I can't quite figure out Handsome Jack...

[Dreadman75]

***WARNING: SPOILERS FOR BORDERLANDS 2***READ AT OWN RISK***

I've played through Borderlands 2 quite a few times now and I have to say that Gearbox did a hell of a job with Handsome Jack. I don't think I've ever wanted a villain dead so badly before, with the possible exceptions of Kessler from Infamous or Fontaine from Bioshock.

But for all of Jack's assholery, there is one thing I haven't quite been able to pin down about his character. And that is:

Spoiler

His relationship with his daughter Angel.

All throughout the game he is portrayed as a classic sociopath, completely incapable of showing any form of compassion or empathy for anyone or anything. Then we get to the assault on Control Core Angel and learn about his little secret. He has a daughter. Not only that but his daughter is the Guardian Angerl and a Siren to boot.

Imprisoned by Jack in a special containment unit at a young age (it's assumed she killed her mother when her powers went out of control and he says as much) and pumped full of Eridium to charge the Vault Key to the point where she is unable to live without it and dies shortly after being disconnected from the vile machine.

Here's the question I have:

Spoiler

Does Handsome Jack truly care about Angel? Or does he only see her, his own daughter, as a tool to achieve even greater power?

There's credence to both theories: Handsome Jack does display what appears to be genuine panic, concern, and grief during and after Where Angels Fear to Tread. He even proclaims to avenge his daughter right before the fight with the Warrior. But I'm not so sure he truly cares.

During the mission in the Arid Nexus, where you find five ECHO recordings of Jack before and at the beginning of him being CEO of Hyperion, some of the things we hear seem to indicate that while he says the containment is for her own good, he's just using her as nothing but a tool to help him find the Vault and manipulate the first four Vault Hunters to opening it. Say what you will about him being so delusional that he actually thinks it's all for the best. (I think he's more than smart enough to know EXACTLY what the hell he was doing.) But a line has to be drawn somewhere between delusionally overprotective and complete sociopathy.

I honestly think he never truly cared at all about anyone but himself, and he merely tries to convince others of the opposite. What do you all think?

(sorry about the gratuitous use of spoilers. I just don't want to spoil anything for those who haven't played the game.)

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

I think the piece of the puzzle you are missing is Jack's delusions of being the hero in Borderlands 2. All throughout the game it is pretty obvious that he considers himself to be Pandora's savior and the vault hunters to be just another bunch of egocentric adventurers out to make a quick buck. In Jack's version of Borderlands 2 he's trying to save the planet, make a fortune while doing it and generally combine making the galaxy a better place with becoming super-rich and super-loved. To do so he's ready to go to any lengths to achieve this goal, believing the end justify the means.

So, he probably cares for Angel. But at the same time he also uses her to fuel the vault key as it is a way to keep her safe from herself (can't kill anyone by mistake if you are stuck in a machine siphoning your powers, right?) while simultaneously helping Jack achieve his plans for Pandora. It is a take on the classical abusers dilemma: No one is allowed to hit my family but me. Jack is hurting Angel because he loves her and for her own good, whereas he considers the Vault Hunters hurting her to be nothing more than evil people being malicious.

 

[Asita]

If he actually does care, that care is in a very twisted and downright abusive form, which follows somewhat from the implication that he himself was abused as a child. There's certainly some implication that he cares about his daughter on some level, seen best in the way his composure absolutely evaporates near the end of the game, he rescinds the bounty on the Vault Hunters' heads and in the same broadcast threatens anyone who dares kill them before he gets his vengeance on them, and starts taking his sadism to new levels not for enjoyment but out of apparent wrath in retribution for the Vault Hunters' actions. Ultimately, I think he's simply incapable of true empathy so while he may love his daughter he is not above doing terrible terrible things to her and doesn't understand why she wouldn't be happy about how it helps him. It's just that his idea of love is as warped as his idea of heroism, which ultimately makes both anathema.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

I think the piece of the puzzle you are missing is Jack's delusions of being the hero in Borderlands 2. All throughout the game it is pretty obvious that he considers himself to be Pandora's savior and the vault hunters to be just another bunch of egocentric adventurers out to make a quick buck. In Jack's version of Borderlands 2 he's trying to save the planet, make a fortune while doing it and generally combine making the galaxy a better place with becoming super-rich and super-loved. To do so he's ready to go to any lengths to achieve this goal, believing the end justify the means.

