• MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca
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    9 days ago

    I feel like a game like Borderlands needs to lead, not follow. They took some risks with BL3 that did not pay off, but the playability of the game was significantly improved.

    Naming a character “skibidi” is moronic in the sense that, this is already a meme. If it get put in the game, they’re just trying to be cool for the sake of it. It’s a very “hello, fellow kids” kind of thing.

    Borderlands, instead, should have some creativity with what’s being said and done in the game. Take a look at Tina for a second. When she’s introduced, she’s unapologetically strange. You either work with her on that level, or not at all. IMO, that’s why Tina is a fan favorite. The absurd and borderline insane statements she constantly makes is the reason that she is so well liked. She makes sense in an almost frightening and sociopathic way… And we love that about her.

    Going to the length of dragging Gen Z memes into the game for no good reason isn’t going to help, and will, in all likelihood, make things very bad. It’s just, in bad taste, lazy, and a cop out IMO. With such interesting and absurd stuff already in the game, like butt stallion, CL4P-TP, BNK-3R, and more than I could possibly think of or remember that are amazing… They’re going to stoop to a pop culture meme instead?

    Borderlands is about being weird and original with stuff, and some things really work, others, not so much. And that’s what made the series great IMO. They took chances, and went out on a limb for a joke, sometimes literally.

    I mean, who can forget shooty mcface? That’s a footnote in a quest and it’s honestly really funny, weird and something that sticks with you. That’s what Borderlands should be. It’s not some meme pop culture reference machine.

    • Postmortal_Pop@lemmy.world
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      8 days ago

      It’s also worth pointing out that borderlands on it’s own has contributed to the cultural zeitgeist. “Looks like we got a badass” is still a regular quote when bosses appear in games. Every single character has a quotable callout and you can normally spot a BL player and their main by the one they use. Cellshade and rotoscope both has a renaissance after BL2 and cosplay contests regularly have a Moxy or Maya. The best way for Borderlands to keep it’s steam is to just be Borderlands, that alone will make the memes.

      • MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca
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        8 days ago

        This is what I’m driving at.

        Borderlands creates memes. Borderlands isn’t just shoveling in whatever memes are popular at the time of the creation of the game. They’re doing their own thing and letting the players decide what is meme worthy.

    • mostlikelyaperson@lemmy.world
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      8 days ago

      Yeah I am not sure what‘s up with the pretenses there, lowbrow and scatological humor has been very much Borderlands brand.

  • agent_nycto@lemmy.world
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    9 days ago

    Can we get whomever wrote Handsome Jack to get in charge? 2 was so great because they landed into the humor and fun of the first one instead of shying away from it.

    • whotookkarl@lemmy.world
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      9 days ago

      Burch was the head writer for 2 and pre sequel, they replaced him for 3 and I think the consensus was while the writing in 2/pre was mediocre 3 was much worse it feels like writing by committee. I’d prefer they get someone who wrote at least one semi successful book with a beginning, middle, and ending.

  • whotookkarl@lemmy.world
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    9 days ago

    Imagine if gearbox actually hired writers with experience and good credits instead of just relying on their Skinner box casino loots.

  • apotheotic (she/her)@beehaw.org
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    9 days ago

    Maybe they could go back to some of the rough, fun storytelling they nailed with the first two games? Instead of marvel-esque storytelling from the third game. Toilet humour has a place in borderlands, its filled with dumb humour and always has been, but its been in a way that feels almost natural.

    A skibidi toilet reference isn’t going to fit, because that’s a passing meme. But shit like the ninja turtles quest in bl2, all the dumb jokes in bandit weapon names, face mcshooty, scooter’s entire existence throughout the first two games, tiny Tina’s character, thats all fucking awesome because we’re all in on the joke and the only pop culture references are evergreen ones.

    What I really want from borderlands is for them to get back to the anti-corpo/anti-capitalist messaging that was rife in the first games. Borderlands 3 felt so hollow because I almost felt like I was part of one of the corps. The ragtag group wasn’t a ragtag group anymore, we had similar influence to maliwan for fucks sake and were flying all over the place dropping on planets and exerting our might. Where’s the scrappy mad max vibes?

    • Marighost@lemm.ee
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      9 days ago

      The jokes in BL/BL2 felt like their own unique jokes, contained within the Borderlands universe, because they were. BL3 had a lot of reference humor, which can be fine, but some of the memes they referenced were 3-4 years out of date and the jokes fell flat and made us groan.

      The trailer for 4 was promising, and I only realized on a second watch that it contained no jokes, which honestly I appreciated. I think it has potential, as long as Randy Shitford doesn’t do anything to fuck it up.

      • apotheotic (she/her)@beehaw.org
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        9 days ago

        I mean they made a lot of pop culture jokes in borderlands 1 and 2. But they weren’t about “current” stuff. It was, as I said, evergreen things, like lord of the rings and tmnt.

