Let's talk Borderlands and female characters

[Tsun Tzu]

I actually really like Borderlands' personality and characters. Absolutely none of them feel token or shoe-horned in to meet some diversity quota or other such nonsense.

The only problem I have is that the gameplay does absolutely nothing to get you involved with them. It's just a whole lot of grind and psychos with quirky narration held up by the occasional cutscene/stylized character introduction scene/or the rare Echo. All in all, it's shallow as hell.

I would like to see Gearbox take on a more story oriented title like, say, Mass Effect. They'd probably do a pretty damned good job of it on the strength of their writing alone.

 

[joest01]

I actually really like Borderlands' personality and characters. Absolutely none of them feel token or shoe-horned in to meet some diversity quota or other such nonsense.

The only problem I have is that the gameplay does absolutely nothing to get you involved with them. It's just a whole lot of grind and psychos with quirky narration held up by the occasional cutscene/stylized character introduction scene/or the rare Echo. All in all, it's shallow as hell.

I would like to see Gearbox take on a more story oriented title like, say, Mass Effect. They'd probably do a pretty damned good job of it on the strength of their writing alone.

WUT?
There is math involved in BL to rival Disgaea. You can easily invest hundreds of hours just playing with different builds of one character. As for me I get a lot closer to a character by actually playing them then by scripted dialogue and cutscenes. But your mileage may of course vary.

 

[The Lunatic]

Right. Because we all have to be politically correct about everything ever all the time for as long as the universe exists. Why the fuck do people give a shit about this? It's a fun game with a weird and often crude sense of humor. That's it.

I'm not saying you shouldn't enjoy them.

I'm saying you shouldn't see a game where the vast majority of enemies are male and say "This game has a good representation of genders".

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

I'm saying you shouldn't see a game where the vast majority of enemies are male and say "This game has a good representation of genders".

Why would anyone even think about gender representation when they play Borderlands?

 

[snekadid]

Right. Because we all have to be politically correct about everything ever all the time for as long as the universe exists. Why the fuck do people give a shit about this? It's a fun game with a weird and often crude sense of humor. That's it.

I'm not saying you shouldn't enjoy them.

I'm saying you shouldn't see a game where the vast majority of enemies are male and say "This game has a good representation of genders".

Except that it does. Your problem is that you are confusing the meaning of character. A character has a personality/history/defining traits to separate it. Fodder enemies aren't characters, they are skins thrown on a throw away model.They began when you entered the area and they cease to exist once you either kill them or leave the area. Giving value to their gender is like giving value to the number of enemies with goggles, it doesn't matter. No one remembers them as an individual.

Of the enemies that are characters, there's several that are female, a decent representation I'd say, especially if you consider that many bosses are actually monsters and not gendered.

 

[Shamanic Rhythm]

It WAS sort of supposed to be space-australia. I don't know how many non-caucasian looking people there are in australia, but I'm assuming quite a lot of the population is from SEA..... Yeah.

Most regional towns are populated entirely by Caucasians and some Indigenous Australians. The cities are completely different, very heavy concentrations of Southern European, Middle Eastern, South-East Asian and West Asian communities. Sydney has whole areas with a distinctive ethnicity to them, eg: Cabramatta is distinctly Vietnamese, Canterbury is distinctly Lebanese, Parramatta is distinctly Indian, Wareenga/Five Dock is distinctly Italian.

Borderlands just pushes everything to extremes. I wouldn't describe its female characters as being superior to other games by virtue of design, but considering that everything it touches upon is considered a fair target of ridicule it has a kind of perverse egalitarianism to it.

I think this is actually the difference between...saaaay saints row/borderlands and GTA

GTA might be defended on the grounds of "everythings up for ridicule!" but the game is still lopsided when ti comes to female representation

at least women in Saints row/Borderlands do shit

Yes, I would agree. The women in GTA are used as background decoration or plot motivators, not so much as people who actually get shit done. There are some exceptions, but by and large when you look at the two games the women stand out more in GTA for not being involved while the women in Saints Row/Borderlands are usually in the thick of it.

 

[Rayce Archer]

So this is really unrelated, but isn't it weird how everyone in Pre-Sequel is censored except the player? Torgue gets a pass, because his shareholders made him get that operation, but it's weird how Nisha can run around yelling "*****" and "asshole" at enemies, but all the NPCs get bleeped for less.

 

[Tsun Tzu]

WUT?
There is math involved in BL to rival Disgaea. You can easily invest hundreds of hours just playing with different builds of one character. As for me I get a lot closer to a character by actually playing them then by scripted dialogue and cutscenes. But your mileage may of course vary.

As an old school Diablo player, I get that there's a good deal of math going on under the hood and that there's a great amount of replayability to be had through different builds...

But! My point was that it was a shallow experience on the whole. You shoot things. You try different builds. You shoot more things.

The narrative, while quirky and fun, exists only to drive the shooty bang bang action element and, unfortunately, doesn't give much in the way of player -> character interaction outside of quests and the cutscenes/echos.

