Giant Bombcast 601: Chief Daedra Officer

I wish I had bought Bl3 off a reputable site, so i could get my money back. As Jeff mentioned, I am glad I figured out which class I wanted to use early, no thanks to the game itself. If I had to play through the beginning, 100% unskippable, godawful story parts much deeper, I would have never done it. Can't believe I even made it to the second planet, but the sidequest with the hamburger cafe asshole repeating the same bark every 30 seconds into a sidequest that took 45 minutes did me in, there is no way someone actually playtested that. That should be illegal.

As a dog who's loving BL3 and playing it every day with partner & friends,
I can't wait to hear some opinions on this game!

U^ｪ^U

Edit: Well, that went pretty much how I expected.
I'm really happy @unastrike is here so it's not just a negative echo chamber.

challenges do display in BL3, just go to the universe level of the map

I can only assume they were non plused about BL3.

It sounds like the writing in BL3 is just as bad as or worse than it was in BL2. I didn't think it was possible.

Jeff.zone is leaking through

No free video this week?

But Ben the new Guilty Gear trailer came out of TGS!

Considering none of them were super hot(as far as I know) on BL1 or 2, and only Brad is reallly into Destiny or any other loot driven(shlooter, mmo, etc) this reaction doesn't surprise me. They just don't like loot games. Comparing gear and stats shouldn't HAVE to be "straight forward".

That said, to say "it's just more borderlands" is a disservice imo. The changes they've made to the guns(you know, the main point of the game) with the different manufactures and mode switching etc along with the new classes makes the game feel different enough.

I personally can't wait for the DLC.

@reap3r160: i played through the entirety of BL1 and 2 (except the DLC), but I think you're right I might just not be a looter kind of guy. Loot systems are like a tertiary interest for me.

this is, i promise, honest-to-god feedback trying to be constructive: ben can you please stop yelling lol it makes things genuinely hard to listen to, even when you make an attempt to lean away from the mic, which i see you try to do often

you're doing great work on this site and i love your personality otherwise, so keep it up

I apologise in advance I just might be having a bad day but...that whole ESA portion made me physically sick how in the capital F does the ESA have the gall to think E3 can continue in any way shape or form after the info leeks to hell with that let it burn

I doubt staff will see this, but the item in BL3 that has red text that says “Want to see a magic trick?” also has text right under it that says something about “Healgasm all over yourself...” so I think their read of it was SUPER charitable.

I've been waiting for everyone's take on BL3. They responded pretty much how I expected

@reap3r160: Jeff was absolutely in love with with BL1. Just listened to the old podcasts that discussed it not to long ago.

@cyrusraven: um by doing away with the journalists all together and making it a fan centered fest like Gamescom or Pax? Doesn't seem that hard to figure out. Not only Giantbomb but most major "gaming" sites seem to have total disdain for it anyway over the years, and companies would rather just have their Directs or E3 shows anyway.

I said this in another thread, but I'll repeat it here: Borderlands 3 feels like a game that missed its release window by 4 or 5 years.

Some of the gameplay improvements like sliding and mantling would have felt like a good natural extension on things it came out a couple of years after BL2, but given the length of time between the games, it just kind of fails to register. And while BL as a series has always been incredibly referential, a lot of their humor is showing its age. There was a Office Space reference in one of the areas and all I could think about (1) the joke wasn't even funny and (2) whether the primary age demographic playing the game is even old enough to remember that movie.

A lot of other "improvements" are technically better, but also implemented in a way the feels dated. The map screen is a mess and constantly centers on fast travel stations rather than the player, the various levels are confusing and difficult to navigate, and challenges are buried on a single layer of the map rather than their own menu, which is completely unintuitive.

Plus, I think the humor has moved from just "bad" to officially "in bad taste." There's a shield you can get where you "healgasm" over yourself when it depletes and the item description is literally "Want to see a magic trick?" Maybe I'm just getting prudish in my old age, and if Randy Pitchford gets off on barely legal squirt porn, well, hey, whatever floats his boat. But I don't need direct references to it in the game.

I do not understand what these drastic improvements to the genre in the last 7 years are that isn't one of these games as a service type improvements, that they feel Borderlands 3 is missing. They repeatedly say those aren't even something they necessarily want, yet keep saying the game feels old and that they could have done so much more. They fail to really give any examples of what could have been added.

I do agree the general murder everything vibe is incredibly grating and a collect as junk option would be lovely, but I'm glad it's a more pure experience and isn't bogged down by Destiny style bloat.

I kinda wanna see fanart of the Pogi Boys and Natalie Portman playing Kodama with each other

I'm pretty much done with all the negativity around Borderlands 3. A lot of the comments I see/hear make me wonder if I'm even playing the same game.

I'm having a fantastic time with it, and that's really all I care about.

Kinda surprised there wasn't at least a passing mention of the Death Stranding demo during the TGS part of the news segment.