I actually think that was a brilliant bit of writing. There are times when the twisted things that Jack does feel exactly like some of the things that a normal player character would do in an open world game, especially when they're high level and just dicking around.

Take for example the "spoon story"

Spoiler

It sounds exactly like a player character walking into a low level bandit hideout and just slaughtering everyone, regardless of the fact that they don't pose any kind of threat to them, just because they can, and then espousing a remark along the lines of "god damn it, I hate these stupid respawning enemies, I just want to get through this area, I'm way over-leveled for all of them, they should just run away when they see me. Stupid AI." I mean hell, a while later in the same game, in the Tiny Tina DLC I used the "drunk gun" to get as many dwarves as I could to walk into traps, just for the hell of it because it was funny.

And that's really how these kinds of games usually go. What's your end goal in Skyrim? Become super rich, super powerful, get all the best weapons so that nothing can stand against you. What's your end goal in Borderlands? Same. End goal in GTA? Same. Jack is essentially the average player character as enemy NPCs would see him.

 

[Legendairy314]

Apparently Jack was supposed to be a douchebag throughout the story and the angel dialogue was changed to make him seem less as a comically insane villain. It's interesting because it gave his character an entirely new dynamic. Still, the change didn't exactly mesh well with some other parts of the story so he can be a bit condescending.

 

[Zhukov]

I actually found that plot twist to be pretty disappointing because of... reasons that I am finding difficult to explain.

It seemed clear to me that he did in fact care about his daughter. He completely freaks out when she's threatened, even goes so far as to beg, which is completely at odds with his personality in all other circumstances. (As someone else said, sticking her in the Eridium-o-matic could be justified as being for her own good.) While on the other hand he cheerfully kills other people's kids (and commits all sorts of other nastiness) without a care in the world.

Which just makes him a hypocrite.

A villain who is either utterly amoral or has a code so twisted and incomprehensible that they might as well be amoral is interesting. (Eg. The Joker.)

A villain who is merely a hypocrite is boring. It's like having a villain who is incompetent or pathetic.

I suppose you could argue that someone who can do terrible things while still possessing the necessary compassion to care about someone in particular being killed is a more horrifying villain than someone who does whatever because they are just plain sociopathic. Personally I just found it made the character seem kind of silly.

EDIT: Come to think of it, Handsome Jack didn't impress me overall anywhere near as much as he seemed to other people. He was just so obviously made to be hated. "You will hate this character. Because he is a jerk. Now he will ring you up every five minutes and say jerky things. So you will hate him." Yes, I realise the over-the-top evilness is intentional, but when a character's role in the story and the way the audience is supposed to feel toward them is spelled out that blatantly I start regarding them not as a complete character but rather as a simple plot device. He was still entertaining and all, but I was never really on board with Handsome Jack as a character.

...

Umm... hopefully something in all my rambling bullshit actually made sense.

 

[Dreadman75]

I think the piece of the puzzle you are missing is Jack's delusions of being the hero in Borderlands 2. All throughout the game it is pretty obvious that he considers himself to be Pandora's savior and the vault hunters to be just another bunch of egocentric adventurers out to make a quick buck. In Jack's version of Borderlands 2 he's trying to save the planet, make a fortune while doing it and generally combine making the galaxy a better place with becoming super-rich and super-loved. To do so he's ready to go to any lengths to achieve this goal, believing the end justify the means.

I actually think that was a brilliant bit of writing. There are times when the twisted things that Jack does feel exactly like some of the things that a normal player character would do in an open world game, especially when they're high level and just dicking around.

