So that Borderlands: The Pre Sequel Ending (Spoilers)

[Scarim Coral]

So I finally got round to finishing the game (busy at work and trying to find the right balance at playing my other games) and it me thinking about the ending.

Spoiler: Here my low down on the overall game.

The game is pretty much what I expected which is a good thing. It's the same game I know even with the new mechanic but that what I liked about the first game. The story was somewhat iffy but hey I still enjoying kicking the Guardians arses.

Sure they try to potray Jack/ Jophn being a good guy at the start of it but it's hard to try to "like" him for all what he did at 2. Granted I suppose the progression from John to Jack kind of make sense as it seen he has some of an trust and paranoia issuses to deal with. He was willing to spared enemy lives but Meriff betrayal annoyed the hell out of him and the possible traitor in the group lead him to killing Gladstone and the other innocent scientists. The real traitors being Moxxi, Roland and Lilith drove him to the edge and beyond with that punch which I don't get why Lilith didn't killed him there and then given he was suppose to be killed at the eye destruction. He lost it when he told the Vault hunter to killed that defeated Dalh soldier before the gunship boss fight as he laugh at the possible idea that soldier live turn around for the better.

Regardless what a certain hipster has said that in Jack point of view, he's the "good" guy, he was still a douche!

Oh one last nikpit was that depite they had made the contructor and produced the robot army needed, they never shown any of them in action other than the ones you repair in the station! Some anti climatic battles!

So the ending reveal that guardian seen at the start of the game that saved Athena life (they never explain what that guardian deal other than I think that is the guardian mention in the Echos) and claiming they need all of the Vault Hunters they can get since "war" coming.

Combining that ending and 2 ending (it was reveal there are more vaults on other planets), I'm starting to think that the possible Borderlands 3 could be an mmorpg like Destiny.

Granted they can still used the same formula I guess (if it's ain't broke, why fix it?) but I'm pretty sure another same game starting new 4-6 characters in the 3rd game could be repeatitive by then (well it depend really seeing how COD and Halo can get away with it) but I don't see 4-6 more Vault hunters as alot if they need as much people as they can since they can throw that title "Vault Hunter" onto anyone who want loots!

Also anyone know how Destiny is doing (I don't owned the game) as in the gameplay wise (I know it been getting mostly plain/ poor reviews and the loots is bad in that game). would you think an mmorpg Boderlands 3 would fair better than Destiny?

So anyway the point of this thread is what you think of the ending? Do you think the possible 3rd game being a mmorpg or using the same gameplay?

EDIT- Yes I read that there is no plan for BL£ at the moment, I mean an off chance in the future when they do make a sequel eventually.

 

[nomotog_v1legacy]

If I was to hazard a guess, the ending means nothing. BLs doesn't have a big arcing story line planed and they aren't even working on BL3, or so they say. Could BL be made into a mmo, Ya in fact a lot of people describe it as a mmo already. It is multiplayer focused and runs of the kind of ding mentality of say WoW. I don't think they will actually make a mmo though. Not when they don't have to. There wouldn't be any advantages for BL to try and be a mmo it would just bloat the budget and make the game be judged harsher.

 

[Ten Foot Bunny]

My opinion is that Jack never WAS a good guy, he only lost the ability to hide his true nature over the course of the game's events.

Moxxi and Jack had already broken up before the game starts, and Moxxi seems to have been on the moon because it was the closest she could get to Jack so that she could more easily destroy him. Think about it: why are Scooter, Ellie, and Marcus not in this game? Because it wasn't THEIR fight, it was Moxxi's. She saw through Jack's duplicity and she'd travel to the ends of the universe to stop his egomaniacal quest for power.

Did Jack ever care about Elpis? No, he sure did not. Zarpedon got in the way of Jack and HIS precious eye at the center of Helios' laser. Jack didn't want Zarpedon to blow up Elpis because he knew that there was a vault on the moon and HE wanted it. Zarpedon was trying to save everybody from the horrors that she saw inside the vault, which I assume was her motivation for destroying Elpis (that last bit is just my opinion because her motive was never made obvious, and only hinted at in the ECHO message you give to her daughter).

