Borderlands 3's Story is Absolute Garbage 

4/6/20 Thank you all so much for getting this video to 500,000 views. That being said, I feel like I need to make a few things clear: Yes, my disclaimers are a bit too fast and I'm looking to make them a few seconds longer in future videos just so they don't take up too much time, but the gist of them is basically that the anger presented in this video is purely for comedic purposes only. The main takeaway from these videos should be the arguments made and the critiques themselves, the anger is just to spice it up. I'm nowhere NEAR this angry in real life. Many have also noted that this is in the style of Mauler's "Unbridled Rage" series and that's mainly because I'm currently using it as something to base my content off of while I transition into my own style of video-making. Future videos will be a lot less like Mauler's style but will still take a bit of inspiration as I don't want to be known as "Cuntie 'Longman' McClone". And if you disagree with this video then that's perfectly fine, just try to be civil and don't try to insult me or point out the obvious fact that I'm Mauler inspired (or complain about the video's length) because I will probably respond and oWn YoU wItH fAcTs AnD lOgIc.

my headcanon is that the reason your vault hunter doesnt stop maya from dying is because they're actually off-screen trying to kill themselves whenever they hear ava speak

"every time Ava/ The Twins speaks I feel my brain cells committing suicide one by one" -Sir Hammerlock

When Claptrap's the least annoying character, you know you screwed up

In the borderlands universe, if youre condesending and sarcastic and happen to be a slim woman, theres a 99% chance youre one of the 6 sirens in existence.

Gearbox should’ve grabbed Tales from Borderlands writers after Telltale went broke and never let go of them. Such a waste.

At least when Roland died they dedicated a whole dlc to dealing with it.

Finally, someone else who believes Troy would have made a better final boss than his sister. What I wanted was that after his boss fight, Troy, in a desperate attempt, leeches his sister to heal himself. However, because he became stronger, thanks to leeching Maya. Troy leeches his sister till she dies, gaining full control of leech and having Liliths and Mayas powers. Thus, having the player need to kill a male siren with the power of 3 sirens and the destroyer would have been a better Final Boss.

"FL4K is supposed to be non binary representation but he's a robot which means he's nothing but binary" That point fucked me up

I remember in Borderlands: the presequal I chose to play as claptrap as a joke and it asked me about 10 times if I was sure that I wanted to play as claptrap

You can play as a siren in this game and you are completely ignored when they talk about sirens.

One thing that always annoyed me... Once Tyreen steals Lilith's powers, she can teleport seemingly anyone interstellar distances. How is her solution to any problem not just teleporting whatever annoys her into deep space?

- Make a game where Sirens are central to the plot - Completely ignore the playable Siren Top tier writing.

the writer for borderlands 2 didn't even work on borderlands 3 and was replace by 3 incompetent writers. Good job gearbox

Just imagine a 97 year old grandma on her deathbed, barely even breathing randomly getting siren powers for like one minute

How does it feel to have lived long enough to see your favorite franchises go up in flames?

Imagine spending the entirety of BL2 attempting to save and improve life on Pandora only for Lilith to undo it all by ordering the Crimson Raiders, the _only_ private military force that bothered to keep the peace on the planet, to abandon it to find a key that was *already* on the planet all along, leaving a power vacuum that made Pandora worse than it was when Jack was in control...

Brick's a siren

I remember thinking Maya's death was an absolute trick and she was still alive cuz there was no way they'd kill off a character like that. Damn I was wrong.

As a Krieg main, Maya's death was, by far, the most insulting part of the story for me. Troy didn't murder her, the writing team did. I'm gonna find whoever's idea this was and I'm gonna PUT MY PAIN INTO THEIR SOUL.

I remember seeing a cut scene that was planned for the game. A proper funeral for Maya, with people giving actual eulogies and showing the situation the respect it deserved. Ava left the funeral to mourn alone, realising her mistakes and blaming herself. Lillith arrived to comfort her, sharing parts of her history, her thoughts and emotions around this loss, and ultimately giving Ava a spark of hope to hold onto. That was supposed to be the moment that made players rethink their opinion of her. If I remember right, it was cut because they decided that the atmosphere was too sombre for comedy to fit in. Seems like a shame that they removed such a touching scene that really helped develop a character that was otherwise loathed by the community.