I don't know Jason's username on here or I'd tag him but if you don't want to follow Randy on twitter you can follow @dgShiftCodes and they they tweet out every shift code/promotion on that is discovered.

Bosses weren't the only problem with the first Borderlands. My biggest issue with it was that Brick was completely worthless. Roland did shit damage but he could survive at least. Brick did neither. Shotguns were also utter trash.

Kinda surprised Jeff dislikes playing Moze so much. Everything about her kit seems designed for his preferred playstyle in shooters

@unastrike

Of course Brad did the fear-mongering about Anthem when it became available on EA Access in the normal timeframe that they do with the vast majority of their games. FIFA and Madden do the same thing within about six months of launch.

@allprox: I completely agree and I don’t even like borderlands that much. Not every sequel needs be like “breath of the wild” in that it’s an massive change to the formula. More but better is fine.

I don't think there's anything wrong with the gameplay structure of Borderlands 3. It was fun before and it should be fun now too. It seems to me that the real problem with the game is that it's just not better than the previous instalments. Like Jason said it's more of an iteration than anything else.

@allprox: Well I don’t know what they’re thinking of necessarily, but there are definitely things that Borderlands could really benefit from. Whether these things are all present in games like Destiny 2, I don’t really know:

• A more cohesive world that doesn’t feel like a bunch of sectioned off areas separated by loading screens.

• Equipable armor pieces to add more variety to loot and character customization.

• More interesting tasks for players to tackle together, like dungeons in the style of Destiny’s strikes or raids.

• Stats and damage numbers that are easy to read and make it less tedious to compare equipment.

• Some sort of crafting system, or at the very least some way to dismantle unwanted guns into useful components so that most of your loot doesn’t just amount to vendor trash.

I had a real good laugh when Jeff says that the same character repeats the same line of dialogue "bla bla bla alien garbage who cares?" and they don't change it at all. That is basically Borderlands in a nut shell.

BL3 sounds like any other Gearbox game. Awful writing and gameplay that's completely stuck in the past. No innovation happening there whatsoever.

Every time Brad suggests the "looter shooter" genre has improved since Borderlands i feel immense rage.

Poor Alex not meeting his favorite director

Was pretty excited to hear what they all thought of BL3 especially since it feels like it's aping Destiny a bit more. Disappointing to hear it didn't seem to work for most of the staff. Besides the writing not be great (which it's never been) I feel like the game is a huge improvement. Guns are actually unique from one another, exploration is actually rewarded, and the 4 classes are all alot of fun.

Jeff not thinking Moze has good skills may be in for a treat with since she has basically an infinite ammo build and seems to get really good later in the game.

The complaints about diversity in planets was a bit strange considering this handled exactly like Destiny's planets. Different strokes I guess.

I love destiny but it being the bar that all looter games are supposed to clear is strange. I much prefer the way Borderlands handles things but different strokes I guess.

iTunes feed has been down for over a month now. :(
Where are the top men?

@tikicobra: I definitely don't want to defend the game to death because I wish the quality of the dialogue was far better and I think some of your points are valid.

At the same time though I think some of them are a matter of perspective. They've somewhat sacrificed the cohesive world to have this planet gimmick but Destiny has the same style of planet based areas with a section of planet that you explore and do missions on.

They have a score on the loot now which I've found a little better for comparing stuff. It's not perfect because the rarity seems to skew it more than it should but it's useful to make me second guess if I should keep something or not at a glance. I've found many of the common weapons you'd think are junk are actually the more reliable straight forward variants that are good if you want a decent default weapon with no weird effects on it.

Armor and crafting absences are a design decision in my eyes to reduce the amount of loot you're picking up. I think they want your focus on offense and then have some shields and skins to at least somewhat cater to defense and looking different. If they add a bunch of armor parts and gun components to pick up it suddenly might get even worse on the inventory management side of things.

The missions can be fairly fetchy or "go here shoot these guys" but there are some interesting missions I've done already about 10 hours in. I can't speak to whether there are raid style or more involved puzzley missions later but earlier games did toy with those ideas during the endgame.

I just think the arguments that it feels old are a little unfounded from what the crew are saying. It definitely doesn't have live events, faction currencies and those sorts of things from GaaS implementations but it doesn't need those for what it's doing.

Weird how the character who has always been 'I speak in innuendo because I have a lot of casual sex' would have a shield that says 'Healgasm'.

When Jeff made the Family Guy comparison...yeah. I'm absolutely, 100% not interested in getting Borderlands 3 at this point.

I fall on Ben's "open bar" side of the analogy. I'm enjoying BL3's looting and shooting. I never came to it for the "jokes".

I’m not a marketing genius or anything but wouldn’t the best way to increase public interest in e3 involve moving the show to the weekend? I guess Gamescom doesn’t need that, but that also seems like a show worth taking time off of work and travelling for..

Watched Gmanlives Borderlands 3 review this morning and it's like he's showing/talking about a different game than the GB crew played. You can easily restock all ammo. The gun variety is crazy. And it looks amazing, visually. I actually wasn't interested at all until watching.