The eye was Jack's trump card, and I think there's a plot hole where we never learn what the eye really meant to Jack, only that he coveted it the way that Gollum wanted The One Ring. If you know his motive, please tell me.

Now, Jack begins losing his good-guy facade with every murder he commits, starting with the Meriff. At that point, he comments about how the kill "felt kind of good." When he kills the scientists, he reacts to the murders with a great deal more enthusiasm and cold-hearted joy. When Moxxi, Lilith, and Roland nearly kill him at the end (especially when Lilith destroys his pretty face) THAT is when he becomes the Handsome Jack of Borderlands 2.

That's my interpretation anyway!

 

[Netrigan]

Doubt they go MMO, but I figure we'll see a multi-planet story with even more playable characters.

I think Gearbox has said they don't have any firm plans, just that it has to br bigger and crazier.

 

[LarsInCharge]

The thing is if this ending leads into DLC for Pre-Sequel...

Won't that be kind of hard?

Wilhelm is very safely dead. Nisha is dead for just about anyone who visited Lynchwood. Digi-Jack doesn't make a great deal of sense.

Not even going into the 6 or 7 million different plot holes.

 

[Prince of Ales]

The plot was destined to be a bit of a mess by it's very nature. You've got points A and C pre-defined and you need to create B that fits. Could have probably done better(*), but I don't blame them for what they made. On the plus side, the actual dialogue and voice acting was the best in the series; the way that player characters speak back, the way players speak to one another, and the fact that there are unique dialogues depending on who you are playing, those are all big positives for the series. So yeah, the new characters were naff, the plot was naff, but the "storytelling" as it were was actually pretty good.

Dat double jump doe... I think the single mechanic they added was a pretty good one. Can't go on enough about how good movement mechanics are in a real time game. I thought the controls were a bit clunky at first, what with the butt-slam defaulting to the 'C' button. But the last boss has this move where he throws you up into the air with this static field at the top, and by the time I'd got to that point as soon as it happened I was ready and pushed the slam button right away. It all felt natural.

Gear wise, they were a bit lazy. You've got the obvious problem with non-respawning enemies dropping unique items (whose idea was that?), but the items themselves are lazy. Other than the new laser class (which are actually alright I should say) I don't think there's a single legendary or unique that isn't a rehashed version of a BL2 weapon. I mean the Fatale is obviously the *****, the Fridgia is obviously the Lascaux, etc.

Don't think the game is worth its full price unless you were a big fan of BL2 (like me). It's definitely on the short side, and I'm very unsure of what will be added by DLC (only 1 of 4 DLCs is to be a full campaign apparently). But short as it is, it's fun. The combat is fun, the movement is fun, the dialogue is fun.

(*)

Spoiler

The way Lilith appears at the end... wasn't needed. Could have just kept the betrayal as the seed and had the vault artifact be the thing that tips him over the edge. Could even have had the artifact scarring him through its sheer power. It would have actually been a lot darker if it was the artifact that turned him rather than the original vault hunters.

Not totally sure about the appearence of the Eridian. In another game you'd think "wooh! Big plot twist!", but in Borderlands, which is only semi-serious at the best of times, it seemed a bit too... epic? I dunno. It didn't sit right with me anyway. Seems to me you want the big reveal in the Borderlands series to be a bit more Terry Pratchett or Douglas Adams-esque and have the whole chain of events be a massive cock-up from a now extict alien species or something.

 

[Wuvlycuddles]

Anyone else feel Angels absence was somewhat conspicuous?

 

[LarsInCharge]

Anyone else feel Angels absence was somewhat conspicuous?

That was easily the most massive plot hole (as discussed in other threads). The issue is the trope of "Just Eat Gilligan". Angel could have solved 90% of the plot's problems, so she couldn't be there.