      • apotheotic (she/her)@beehaw.org
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        8 days ago

        Cliche catchphrasey dialogue/plot points. “He’s behind me, isn’t he” “did I just do that, with my freakin’ mind?” type stuff

  • Obinice@lemmy.world
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    9 days ago

    I’ve managed to avoid finding out what the slang term skibidi means so far, somehow.

    I guess it just doesn’t come up in the media I consume. Not heard Kruggsmash or Technology Connections mention it yet :-P

    But yes slang aside, I’ve never enjoyed toilet humour, even as a child. Maybe because I’m very hygienic? It just disgusts me, haha. So this is good news.

    • Flatfire@lemmy.ca
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      9 days ago

      It also doesn’t mean anything. It’s not even slang, it’s just a meme reference.

    • Maalus@lemmy.world
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      9 days ago

      Skibidi is a machinima. Like in ye olden times when we used gmod to make movies / animations / shitposts. Just another generation of people leaving their mark on the world. They do have source filmmaker now, so that makes it higher quality than the physgun posed animation way back when.

        • Maalus@lemmy.world
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          8 days ago

          Lmao no, we didn’t. You are thinking 2012. I’m thinking 2008 - DasBooSchitt with his Idiot Box series. It was a while before we got filmmaker and it was a huge gamechanger with how smooth the animation could be. No more players throwing shit with the gravity gun from the sides, no more posing a face and changing sliders to make a stop motion “animation”. No more invisible thrusters to make someone flail their arms and legs. No more physgun from the side rotating the head to simulate “talking”. That’s why vagineer had such an exaggerated face - you can’t / don’t need to make that shit talk.

          I don’t pull this quote often, but do not cite the deep magic to me, I was there when it was written. I was on Unsmart’s when Mopaz was coding the drunk combine. We had a shitload of the most talented Expression 2 minds around. We had VTOL planes, we had WW2 tanks and artillery, AC-130s which flew around the map. Hoverballs were literally the most shameful tool someone could use, everything was calculated with actual physics and applyForce / applyTorque. Those were the days. Nowadays they aren’t the days.

  • derpgon@programming.dev
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    8 days ago

    Paul Tassi joked that we were gonna have a gun called Hawk 2A and a fellow dev asked me if it was real and I wanted to put my hand down the sink grinder.

    As long as it didn’t scream “Buy muh crypto” when shooting, I would’ve loved the inside joke.

    • averyminya@beehaw.org
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      8 days ago

      Seriously, skibidi gets trashed for being brainrot but it actually has themes and a plot that’s better than 90% of the other modern content coming out.

      And tbh, better than a lot of YouTube from when I was a kid

      • Fizz@lemmy.nz
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        8 days ago

        To be fair you have to have a pretty high IQ to understand skibidi toilet. Its modern cinema that just can’t be appreciated by the layperson.

      • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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        8 days ago

        Unironically this. It proves something I have believed for a long time, that there are no bad ideas, only bad executions.

        You could have a Sonic game about how Robotnik’s penis is cursed by the Master Emerald to sing and dance when he exposes himself in public, and if done right it could be the greatest storyline in not just a Sonic game, but in all media forever.

        Skibidi Toilet is about a transhumanist war between people who have become Cameras and people who have become toilets thanks to a biological contamination. The toilets are so silly and innocous that they were able to doom the world to an apocalypse by being “Invaders coming in peace.” with only the resistance who became camera heads after seeing the danger the toilets really posed. That they weren’t just silly singing toilet people who wanted a good time, but that they were actively hostile with goals of destroying everything.

        It’s legitimately a good story and one told without any real dialogue.

  • Bronzebeard@lemm.ee
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    8 days ago

    You know some prankster programmer is going to put that in a comment somewhere for the lols now that he’s said that

  • fsxylo@sh.itjust.works
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    8 days ago

    Anyone else feel like the vault hunters in this game look generic as hell? I personally can’t wait to play… Guy in a hoodie.

  • Affidavit@lemm.ee
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    9 days ago

    If this is the message they took from Borderlands 3 then I don’t have high hopes for this game. Borderlands 3 was boring. The story was subpar and almost every single item in the game was utterly pointless due to the ridiculously high legendary drop rate.

      • apotheotic (she/her)@beehaw.org
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        8 days ago

        Legendary drop rate was tuned waaaaaaay too high. There was basically no reason to have anything non-legendary equipped past level 10 because even an underleveled legendary still performs better than your on-level blues or purples (except for uniques) and by the time it doesn’t, you’ve replaced it with another legendary because of insane drop rates.

        I found the effects fine, tbh. Some had fun gimmicks to build around, some had powerful effects, some had niche effects, and some were nice gags.

        • UntouchedWagons@lemmy.ca
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          8 days ago

          Yeah the legendary drop rate in 3 was way too high just like it was way too low in 2. I’ve played through 2 several times and only ever got a couple of legendaries. The only way I got anything better than uncommons were quest rewards or from the golden chest.

          • apotheotic (she/her)@beehaw.org
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            8 days ago

            I found the drop rate pretty reasonable in 2 considering that the legendaries had dedicated drop sources as well as just random world drops. So you could actually farm a legendary. As opposed to bl1 where all legendaries were random world drops.