Take for example the "spoon story"

Spoiler

It sounds exactly like a player character walking into a low level bandit hideout and just slaughtering everyone, regardless of the fact that they don't pose any kind of threat to them, just because they can, and then espousing a remark along the lines of "god damn it, I hate these stupid respawning enemies, I just want to get through this area, I'm way over-leveled for all of them, they should just run away when they see me. Stupid AI." I mean hell, a while later in the same game, in the Tiny Tina DLC I used the "drunk gun" to get as many dwarves as I could to walk into traps, just for the hell of it because it was funny.

And that's really how these kinds of games usually go. What's your end goal in Skyrim? Become super rich, super powerful, get all the best weapons so that nothing can stand against you. What's your end goal in Borderlands? Same. End goal in GTA? Same. Jack is essentially the average player character as enemy NPCs would see him.

You know, I've never looked at it like that before. And now that I do, I can totally see the similarities between Handsome Jack and what I would most likely do in Prototype to pass time after beating the game. He represents the absolute worst people are capable of when given virtually unlimited power and resources, that is brilliant!

Was this an intentional bit of writing? Or was this something people just read into it?

 

[-Ezio-]

i always thought of it as him not really caring for her as a person but more as his property. she's his key to power and success which is the only thing he really does care about.

 

[Dreadman75]

I think the piece of the puzzle you are missing is Jack's delusions of being the hero in Borderlands 2. All throughout the game it is pretty obvious that he considers himself to be Pandora's savior and the vault hunters to be just another bunch of egocentric adventurers out to make a quick buck. In Jack's version of Borderlands 2 he's trying to save the planet, make a fortune while doing it and generally combine making the galaxy a better place with becoming super-rich and super-loved. To do so he's ready to go to any lengths to achieve this goal, believing the end justify the means.

So, he probably cares for Angel. But at the same time he also uses her to fuel the vault key as it is a way to keep her safe from herself (can't kill anyone by mistake if you are stuck in a machine siphoning your powers, right?) while simultaneously helping Jack achieve his plans for Pandora. It is a take on the classical abusers dilemma: No one is allowed to hit my family but me. Jack is hurting Angel because he loves her and for her own good, whereas he considers the Vault Hunters hurting her to be nothing more than evil people being malicious.

That...makes a lot of sense. It also kind of hurts that, in a way, Jack is right. Pandora would be a lot better off without a lot of the bandit clans roaming around killing everything in sight.

Hell, if he didn't kill innocent people he might have even been an...ally perhaps? That's a interesting thought.

 

[Diablo1099_v1legacy]

Jack is essentially the average player character as enemy NPCs would see him.

Mind. Utterly. Blown.

Everything makes sense now! Think about how you treat allies in say, a RTS game. You put them someplace, regardless of relation, to use their skill for your gain.
In MGS Peace Walker, Kaz is basically your No.2 for the whole game, but I still shove him in the kitchen (Mess Hall) because I can.

That's what he's doing to Angel!

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

You know, I've never looked at it like that before. And now that I do, I can totally see the similarities between Handsome Jack and what I would most likely do in Prototype to pass time after beating the game. He represents the absolute worst people are capable of when given virtually unlimited power and resources, that is brilliant!

Was this an intentional bit of writing? Or was this something people just read into it?

Mind. Utterly. Blown.

Everything makes sense now! Think about how you treat allies in say, a RTS game. You put them someplace, regardless of relation, to use their skill for your gain.
In MGS Peace Walker, Kaz is basically your No.2 for the whole game, but I still shove him in the kitchen (Mess Hall) because I can.

That's what he's doing to Angel!

Glad I could blow some people's minds. I've never actually talked about my interpretation of Handsome Jack before, but it's more than a little surprising to me that most people don't make this same connection. It feels pretty obvious to me, but then again, I know that people don't like to see themselves as the villain when they're playing games, so I guess a lot of people wouldn't compare their in-game actions to that of the antagonist.