 

[darkcalling]

I enjoyed it and I enjoyed seeing jack go from (as I saw it) sane but greedy and overambitious, to deranged and utterly convinced he's the good guy. The one disappointment for me is that we still don't know why jack actually hired maya and the others in number 2. He didn't need them to find the vault as he knew exactly where it was. He clearly had no use for them since he tried to blow them up in the intro. Why hire them at all? My only guess was to attempt to eliminate threats but there are far better ways to do that. Though jack was pretty far from sane even at the beginning of number 2.

 

[TheVampwizimp_v1legacy]

The one disappointment for me is that we still don't know why jack actually hired maya and the others in number 2. He didn't need them to find the vault as he knew exactly where it was. He clearly had no use for them since he tried to blow them up in the intro. Why hire them at all? My only guess was to attempt to eliminate threats but there are far better ways to do that. Though jack was pretty far from sane even at the beginning of number 2.

That was already covered in BL2. Jack needed a way to destroy Sanctuary so that Roland and Lilith would stop interfering with his attempts at opening the second vault. So he hired some vault hunters to gain Roland's trust, so that they would kill Wilhelm and use his power core for the Sanctuary shield, so that Jack could turn the shield off and destroy them. Indeed, it is needlessly complicated, but it was all covered during the big mid-game twist.

 

[laggyteabag]

Well, I imagine that another Borderlands game is in development (Probably at 2K Australia), and it seems like they are headed for a much bigger game, be it more open world, or maybe an MMO or Destiny-esque "shared world shooter". It would take a lot of development, but if pulled off well, it could be great, or at least much better than that Battleborn crap that Gearbox is developing. Seriously, that game looks like Overwatch X Borderlands but with 0% of the charm or quality attached to it.

 

[Rayce Archer]

My opinion is that Jack never WAS a good guy, he only lost the ability to hide his true nature over the course of the game's events.

Moxxi and Jack had already broken up before the game starts, and Moxxi seems to have been on the moon because it was the closest she could get to Jack so that she could more easily destroy him. Think about it: why are Scooter, Ellie, and Marcus not in this game? Because it wasn't THEIR fight, it was Moxxi's. She saw through Jack's duplicity and she'd travel to the ends of the universe to stop his egomaniacal quest for power.

Did Jack ever care about Elpis? No, he sure did not. Zarpedon got in the way of Jack and HIS precious eye at the center of Helios' laser. Jack didn't want Zarpedon to blow up Elpis because he knew that there was a vault on the moon and HE wanted it. Zarpedon was trying to save everybody from the horrors that she saw inside the vault, which I assume was her motivation for destroying Elpis (that last bit is just my opinion because her motive was never made obvious, and only hinted at in the ECHO message you give to her daughter).

The eye was Jack's trump card, and I think there's a plot hole where we never learn what the eye really meant to Jack, only that he coveted it the way that Gollum wanted The One Ring. If you know his motive, please tell me.

Now, Jack begins losing his good-guy facade with every murder he commits, starting with the Meriff. At that point, he comments about how the kill "felt kind of good." When he kills the scientists, he reacts to the murders with a great deal more enthusiasm and cold-hearted joy. When Moxxi, Lilith, and Roland nearly kill him at the end (especially when Lilith destroys his pretty face) THAT is when he becomes the Handsome Jack of Borderlands 2.

That's my interpretation anyway!

I think this is about spot on. Jack always intended to rule Pandora and user the vaults there to take over Hyperion, that was his motivation for putting their space station there in the first place. He also lets slip a couple times that the real purpose of the eye of Helios is to let his minions (the pre-sequel player characters) more easily subjogate and forcibly civilize Pandora. Jack is more attached to Elpis, because by and large it's less of a shithole than Pandora and the citizens of Concordia are already loyal to Hyperion, but he doesn't LIKE any of them particularly. The pre-sequel is his transformation from kind-of-shady dictator in the wings to full on super-villain.

The thing is if this ending leads into DLC for Pre-Sequel...

Won't that be kind of hard?

Wilhelm is very safely dead. Nisha is dead for just about anyone who visited Lynchwood. Digi-Jack doesn't make a great deal of sense.

Not even going into the 6 or 7 million different plot holes.