Ava: *starts talking* Jack: I'm sorry but that's verbal littering and littering is punishable by death.

Borderlands 3: the only game where you don't play as the main character.

I remember finishing 2 and being like “holy shit! The next game is going to be across multiple worlds.” Only to discover every ‘planet’ is monotone in environment and enemy composition. Pandora in borderlands 2 is more diverse than 4 or so planets you find in this game.

Borderlands 3 gives me the vibe that Gearbox never knew what made Borderlands cool. Like it feels like they made Handsome Jack by accident.

Maya doesn’t have time to explain why she doesn’t have time to explain.

I genuinely think the series will only get worse if they keep these writers. they’ve managed, in one game, to destroy over half of the characters in the series

Siphoning LIlith's power doesn't kill her but weaken her, from siren to siren... But Maya literally turns to ashes from getting leeched from human to siren?

Dialogue skipper mod is what saved this game's post-story content for me. The Girl on Fire song at the end was, and I use this word sparingly, one of the most cringy moments I've seen in a form of media.

Ava is basically high school fan-fic writer's self-insert.

37:40 your character doesn’t get addressed because they’re sobbing that Ava survived.

What hurts me even more is that the whole story could have been prevented if tannis would have just jammed the twin's comms and not make them able to recruit people at all

in BL2, Jack described Maliwan as "war hippies." I was really looking forward to the comedy that oxymoron presented and the interesting characters it could bri.... oh wait they ignore that lore too. Instead we get generic capitalism man and his glowing goons

“There’s a War coming. Gather Vault Hunters” >doesn’t get all the Vault Hunters from B2 Makes sense.

Maya in BL2: Singlehandedly beat Terramorphous The Invincible, Vermivorous The Invincible, Hyperius The Invincible, Master Gee The Invincible, Pyro Pete The Invincible, Voracidous The Invincible, Dexiduous The Invincible, Ancient Dragons Of Destruction, The Invincible Son Of Crawmerax The Invincible & Haderax The Invincible. Maya in BL3: Dies by being touched by some anorexic leech. 10/10 story.

This video offends me. Watching paint dry is a calming and popular hobby. Please do not degrade it by comparing it to such a terrible game.

It took me 2-3 years to play this game because I had heard so much hate about it. So I finally gave it a chance a few weeks ago and I’m currently at the part where you find out Tannis has been a siren the entire time. By this point I was like “aight I’m done” so then I looked up a summary video to see if the rest of the game would be worth it and it definitely isn’t. Thank you for saving me time and heartbreak for a story they’ve absolutely destroyed

On the final DLC, this game could be fixed if it ends with Marcus starts clearing his throat and grumbling waking up saying, "And so our story begins." Then an orphan replies, "You passed out drunk so we finished it for you." Another follows saying, "Yeah Ava is the leader of the Crimson Raiders." Marcus: "Who the hell is that?!" Orphan 2: "An orphan that Maya and Lilith died for." Marcus: "THAT DID NOT HAPPEN! Now I have to start over." Orphan 1: "You only told us about the vault hunters and passed out. We thought you were dead." Marcus: "Good..." (grunts) "So... You want to hear a story?"

Borderlands 4 will reveal that this game was just a coma-induced fever dream that Lilith had

I may be 3 years late, but I’m still incredibly pissed about how they handled the last HALF OF THE GAME, mainly by having Troy kill Maya and get her powers, and not get a better ending. Making Tyrene the big bad was obvious, which is why I thought one of two things: either Troy will become the final boss, or Troy will become a good guy, temporarily if not completely, because he does act much more human than Tyrene. Hell, I was honestly expecting the Destroyer to be the actual final boss (not the weird amalgamation we got, I mean the actual Destroyer, in its full power). God they floundered this games story

The way they made every likeable character from previous games into someone id like to punch in the face is actually quite impressive when you think about

The worst part about the story is after Lilith’s “sacrifice” is the song that plays after. The game acts as if it was an epic hero moment when in reality it is one of the worst endings to a video game ever.

