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[UXLZ]

I do dislike the lack of interactivity with Borderlands' story, but...

Also, I never said I hated Jack, I just said that he was a villain that you did have a connection with. I mean, it's not necessary, but it makes villains better. He wasn't an amazing villain from the normal sense, but... That voice acting. xD

[McDonald]

Oh man, these respawning stations. When

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

 Handjob killed Roland, why didn't he respawn? Or go into fight for your life? How did he get OHKed, when it's impossible? I hate you, Borderlands.

[Darkmere]

Gameplay and Story Segregation, TVTropes link redacted, search at your own risk.

The thing is, Borderlands just at its core isn't an RPG. It's a hack 'n slash with guns instead of swords.

I like the formula... it's a damn good formula. But it will never have the depth that I crave from a real RPG and I'm glad they aren't trying. THat's not to say it wasn't a colossal let-down that there's not even a single line between Lilith and Maya mentioning anything about the sirens at all.

For that matter I think it was really jarring to me to suddenly have the player characters from 1 be more formed characters... as I'm dropped into the body of an invisible one-liner fountain yet again. Don't get me wrong, there were many, many great changes to what is *actually* important (the gameplay!) but the lack of advancement on story fronts was a little disheartening. I got over it and started shooting stuff with crazy-ass rocket shotguns and burst fire grenade rifles and homing black hole electric grenades, though.

[UXLZ]

It's an issue of gameplay and story segregation, yes, but since they integrated the respawn points into the game world itself it doesn't work that way.
Seriously, they should have just had you pop back into existence at the start of the area. Maybe make checkpoints glowing balls of light or something. In those cases, it's easy to mark it off as 'oh, I'm the player, of course that's going to happen' but with respawn points? Recorded messages from the company talking to as you respawn? Yet for some reason the player characters are the only ones who can ever use them and they're never mentioned by other people? Sorry, WSoD can only go so far.

[Darkmere]

Right, and I completely get what you're saying. I think it's a symptom of the same plot problems here. There's a duality between zaniness and a very strong undertone of the macabre desperation of the shithole that Pandora really is, but the game design is unable to find a thin line to walk, instead tottering over from madcap to maudlin with disturbing regularity.

[nenjin]

It's a decent game and 2 was better than 1. It always had the promise of finding something new which is a big draw to me in games. Mechanically it's fairly casual, and that's ok too. But when you drop the story on top of it, it all somehow takes a turn for the irritating.

[UXLZ]

I just think they really, really mishandled the respawning system, which fucks with the plot and introduces massive, gaping holes in the story.

Take Diablo 2 as an example of it being done right. They're similar games. In Diablo 2, you just sort of appear back in town missing your inventory. There's no explanation for it whatsoever. Hell, it makes even less sense because you can go collect your stuff off your own corpse but nobody ever questioned it because willing suspension of disbelief made up for it. It didn't need an explanation. It was just a sort of 'Well, I'm the player, of course I respawn when I die' and it didn't introduce massive gaping plot holes like 'Wait a minute, when X died why the hell didn't they just respawn like I've done a million times in a million different situations?'
Torchlight 2 is another similar one, done slightly differently yet still a lot better than the Borderlands series.

------

Peeve: Boss fights that you have to win to advance the plot but when the fight is over the story acts like the boss won and was kicking your ass the entire time. Why the hell didn't they just make it an unwinnable boss battle? 

[Neonivek]

Peeve: Boss fights that you have to win to advance the plot but when the fight is over the story acts like the boss won and was kicking your ass the entire time. Why the hell didn't they just make it an unwinnable boss battle?

I've seen it justified only a hand-full of times

Either that
A) If you lost then the boss just up and murdered you, rather then holding out until he injured you.
-In one game in particular that is the case. If you do badly and the boss kills you, he uses his finishing attack and it kills off your team. If you do well, he uses the same finishing attack but you still have enough energy to survive the attack.
or
B) You entertained the boss

[UXLZ]

Peeve: Boss fights that you have to win to advance the plot but when the fight is over the story acts like the boss won and was kicking your ass the entire time. Why the hell didn't they just make it an unwinnable boss battle?