Jack's body double is dead too. You kill him as part of the quest to copy Jack's voice in BL2. Of course you could easily retcon it into "oh they just got shot to hell and escaped" but since to date no player character has been a player character twice, why bother? I'd guess if we DO have a galaxy hopping game, we'll see more characters with unique, off-Pandora natures like Zer0, and probably the individual corporate states as antagonists, except Torgue because Mr. Torgue seems to love the violent mayhem of vault hunting OR IS THAT A CLEVER ILLUSION TO CONCEAL HIS TRUE INTENTIONS? DECEEEEEPTIOOOONNNNNNNNNN MIDDLY MIDDLY MOWWWWWWWWW!

If we're engaging in conjecture, I'd think the following known Borderlands worlds are possible:

-Athenas. The planet Maya is from. Ruled with an iron fist by intensely corrupt monks who seem to know a fair bit about sirens. Could easily house a vault or other Eridian stuff.

-Hephaestus. Mr. Torgue's homeworld, but also a Dahl mining colony. Could set up a Torgue-and-Vault-Hunters-Vs.-Dahl scenario.

-Promethea. The site of the first discovered vault, HQ of the Crimson Lance, and apparantly the only place in the universe more god-forsaken than Pandora. Since Atlas found only one Vault and subsequent games would indicate that there can be many vaults on one planet... Yeah.

Could just as easily be someplace new.

 

[ThriKreen]

Anyone else feel Angels absence was somewhat conspicuous?

Her picture is on Jack's desk though. And she was helping Jack with the hiring in one of Nisha's ECHO recordings.

The eye was Jack's trump card, and I think there's a plot hole where we never learn what the eye really meant to Jack, only that he coveted it the way that Gollum wanted The One Ring. If you know his motive, please tell me.

My thinking, orbital drill to make it easier to get to the vaults, as well as the usual eliminate opponents without danger.

My only guess was to attempt to eliminate threats but there are far better ways to do that. Though jack was pretty far from sane even at the beginning of number 2.

You got it, it was a ploy to get them to hook up with the previous Vault Hunters and into their good graces, then sneak in the tampered energy core. He wasn't counting on Lilith being able to phase shift the whole place out of the way, nor it being capable of flying to avoid his future bombardments.

 

[TheVampwizimp_v1legacy]

If we're engaging in conjecture, I'd think the following known Borderlands worlds are possible:

-Athenas. The planet Maya is from. Ruled with an iron fist by intensely corrupt monks who seem to know a fair bit about sirens. Could easily house a vault or other Eridian stuff.

-Hephaestus. Mr. Torgue's homeworld, but also a Dahl mining colony. Could set up a Torgue-and-Vault-Hunters-Vs.-Dahl scenario.

-Promethea. The site of the first discovered vault, HQ of the Crimson Lance, and apparantly the only place in the universe more god-forsaken than Pandora. Since Atlas found only one Vault and subsequent games would indicate that there can be many vaults on one planet... Yeah.

Could just as easily be someplace new.

I wonder though if Borderlands will ever be willing to step away from Pandora. We have certainly heard hints of a larger universe, such as those other planets you mentioned, and the ongoing open corporate warfare dominating humanity. But they had the opportunity to expand into other areas with Borderlands 2, and now that they have 3 games set on the same world with mostly the same characters, they may be too committed to their mainstays to start over with a new setting. Unless they come up with some contrived reason to put Marcus and Moxxi on Promethea, and that's even worse.

Which does make it sound like an MMO-type game is their next logical step. They can put half a dozen new planets into the game, and have you meet a familiar vault hunter or two on each one. The mention of a war at the end of the Pre-Sequel makes me think they're aiming for the next game to be about a galaxy-spanning conflict over all those new vaults, drawing on all the bits of lore they've hinted at but never explored.

And I love Borderlands to death, but it's already too focused on making you play with other humans, and if they go full MMO I just don't think I will be buying any more games.

 

[Laughing Man]

And I love Borderlands to death, but it's already too focused on making you play with other humans, and if they go full MMO I just don't think I will be buying any more games.