I loved BL2 and followed the recent drama like everyone else, but feel like GB are sour on this game in a really weird way. Some of what they say is childish and unreasonable. Jeff's whole "It should be entire planets!" is like the stuff a 5th grader says. And Mortal Kombat 11 should have 100 characters! What a crap game!

It'd be a more honest discussion to compare it to what else is out there: Destiny, Division 2 and Anthem. It's not like those games have gigantic worlds you go to and explore either. That'd be impractical to build and no game has done it (even Mass Effect's planets are very small and linear). Those games also don't have anything close to BL3's weapon variety (It even has the 2016 Doom shotgun that plays the Doom stinger music!)

Different strokes for different folks, I guess. I'm not super hyped on it but some of the recent review coverage got my interest and reminded me how much I enjoyed BL2. Destiny and Division don't do it for me, so this is a lot more appealing.

I really don't get it. BL1 and 2 nailed the sub-genre on the first try, and every other one has been a pale imitation. Destiny still has a little better gunplay I suppose (though the gap is much smaller), and great art direction, but its guns and classes are boring, and its RPG mechanics are so practically non-existent that they may as well be actually non-existent. I find The Division boring as well, although if you prefer third-person and a realistic setting it's probably you're cup of tea.

BL3 is super fun, with vastly improved combat from 2, and the loot, classes and progression mechanics are still flat-out superior to those of every other loot shooter. The writing is whatever, I chuckle now and then but am overall lukewarm on it, but it's never been the main point to me. I'm only what feels like halfway through it so far, so I don't know what its endgame systems are like, but it's an easy GotY for me... Or it would be, if if MHW: Iceborne hadn't also come out. It's an easy and close number 2, in any case.

I think most of them, especially Jeff and Brad, are just not that into Borderlands to begin with, and were for some reason expecting this to sway them.

@lonelyspacepanda: I think it's disingenuous to think that their sourness is unfair, it's okay that they dislike it and the ammo issue is absolutely relevant, I picked mozes unlimited mags class to specifically ignore a series long issue. It might not bother you, but it's absolutely there.

And more "honest"? I think that, again, we're not giving credit to sincere impressions here. Many of jeff's gripes, especially his issue of not finding the right character and being too far in to retread, is absolutely valid. They did admit the shooting and gunplay felt fun but the variety of guns vs the sort of archetypes that are becoming more well defined in gun manufacturers is absolutely true. It makes it feel like the millions of guns possible are too well split off into categories and the feel of new guns, at least until you get into the late game I suspect, is very much "20 different kinds of guns with a million different stats"

And I LOVED bl2, but that's because of gaige the mechromancer. One of my main gripes about the series is that they create really cool builds that become it's own "class" but these unique ones never carry over. the main pet, turret/gunner, stealth, and siren archetypes are absolutely there. But the kreigs, the claptraps, the Nishas, and so on are never going to come back. So it sucks for you if you found a class in a previous game you loved TOO much. Worse yet, most people just say "go play bl2 then" when that's absolutely not the sort of response you can even make when borderlands is a series based on "more of the same but with some improvements" and the main 4 still have similar identities - albeit expanded and refined each installment

I felt bad for Jeff about the moze build he decided to go with, it's definitely the shield skill tree. It's a failing of the game that they still have extremely uninteresting and unimpactful trees like that shield one, and I definitely prefer the unlimited ammo tree

Goddammit. I started listening to Waypoint and it opened with a story about Rob Zacny baking English muffins and I was so bored I switched to the Bombcast and it's more effing baking talk! A bad omen for my morning?

The ammo issue is only present very early on. It's mostly a result of the fact that you're only using pistols in the beginning, and the pistol ammo pool isn't balanced around the 20+ round mag, full-auto pistols you're shooting. BL2 had the same problem, except worse because it was several levels before you start getting many guns that weren't pistols. 3 wastes little time dropping you other stuff, and once you get to the ship and can get the first couple ammo capacity upgrades, it mostly becomes a non-issue. I'm also playing Moze, but not an Endless Mags build, and since getting to the ship for the first time, I've run out of ammo for a gun like... Less than 5 times total, not counting heavy weapons. This complaint feels like a nitpick, to me.

I also find the weapon variety to be much better than in 2. BL2 had weapons categorized into archetypes based on manufacturer as well, but BL3 seems to have two or three different archetypes per gun type with most manufacturers, and they're mostly pretty fun to use. I actually like Torgue guns now, which I rarely used in BL2. It's still monumentally superior to the other loot shooters in terms of gun variety.

Pretty easy to guess Jeff's views on BL3 after last week. Bad taste in his mouth from the jump

also why does Jeff play the most boring way possible and then blame the game

AND I SHUOULD HAEV NOWN THAT YOU GUYS WOULDNT APRESHIATE REAL COMEDY BORDERLADS IS THE FUNNIEST GAME SOF ALL TIME THANKS FOR READYING