The player has to actively search for lore and character interactions, or make their own.

Not that I'm knocking what's there.

What's there is god damned awesome.

Gaige and Tina are fuckin' bosses.

 

[joest01]

As an old school Diablo player, I get that there's a good deal of math going on under the hood and that there's a great amount of replayability to be had through different builds...

But! My point was that it was a shallow experience on the whole. You shoot things. You try different builds. You shoot more things.

The narrative, while quirky and fun, exists only to drive the shooty bang bang action element and, unfortunately, doesn't give much in the way of player -> character interaction outside of quests and the cutscenes/echos.

The player has to actively search for lore and character interactions, or make their own.

Not that I'm knocking what's there.

What's there is god damned awesome.

Gaige and Tina are fuckin' bosses.

I guess we'll agree to disagree. I don't just shoot things in BL. With maya you decide who to phaselock and whether to keep them alive to use bonuses on other enemies. With Zer0 you throw a shock grenade to get rid of shield, turn invisible, stab them in the back, shoot the next enemy once to put a death mark on them, then run up and melee them.

And those are examples for very specific builds of only two classes. You have kill skills, skills active only while special skills are active, passive buffs etc. And gear to support it all. And to properly use it you really need to adapt your playstyle.

Bahroo did a solo run of Digistruct [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NMONfzkpQw#t=13] with no legendary gear . You can see a lot of siren strategies at play there.

 

[Brian Hull]

I find the Australian accents fantastic, and their voice actors are top notch. So is Jack, and Claptrap. Athena's voice acting is horrid but most of them are quite good. And despite that I love my Athena; it's taken me until level 54 to figure out melee but it is win (add freezy gun for A+++)

As far as diversity goes, TPS has so much diversity that it ends up having none; it simply inverts the tropes found in other games- which as it turns out is not a good formula. LGBT can certainly be treated with dignity and humanity, and equality in a game, they have my vote, BUT... in TPS you will notice the following:

- EVERY person who brings up his or her own sexuality is gay or bisexual. Heteros don't talk about it, unless it's brought up as a lesson warning us away from hetero men (Moxxi's exes, the creepy husband, Deadlift, Jack)
- EVERY human enemy is a white male, with the exception of Zarpedon, who is more masculine than any of them.
- EVERY time a character who is male and not outed as gay or bi he is either a blithering idiot, a predator, or a crying helpless baby.
- EVERY female character in the game secretly has a heart of gold and is beyond reproach.

If you're a guy who likes girls you've got a very short lifespan on Elpis. If you're a guy who's into guys your odds improve but there's still danger, and if you're a girl who has no interest in men the sky is the limit and everything that you do is perfect.

Gearbox- LGBT people are not perfect. They are not archangels, and white men are not necessarily demonic predators. If you want to demonstrate true diversity stop hitting us in the face with a sledge hammer about it, we don't need to hear about everyone on Elpis's same sex ex. Or exes in general! Sexuality doesn't need to be on the front page, especially when it's this transparent.


For the DLC i hope they use a lighter touch. And if they want real diversity let's have some non-white people and unsympathetic female characters. The game is funny, but the world couldn't be more hollow; it doesn't ring true in any sense.

Thank god we're just here to shoot stuff.

 

[Adultratedhydra]

Never heard of borderlands, all i've heard of is Bordermemes: the memening of the forced memes of meme lel so funyn such meme omg isnt claptrap so funneh.

OT: Considering every single character in the series is crazier than a shark with a can opener and they all have moral compasses about as well set as broken compasses then yes it could be argued that the characters are good in the merit that they are all equally complete psychopaths who cant function in real society.

 

[Brian Hull]

Women are strong wise and ultra powerful on Elpis, yet they still require special treatment. Even Zarpedon's crew is 100% male, so females can be generals but not soldiers? Even their own lore doesn't make sense. SJW + chivalry lol...

Anyway once you get past the misandrist heterophobia it's still a great game.

 

[dohnut king]

I don't think it's a matter of making good female characters, just good characters period. They know how to write characters that are entertaining and interesting and it has nothing to do with their gender.

This. Even their robots are more interesting and have better lines than the characters in most games.

 

[Prince of Ales]

- EVERY human enemy is a white male, with the exception of Zarpedon, who is more masculine than any of them.

Are you serious? You're basically saying "all the enemies are men, except those who aren't". You're also specifying human antagonists, which discludes Felicity. If you mean only story-worthy antagonists then there's only one the entire game, and that's Zarpedon.

For other bad-guys in the series, there's Mr. Shank in the the General Knoxx expansion of the first game who's openly gay and very much a bad guy. There's also Captain Scarlet in the 2nd game who's obviously a woman and happens to be an enemy. How about Motor Mama who is all of gay, a woman, and black, and also an enemy (also described as a canabilist). All of the TPS main characters happen to be bosses in BL2. So Nisha is a female asian who happens to be an enemy. You're looking for things which aren't there.