Me too, I've played through all three games all solo the idea that they could end up forcing you to play with other folk in ANY of their up coming games would be an instant NO BUY from me.

As for the ending, well it saddens me to a degree, the ancient aliens were the weakest part of the Borderlands games, the locals surrounding them and the enemies themselves just felt, out of place. Yes I know that is kinda the point, to make them so different to what you have seen as to stamp the fact that they are alien but they had stupid annoying poweres and were more often than not uber bullet sponges and really stopped the games flow.

It also explains why I loved Bl2 so much. No Aliens what so ever in that one, so yes seeing the ending to TPS and seeing that it hints at potentially more alien encounters, well I am not that hyped for it.

 

[Rayce Archer]

I wonder though if Borderlands will ever be willing to step away from Pandora. We have certainly heard hints of a larger universe, such as those other planets you mentioned, and the ongoing open corporate warfare dominating humanity. But they had the opportunity to expand into other areas with Borderlands 2, and now that they have 3 games set on the same world with mostly the same characters, they may be too committed to their mainstays to start over with a new setting. Unless they come up with some contrived reason to put Marcus and Moxxi on Promethea, and that's even worse.

I think Borderlands 2 stayed on Pandora because Borderlands 1 was so limited. If you think back, BL1 basically consisted of beige desert full of trash, beige box canyon full of trash, big pile of trash on a beige mountain, and so on. 2 was the same aesthetic, but applied to a much more robust set of environments because, you know, they didn't have to totally redesign the graphics at the last minute with 2. The pre-sequel, being a prequel, was kind of stuck being on or near Pandora, I think going to the moon was about as good as we were going to get.

I'm still a little fuzzy on how easy interplanetary travel is in the Borderlands universe. Many inhabitants of Pandora and Elpis seem to be marooned there, but characters like Gaige and Zero have traveled between planets (in Zero's case many times) and it seems to be fairly commonplace to them. I'm guessing that travel between worlds is simply prohibitively expensive, hence how it's mostly restricted to corporate officers (who according to the kiosks on Helios are now more or less the government) and treasure-hunting mercenaries.

 

[TheVampwizimp_v1legacy]

I'm still a little fuzzy on how easy interplanetary travel is in the Borderlands universe. Many inhabitants of Pandora and Elpis seem to be marooned there, but characters like Gaige and Zero have traveled between planets (in Zero's case many times) and it seems to be fairly commonplace to them. I'm guessing that travel between worlds is simply prohibitively expensive, hence how it's mostly restricted to corporate officers (who according to the kiosks on Helios are now more or less the government) and treasure-hunting mercenaries.

Yeah, I would assume that, just like everything else, the megacorporations own almost all space travel, and if ordinary citizens want to travel on their own, they either have to stow away on a legitimate transport or hire an illegal spaceship operated by criminals. Which limits interstellar travel to corporate executives and their employees, desperate fools with nothing to lose, and wealthy desperate fools.

I think Borderlands 2 stayed on Pandora because Borderlands 1 was so limited. If you think back, BL1 basically consisted of beige desert full of trash, beige box canyon full of trash, big pile of trash on a beige mountain, and so on. 2 was the same aesthetic, but applied to a much more robust set of environments because, you know, they didn't have to totally redesign the graphics at the last minute with 2. The pre-sequel, being a prequel, was kind of stuck being on or near Pandora, I think going to the moon was about as good as we were going to get.

I hope that is the case. I hope they realize that they have really explored Pandora thoroughly, and are planning to try a new setting. They clearly have some skill and creativity with world design, as they managed to turn one of the brownest environments ever into a pretty vibrant and varied world. And I don't know how other people feel about it, but I really liked Elpis. The semi-retro Apollo-mission aesthetic was neat, and it showed that they don't have to rely on skags and spiderants to fill out the enemy ranks.

So in conclusion...I guess I'm both hopeful and wary? The future of the franchise could go in a few different directions from here, some better than others.

 

[Imre Csete]

I hope they won't go the MMO route, I only play with friends, screw randoms messing up your game.