"Vaults contain unimaginable loot" oh wow these greens and blues are so amazing!

Remember when borderlands 2 had a dlc for Tiny Tina that was her dealing with the fact that roland died? Blaming Angel for his death and refusing to accept that roland died, and in the end everyone helping her accept reality in a scene that almost made me cry of how good it was, and remember when bloodwing died Mordecai kept untill the end saying how he will take revenge on Jack for killing his pet, and when Jack captures lilth he goes into a rage because he already lost two friend and he wouldnt allow a third one. And now in borderlands 3 we have "haha, my friend died, heres a joke, i liked her when she was alive, hahaha, so funny am i right?" I am really worried about tales from borderlands 2, the only acceptable character seems to be the robot, but if the "humor" is "i hope that wont be talking Guns.... OMG! A talking gun, and he is an asshole, because you know... being rude for no reason is funny and charismatic" it seems that it will have good moments, but they will be under skag diarrea and vomit

-Lilith losing her powers -Maya's death -Fucking Ava There's plenty of other problems with the story but for me, these were the worst things that happened.

When literally the storyline of the Face McShooty mission is better than the entire storyline of BL3

Borderlands 2 villain: Self righteous but delusional man who reacts to the actions of the player Borderlands 3 villains: Facebook streamers

It's so funny that Borderlands 3's DLC's have a better story than the main games story. Psycho Krieg's DLC had a fantastic story and emotional ending, The Handsome Jackpot DLC had an amazing story and a great ending, and the Guns, Love and Tentacles DLC had a romantic story and the best ending possible for two great characters. The Calypso Twins can't even compare to John/Handsome Jack at this point. And which pisses me off more is the fact that Ava and Tannis apparently "inherit" the powers of Maya and Angel. Who in the hell thought this was a good idea? Whoever came up with the idea, you're an idiot. And to ruin the topping on the cake - (insert clearing throat) Bringing back The Destroyer and making an abomination out of it? Why?! WHY-Y-Y-Y?!! Make a new Vault Boss for goodness sake!

I think the worst part about BL3's humor is that it tries to capture the "LOL XD" humor that BL2 had, without understanding that it was more than that. BL2 humor was dark, knew when to crack an actual joke, and then when to poke fun at the absurdity of a situation. Handsome Jack playing a really shitty violin for Bloodwing after he blew her head off is funny, but it isn't JUST because its a joke, its because its delivered with the absurd evil of what Jack did and his delivery (especially since he delivers it so late). It doesn't feel like a character trying to tell a joke, rather the event is just funny. The humor can feel random, but to me it feels like its because what the characters say and do can come out of left field, but more importantly it stays true to their character. The humor also tends to reflect just how awful things are. Pandora is a horrible, terrible place to live, and the people living there always seem to be teetering on the edge of insanity or outright psychopathy to survive, putting a comedic lense on it all that creates a macabre sense of humor. You kill Hyperion workers and hear them say "I was two weeks away from retirement!". You laugh, but really its quite sad. Bl3 tries to replicate this, but doesn't understand when to deliver a line, and what is actually funny. BL3's entire script feels like the writers tried to create dialogue they hoped would be turned into memes or funny in-jokes, but for every. single. line. It causes every character to constantly feel like they are saying one liners all the time. Its even worse because what could be tense moments or moments of emotion are always punctuated or sharply interrupted by a really bad one liner that doesnt make sense or just isn't funny. The worst part about the humor, however, is how safe it tries to be. There are far, far too many poop and butt jokes to even mention. The macabre humor is completely missing, its all meme references (Big Succ, Big Dock Energy, etc.) and humor that tries its hardest not to offend. Hell, even the midgets were renamed to tinks. (small complaint, but still) I honestly cannot remember a single joke from BL3, apart from Claptrap saying "My ass is full of stars". Also, if I'm not mistaken, BL3 also reuses the "Kill Yourself" joke mission from BL2. Its not done nearly as funny nor does it carry the same weight it did in BL2.

