Borderlands: A Love/Hate Relationship

12:01 PM on 12.17.2015 (server time)0

Allow me to start this by saying, that if you know me, you know I loathe Randy Pitchford. He's a scumbag, shirks blame for anything and more. I won't rant about him for an hour here, but I strongly dislike him. So his studio/company Gearbox gets thrown under the bus for me often...because it's his.

Now, I was one of the guys out there who was excited for Borderlands even when it was first shown before it got it's now trademark cel-shaded look. I LOVE lootfest hack and slashers, having grown into a teenager on a strong diet of games like Diablo, Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance, Champions of Norwrath, etc. I also greatly enjoy shooters, so combining the two together in a very Mad Max like setting (A favorite movie series of mine) sounded like pure bliss.

So the game finally releases and surprise! I love it. I start to get my friends into it and we all love it. Fast forward to when Borderlands 2 releases and again, my friends and I eat it up. Good times, good times. I'm a short, fiery tempered, compact little man myself, so BL2 even had a character that catered to ME in Salvador. I loved it!

I played the shit out of BL2 to the point of getting flat out burnt out on it. Whatever, still liked the game. Then Duke Nuke'em Forever happened. I thought, well the game was looking to be a turd even before release, so this really isn't Gearbox's fault. And I honestly still think that, but then Randy comes out and starts blaming others for it's failure and generally being a dickhead. This was the first REAL time I'd actually bothered to pay attention to this guy. Before this I just enjoyed his games.

Left a bad taste in my mouth, but whatever, shit happens. Aliens Colonial Marines is announced, and I LOVE Aliens. Randy is pitching (Gyuk!) the game and it sounds and looks stellar! Come February and the game is about to launch...releasing ON my birthday! Man, what a treat, happy birthday to me, right! Indeed, happy fucking birthday! The game turns out to be a complete shitstorm, I don't need to explain that to you though, it's well documented at this point. And that blows, that's not even why I was so upset though, I've played and sometimes even enjoyed some truly SHITTY games before. But it's how it's handled. It was a fucking mess and Randy, rather than accepting he fucked up and maybe even apologizing or just letting it go even, acts like a little kid in trouble about it. Blaming others, blocking people with ANYTHING negative, light or otherwise from his Twitter, etc. It was a mess and it really painted his true character out there. He's a giant asshole.

It really got under my skin and for the first time EVER in this industry I did what all the other disgruntled folks on the internet threaten to do...I boycotted Randy, his studio and their games. This was a thing I kept to for a good bit of time, completely missing out on an entire Borderlands game in the process, a series I otherwise really enjoyed.

So now, we're going to fast forward to this month in 2015. Early this month, in fact just about two weeks ago the Playstation Network had the first week of their holiday sales. Telltale games had a big part of this sale. Tales From the Borderlands' Season Pass was under $4. A deal I couldn't pass up after hearing it's rave reviews. So I didn't pass it up. I scooped it up (Along with the Game of Thrones Season Pass for $5) and put off playing it almost out of guilt to myself for almost a week. Finally one night I was bored and no one was online playing anything else and I decided to fire it up...and I instantly fell in love with it.

I felt those twinges of guilt again briefly but brushed them aside. I could understand the praise behind this game already not even finished with the first episode yet.

Literally two days later I had traded in some stuff at my local Gamestop to get some League of Legends Riot Points cards (For their holiday sales) and got a good chunk for what I'd brought in. And then noticed that shiny Borderlands: The Handsome Collection for PS4 was on sale by 50% off. "We don't buy into that shit anymore, fuck Randy Pitchford!" a voice inside my head claimed. But then I remembered that a close friend had been talking about how he's never played a Borderlands game while we played Destiny one night a bit back. (Him and I had stopped talking for...five years after an incident and just recently made up and got over it last year. Without going into details it was bad and involved a girl...as it always does. But this girl was my then fiancee, now wife.)

And I succumbed. I had the trade in credit anyway, I wasn't really paying any money...so I bought that Handsome Collection with the intention of talking said friend into also picking it up so we could dig into Borderlands together and I could show him the ropes. The next day I did just that and that night we cracked into BL2 together, along with another friend even. And it hit me like a ton of bricks. Fuck it. Seriously, who fucking cares? Why was I feeling guilty, like I'd just done something that destroyed my dignity? I was enjoying a game with my friends even IF a giant asshole was behind the series, who fucking cares, really? Why stay bitter?