Anyone else feel Angels absence was somewhat conspicuous?

Her picture is on Jack's desk though. And she was helping Jack with the hiring in one of Nisha's ECHO recordings.

And she also helped reprogramming the Fyrestone Claptrap into Fragtrap.

 

[LawAndChaos]

To be honest I don't think Jack truly started as the monster he became. He was a sociopath, most definitely, but he didn't want to kill people if he could avoid it at first. He had some semblance of rationality in his head, and while he was putting himself first, in the cutthroat industy of the Borderlands universe, who can afford to be 100 percent altruistic? He still tried to do the best he could. He still tried to be a good guy.

Spoiler: Wall O' Text

If anything, the heroes handled things in the worst way possible. Zarpedon foresaw a disaster and decided she needed to destroy the moon. So, lacking time and resources (but not soldiers, apparently), she stormed a station full of non-combatants and cleaned the place out, hijacked the space laser and went to work trying to kill everyone. Now, most certainly the most direct method to avoiding the disaster the moon vault would cause sure, but Zarpedon should've hit the base as hard as possible. Send the freaking aliens in, go in with the Dahl mechs, rush the inner areas (or that spot where the rocket crashed with 4 vault hunters in it?) and tie up the loose ends all on the station, all at once. If she knew vault hunters were coming, she should've handled things personally and eliminated the lot of them if her own soldiers weren't proving effective.

And then Zarpedon and her pals sit on the station while you butt-slam across Elpis. They make little effort to stop your interference in their work, except maybe spurring on Deadlift to kill you.

Moxxi betrays Jack. As a result, Jack loses the one thing that kept his job secure and his position in the company safe. He loses it. At this time, he doesn't even have the vault key, and I think eridium was still in testing phases, so Angel was just stuck in a chair and could've been let out at some point and lived a life, however awkward it may have been. Angel's picture after the Eye's destruction is face down on his desk. Without the eye, he has to continue using his daughter to keep things together.

He's a bundle of mess. His lousy job, his ungrateful boss, the fight for Helios & the loss of the eye, the betrayal of a once-loyal meriff, the infiltration of Hyperion by a mole, his own sociopathy, the betrayal of Lilith, Roland, & Moxxi, completely screwing him in every conceivable way AND also nearly dying and being killed on several occasions all added up. He was probably reasoning to himself as you fiddled with the eye "I can fix this," and if it had worked he might've been able to get his cool back, and at worst want revenge on just Roland, Lilith and Moxxi for trying to kill him for a vaguely good reason.

But everything gets fucked.

From there he's a large bomb on a small fuse. He hits the vault and gets THE QUICKENING (in caps). And then Lilith scars him. Whatever Eridian mojo was in that vault either sent him right off the deep end, or Lilith messing with the voodoo messed something up. Assuming the latter who knows what Lilith's siren powers exactly DID. It could've caused some crazy reaction that made things worse.

If Jack really was in it for himself from the start, he wouldn't have spared the Meriff. He would've never considered the possibility of copying Felicity so she could stay who she was. He never would've had that Angel picture on his desk.

Jack was unstable. He had serious underlying mental issues that needed working out in a world where therapy is probably nonexistent. But in the end once Moxxi screwed him over thinking he was going to become evil, he became evil. Self-fulfilling prophecy, ladies and gentlemen.

Now game-wise, I'm curious to see where they go from here. If they're leaving Pandora, good on 'em. I'd like to see a few more varied locales from the series in the future.

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

Here's one thing I've always been fuzzy on in the Borderlands universe (I love 1 and 2 to death, but I hate Jack so I don't think I'll play the Pre-sequel)

Why is Death a thing in the Borderlands Universe?

The New U Station should make everything freaking pointless.


it starts at 7 minutes, 30 seconds if the youtube doesn't go to the section where they explain how New U works.

You're telling me Jack, Roland, all these important people (especially Roland because he used that thing dozens of times on his romp through the first game) aren't listed with the New U Station? They can't be brought back because of... reasons?

If I wasn't such a total loot whore, that would make it hard for me to like the game.