The actual vault loot made me so depressed when I opened it and saw mediocre loot. All this hype after all these games of what you might find inside, just to see it contains the same quality of loot as the portapottys in BL2

at least handsome jack has a reason to be evil. he lost his wife, job, weapon, face and daughter, Troy and Tyreen are just like “yeah we’re evil because we’re evil”

It's been a while since I played the pre sequel but if I recall, Aurelia was already established as a terrible person throughout the story, but that even she couldn't condone the things Jack was getting up to.

Ok, the part that makes Maya's death scene worse If you play amara then troy and tyrene, who can now absorb siren powers, phase lock, and teleport, literally look at you, one of three remaining sirens in the universe and go "Naw,not worth taking the effort" and leave you.

Borderlands 3 is a non cannon fanfic. You cannot change my mind. I don’t want to believe that this is the sequel to Borderlands 2

Here's something fun about Elpis. In the pre sequel, there was a vault on Elpis. In 3 Elpis is a vault key to the great vault. This means the Eridians put a vault in their vault key.

Fun fact about Maya's death There's a cut story board of a much more respectful scene. Where the characters actually morn about her death. They even have a funeral for her. Even Krieg shows up in the background! Why the hell did the replace it with the crap we got in the game!?

I have to say my biggest issue with the story was how Tyreen and Troy were never once bothered or affected by our actions. It made everything we did feel totally pointless and allowing them to keep their conceited shit attitudes the entire game was a terrible choice. Handsome Jack was slowly affected by us up to Angel being killed at which point he was broken by us. We didn't even get a satisfying killing of Tyreen and I'd hardly say Troy's death was at all rewarding because of Tyreen suddenly rising up and ruining the accomplishment. I despised hearing them every time they spoke by the time we left Pandora and then they never once cared that we totally ruined their plans or just had something else that would work fine as if we meant nothing. It at least made me fucking despise them but, again, they didn't pay that off with good endings to them. Both of their boss battles felt like let downs when Tyreen ruined the Troy battle and then she just dies without any shock or surprise that we killed her. It was lame, but my goodness is the gameplay superb. If not for the cool visuals and interesting locations, good gameplay and fun guns, I wouldn't have enjoyed Borderlands 3. Luckily I could look past the issues, but I also can't say they made the DLC stories much better. I just finished Guns Love and Tentacles and wanted to strangle Gaige by the end as she never shut up once she started speaking. But thankfully Wainwright and Hammerlock were both good and the villain in it was far better. For my money the DLC Bounty of Blood was a solid upgrade with far fewer unlikable characters if any. I really thought Rose was a good villain and at least wasn't fucking obnoxious. I hated her too for a reason that wasn't just annoyance when our first meeting has her put down Toge just because he's injured. And that was a good way to set her up as the surprise villain. It shows that they can write better at the very least, but the main story was a mess. I too only found myself enjoying Wainwright and Typhon DeLeon, who I did NOT like until I met him and learned his tragic story with his kids. And as you said, Balex was actually very likable and well voice acted and I had no idea that was actually Ice T. At least that's in terms of new characters of course. Maya I don't think they wrote well, Lilith literally doesn't do anything and is a punching bag for the Calypsos, and as you said Brick, Mordecai and Tina were almost unused. I liked Rhys enough but Vaughn was so fucking irritating and set the tone for the game, by trying to be funny and failing at every turn and only succeeding in being cringeworthy.

I actually went on IMDb to see who wrote this story: Connor Thomas Cleary: First timer Danny Homan: Did writing for Elliot Quest Randall Varnell: Was a director of Battleborn, one of the producers of Borderlands 2, and also worked on Duke Nukem Forever. Also first time writer. Sam Winkler: A visual effect artist who worked on multiple movies and TV shows. Also a first time writer Then I went who wrote for Borderlands 2: Matthew Armstrong: Worked on Half Life games, Borderlands, and Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 as a designer and writer. Anthony Burch: Worked on Tv shows, Borderlands: The Pre-sequel, and Tales from the Borderlands WHAT HAPPENED TO THESE PEOPLE?

Don't let this distract you from the fact that most of the characters haven't aged a day even though it's been about 10 years in universe since the start of the first game. Lilith should be pushing 40 at this point.

