The "Bored"-erlands

I’ve been playing Borderlands 3 lately. I got it for Christmas, and I’ve been playing it since. I went from chasing bounties in Destiny 2 to vault hunting pretty quickly.

To me, the Borderlands franchise is very similar to Diablo. Not that this is a bad thing. Both involve going into an area, killing a bunch of enemies, getting a bunch of loot, and then going to the next area. It is a lot a fun, and both franchises are very good at it.

Borderlands, in particular, is very iterative. If you have played either of the first two games, you’ll be really familiar with the third. If you haven’t, then you’re going to be a little lost, especially with the plot once you get to the third. Not that it’s opaque to first-timers, but so many of the characters are referring to events that happened in the first two without explanation. It's like picking up a comic book series in the middle of the run.

And that’s actually Borderlands strength. The whole series is the closest I’ve seen to playing through a comic book, like a monthly comic book serial. The art is comic styled; the writing and characterizations, and plots all would be at home in a comic book. Characters die, but they’re never forgotten. Heroes from the previous series are still around, still interacting with the current, new heroes. It’s all very well done, and a lot of fun to interact with.

That being said, I’m at a point in Borderlands 3 that feels really similar to a point that I got to in Borderlands 2; I’m getting bored. I’m towards the end of the campaign, but I’m at least four levels above the enemies I’m facing, I think because I like to chase all the little side-quests that I can. All of the loot that’s dropping is much lower than my equipped gear. I’m basically picking it up for the cash at this point, but I’ve got a lot of cash and not much to spend it on.

I’m pushing through because I like the story, and want to see how it ends, but also I want to get to level 50 and the endgame and see how it stacks up. There was a point in the campaign where I hit a sweet spot, where the enemies were challenging and the loot was good, but then I grew faster than the game intended. I’m hoping that the endgame will get me back into that spot.

But it makes me wonder, why are the campaign missions set at a certain level? Why doesn’t the game scale to the level of the player? They’ve built this into the cooperative play of the game, where you can join someone else’s game, and the enemies and loot will match your level. Why does that only kick in during multiplayer? One of the reasons why I’ve been chasing the side missions is that when I played Borderlands 2, I ignored the side missions and went back to them later, and they were basically pointless, because the enemies were all way below me, and the loot was as well. This time around, I followed the side missions, and in doing so, boosted my level past that of the main missions. It seems like the best solution would be to make it so that the missions scale to the player.

I haven’t tried playing the campaign with randos, but I think I’m going to give that a whirl soon. They’ve made one of the endgame events, The Maliwan Takedown, scaleable for different size groups, but only until the end of the month (again, why isn’t it like this all the time?), so I’m trying to get to level 50 soon so that my brother and I can take a crack at it together. All of my friends who have the game made it to the endgame months ago, so I’m scrambling to catch up.

Overall, Borderlands 3 is a great game, a definitely a fun way to spend some time smashing things. It’s really neat to play after playing through the first two chapters, and both of those games are worth picking up if you haven’t already. I’m looking forward to getting to the endgame, but I have my concerns. Again, it seems similar to Diablo, where you kill enemies to get better loot to kill tougher enemies to get even better loot, and I just don't know how sustainable that loop is. For now, though, I'm just enjoying the wild, crazy ride.