I've seen it justified only a hand-full of times

Either that
A) If you lost then the boss just up and murdered you, rather then holding out until he injured you.
-In one game in particular that is the case. If you do badly and the boss kills you, he uses his finishing attack and it kills off your team. If you do well, he uses the same finishing attack but you still have enough energy to survive the attack.
or
B) You entertained the boss

The first case is ehhhh. Understandable in a select few scenarios though, I guess.

The second one is still inexcusable. If the boss was just pretending to lose, it's fine, but when the game tells you that your party was losing the fight really badly the entire time (and yet you still need to actually win the fight to progress) it really pisses me off.

[Neonivek]

I said a handful of times. Usually it is exactly how you say it.

Besides the WORST case is when you outright beat the boss... and then the game goes "actually they beat you"

Rather then some vague "you did well"

[Shadowlord]

The Witcher 2 did the 'Warrior Girl' thing (the actual, proper warrior) reasonably well with Saskia. In almost all her appearances she's in full plate armor (though no helm, and excepting the Lesbomancy scene, of course.)

Except that

Spoiler: major spoiler (click to show/hide)

Dragons don't wear armor or clothes when they're in their dragon forms! (Or at least Saskia doesn't)

On the latest subject: I kind of like how Injustice: Gods Among Us's campaign had you fight each battle as the character who, according to their plot, would win it. That way you always either won and the plot continued, or you tried again. There was no winning and then being told that you actually failed. On the other hand, it gets challenging near the end of the campaign as the enemy difficulty picks up and it keeps swapping you to different characters that you may not know how to play. I ended up having to practice with them (or do the classic battle mode to get somewhat used to them - the campaign difficulty isn't very high even near the end).

[UXLZ]

The Witcher 2 did the 'Warrior Girl' thing (the actual, proper warrior) reasonably well with Saskia. In almost all her appearances she's in full plate armor (though no helm, and excepting the Lesbomancy scene, of course.)

Except that

Spoiler: major spoiler (click to show/hide)

Dragons don't wear armor or clothes when they're in their dragon forms! (Or at least Saskia doesn't)

On the latest subject: I kind of like how Injustice: Gods Among Us's campaign had you fight each battle as the character who, according to their plot, would win it. That way you always either won and the plot continued, or you tried again. There was no winning and then being told that you actually failed. On the other hand, it gets challenging near the end of the campaign as the enemy difficulty picks up and it keeps swapping you to different characters that you may not know how to play. I ended up having to practice with them (or do the classic battle mode to get somewhat used to them - the campaign difficulty isn't very high even near the end).

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

If I wanted to be really technical I could argue that her dragon form is technically called Saesenthessis rather than 'Saskia'.

[Shadowlord]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

If I wanted to be really technical I could argue that her dragon form is technically called Saesenthessis rather than 'Saskia'.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I think that's her "real" or "true" name. I don't think it's exclusive to her dragon form, it's just not something she's telling people who don't know she's a dragon because a name like that would be hard to explain. I also got the impression that she preferred "Saskia" anyways.

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

I hate when games make it impossibly hard to get hold of the good equipment, specifically FPS.
Cod has all the best guns reserved for the highest levels making longer playing players extremely OP and harder for new players to level up.
Battlefield 3 didn't let jet pilots have heat seeking missles (primary air to air attack) until they got enough experience from using the only weapon on the jet, the front mounted manually aimed machine guns, me being a new player in an old game found it impossible to get a single kill on another jet because they were all older players with all the good equipment on their jets.


A game that doesn't seem to have this problem is Titanfall, most of the starting weapons are pretty good and with the ability to buy packs of burn cards (single use, single game upgrades like replace primary weapon with amped up version of x weapon or faster speed or double xp) makes it easy for new players to still be equal to old players since everyone has access to good weapons and equipment. Even though you have to level to get new equipment the standard equipment is pretty good and the new stuff isn't OP compared to the standard stuff

[EnigmaticHat]

When DNA bubbles in Plague Inc. pop up in Alaska behind the options button so you have to zoom in to click on them.

I'm not even going to bother to make that complaint apply to any other games.  So annoying.