[AT God]

I must admit that I did find that interesting that no uproar occurred over the midget enemies. I always felt it was odd that a major game used that term so much. However I gave up caring about Borderlands being politically correct when I saw people thought Tiny Tina was racist. After that hilarious debacle, the next game could feature the sound track from Song of the South and I wouldn't care. Really hope it doesn't though.

 

[Dr. Thrax]

Pandora is a lawless world where about 95% of the population is insane and basically living in poverty.
Everything on the planet is trying to kill you, whether it's any of the native fauna, or the flora that explode violently, or just simply an incredibly dangerous environment.
The only people you really encounter in the game are people in towns, bandits, and soldiers from one of the large gun manufacturers.

Bandits are either people who turned to banditry to survive, criminals brought in as cheap labor who were subsequently abandoned when their corporation pulled out of Pandora, and some people are just assholes.

These midgets were originally regular proportioned people, like you and I, but a discovery at Headstone Mine had caused the convict workers to undergo mutations, growing into huge, muscular parodies of humanity, or stunted to dwarf proportions. The diminutive crazies came to be collectively known as "midgets".
With exception to the Shotgun Midgets, all of them are essentially small Psychos, they also have been driven to the same kind of crazy as the regular Psychos have, being utterly obsessed with the Vault.

So these aren't just people who were born with dwarfism, they were mutated by something that caused them to lose all semblance of sanity, and their stature.

 

[Master_of_Oldskool]

It seemed to me that the dwarf enemies in Borderlands started out as a pretty straightforward reference to Beyond Thunderdome's Master/Blaster that got copy-pasted for padding. It fits with the setting, the masks are basically the same, and if I recall correctly the first midget enemy in the original was riding a brute-type enemy. So I'd guess it was born of laziness rather than actual hate, which is better, if only marginally.

Incidentally, why is most of the criticism on this thread less "They generalized a broad group as squeaky lunatics" and more "They used the word 'midget'"? I've met people with dwarfism who self-identify as midgets. No inherently bad words, guys, there's just what individuals are and aren't comfortable with. If Gearbox feels that their audience would be more comfortable if the enemies weren't called midgets, fair enough, but let's not act as though that bit was a no-brainer.