As the creator of the 'All Character Dialogue in Borderlands 3' series, having to play through the game 4 times, sift through hours and hours of content, dialogue and lines just to stitch together a video I can testify that this video is the most accurate thing on the internet.

I just finished BL3. God I'm glad I found this video. I needed my opinions validated because I left the game going. WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON. The vault hunter not being present during the cut scenes single handily ruined the entire game for me. It is beyond frustrating that i could have killed Tyrene and Troy before we even entered the spaceship and I was stopped by plot armour.

this whole game is written like a rushed high school essay

There is no frickin way it took the writers 5 years to make this. This mess of a story feels like it was put together in a day.

The borderlands 2 and pre sequel vault hunters are some of the most important to the series, because it's the pre sequel vault hunters that helped make handsome jack, and the BL2 vault hunters that killed him and set he events of tales from the borderlands in motion. We don't get any mention of Athena in the story, even though she's been in three of the four games to come out before BL3, and in one of them she was one of the playable Vault hunters, and even the narrator of the game. And she's not even mentioned in passing

The amount of unique insults you threw at this game was staggering. They were all golden

Everything Ava does in the story you could replace with Maya doing it. Ava is not needed for the story what so ever, she feels like a self insert mary sue character that big thing in the story is getting Maya killed.

How to fix the story: have Marcus go ,,HAHAHA you should see the Look on your face! I mean, can you imagine if it went like that?‘‘ and then make an actually good Story and have that be the real one

The funniest part of maya's death is I was playing fl4k and had the monkey with a gun as my pet as I came out of the vault into the cutscene. During that you see the monkey's gun floating around the cutscene as maya dies

This is 3 years old but literally still to this day, thinking about going back to borderlands just for some fun shooting I get reminded of the twins, groan and load up another game. Like they literally make borderlands 3 so unfun in my mental and an absolute turn off from even touching that download button.

Biggest insult of the entire game was Ava being the successor. Literally ANYONE in the crimson raiders would have been a better alternative.

Tales from the Borderlands feels more like Borderlands 3 than Borderlands 3 in terms of story.

What they did to Aurelia was completely unforgivable. She was my absolute favorite Vault Hunter, and while her hyper capitalist, rich bitch trope was played up, she also genuinely epressed being uncomfortable with things Jack did (what he did to Claptrap and Felicity in particular), and clearly didn't hate Alistair--they were just oil and water. She literally fakes an accent to avoid a fight with him during a mission. And she would never screw Troy, he's basically Tyreen's Alistair! She was not a moustache twirling villain in TPS nor did her arc push her in that direction, considering she WALKED AWAY from Jack! That's literally the worst part, they murdered my girl twice in BL3.

borderland's 2: handsome jack borderland's 3: 2 teenager on twitch

Maya's death is a huge hang-up for me, not because she died, but how she died. Having played any of the main characters from BL 1&2 the players know that the characters have POWER. They accomplished magnificent feats and overcome horrendous odds. The Siren's are even more special, they are a 1/10x10¹⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰+ universe wide oddity, it is OBSCENE that Maya (and Lilith in act 1) GET COMPLETELY PWNED by some NO-ONE who came out of NO-WHERE, and regardless of their previous competence Lilith and Maya are just brushed aside and deleted.

How to make Borderlands 3's Story better. 1. Kill Ava 2. Profit.

I just hate how much this game ignores previous plot points. Bl1 a practically unmissable sidequest has you listening to tannis' echologs of how shes wasting her time on finding a vault she believes is a complete myth before actually finding evidence on it and studying it. Now she has always been in live with the vaults and I think they mention she has idolised typhon since she was a little girl? They just yadda yaddad so many vaults into the universe when previously people thought they were myths and old folktales

How the hell did we go from fighting corporate scum to fighting independent creators with the help of corporate scum? Story felt like it was made by a bunch of boomers who hate everything that the younger generation likes

Ava feels like self insert character.

"Scene was a giant middle finger to everyone that mained Maya in BL2." Yes, yes it was.

The game itself is really fun, but the story is one of the worst i've ever played. I have never once gone to the files of a game to delete the dialogue. The game is soooooooooooo much better after i did that.

The game play was solid but the story annoyed me from the very start. By the time of the "big reveal" where Tanis is just now a siren I checked out of the story. It all just reeked of lazy leftist writing, "look how awesome all the female characters are! Sirens are so rare in the galaxy and all our female characters are sirens! Isn't that awesome!?" It's just so cliche and predictible and dumb and does nothing but cheapen the established lore in the service of an agenda. I've heard the writing described as "millennial writing" and I think that fits so well.

In order for Borderlands 4 to not suck ass in the "Story" sense, the literal opening of that game needs to be a brief flashback of the events of Borderlands 3, slowly fading to a Bandit jolting awake in a ditch somewhere and the entirety of Borderlands 3 being passed off as the drunken dream that never happened.

This whole game was just another of Tinas messed up D&D campaigns, I hope.

The character designs alone already tell you what kind of people were behind this game. And their mindset

I'm beginning to think the point of BL3's story was to prove that Handsome Jack actually WAS the hero the whole time. And because the bad guys (us) won BL 3 was allowed to take place...as punishment.

sirens are supposed to be simple, there are six sirens alive at all times. each has a unique power, each siren has to be a girl. every time a siren dies another is born. this game pretty much broke those rules.

I figured it out. Borderlands 3 is over committing to a meme. What meme? The meme of the bad writing plague. Think of it, all of 2019 was scarred by it. Star Wars, Cats, game of thrones... its so genius it’s horrid... /s

Honestly, the number one issue is that they wanted to make Sirens the center of their universe but decided to never make any firm rules for them. I also think that going moment by moment through the story really doesnt' do justice to how poorly written the twins are compared to Handsome Jack.

Just finished borderlands 3 for the 3rd time now on PS5. I don't think BL2 story was great but geezzz... BL3 story REALLY sucks. Ava is one of the worst characters I've ever seen.

The game is written like the writers only played the first 5 hours of each borderlands game and decided that they knew enough and started writing the script

They included a character like Ava, but not even a dialogue line of Axton or Salvador. I’m speechless

As soon as the Villains were revealed to be streamers, I knew the goose was cooked and I was about to be served a rotten story. Never even finished the game, not with my buddies, not even singleplayer.

I was a Maya main in BL2 and the whole time Iwas thinking to myself "WHERE THE F IS MY VAULT HUNTER???" and "why am I not currently putting a hole through the heads of Dumb and Dumber over here?"

never forget how the writers got offended by how much ava was being hated on and tried to defend her. 🥱 when the DLC's stories are better (ESPECIALLY the new one) then the main story, that's a major problem.

Ava makes Jar Jar Binks look like Zuko. Edit: Sorry, I meant Prick.

If the team had Troy accidentally kill Tyreen in a desperate attempt to achieve what they dreamed of as children during the Troy fight; I would've respected that choice. Especially because you end up learning about their past a while after the Troy fight, and it would have been interesting to watch a possibility desperate Troy try and wake up The Destroyer while only having a limited amount of time until Tyreen's siren energies wear off and he dies

My entry point was B3, so some of the lore elements you mention, I was unaware of. That aside, even as a noob to this universe, there were things in the story that just made no sense to me. I got the feeling that the writers were not worried about continuity, and more interested in doing stupid, topical rubbish and stupidity to get us from place to place. And thanks to your video, I see it was worse than I thought. Gameplay is still awesome though.

One thing that urks me is when ava says that lilith killed Handsome Jack.

Borderlands 4 would be interesting if clap trap wake up and says "maan, that was really horrible nightmare" and Borderlands 4 would be common story and not this

Remember how at the end of the presequel the guardian told basically everyone important that they'd need every vault hunter they could get fpr the coming conflict? Only for them to completely ignore the warning and let every Vault hunter on the team around that time to just up a leave, some going off to parts unknown? Hell they let Maya, the *fucking Siren* sequester herself away in a scarcely defended monestary when she's one of the only people in existance capable of interacting with eridian tech. Where's Axton? Salvadore? Gaige? Kreig's off on his sabbatical or whatever good for him honestly but did no one actually keep in contact? Jack was actively killing vault hunters for years, you mean to tell me in the years after his death the only four to actually show up happened to be the ones we got in BL3?