Games: Borderlands 3

2026-05-28

Games I have covered thus far are slow-paced experiences: puzzles that you piece together to reveal their secrets. They tell you a story without expecting you to be decisive in your actions. Borderlands 3 (hereinafter referred to as “Borderlands”) is the exact opposite (spoilers throughout this article). It is a first-person shooter with many intense moments of action. You do not need to be a commando yourself to have a fun time, but you definitely have to have a decent mastery over the controls.

I am a fan of the gameplay. Shooting is precise and the feedback direct. Enemies are generally easy to discern as they stand out from their environment. Their motions are basic so you will quickly figure out how to exploit their weaknesses. In this sense, the game is easy. I personally like it that way as it contributes to the absurdity and lightheartedness of its lifeworld. It would make no sense for those hordes of cultist psychos to be at once delirious in fanaticism and assiduous in their every decision.

My favourite part of the violence is those critical hits that you can score with a precision gun. Once I got my hands on a sniper rifle I was going around “bang! bang! bang!” with the headshots. By contrast, the assault rifles and submachine guns felt underwhelming. It is preposterous to have those unarmoured maniacs take thirty bullets to the stomach without flinching. Though I make an exception for some “epic” weapons that would just annihilate everything. I had one such shotgun which turned an otherwise challenging boss fight into a 4-second press of the trigger.

Borderlands is proudly silly and self-deprecating. It has a certain humour that you may love or hate. I find it appealing. The characters you meet are flat and uninspiring, which I think is a perfect fit. Why would we even make pretences to intellectuality when we are here to pop off some heads? I would find it unsettling if, say, Vaughn was contemplating the implications of his existential angst, even though he looks a little bit like a certain philosopher I know! To me he is not a believable character. He is a talking head that gives you orders and provides colour commentary for a little while until some other equally uninteresting figure takes over.

What the cast of characters does well is express unhinged opinions while behaving casually. As outsiders, we may think this is over-the-top, though we can also take the view of the anthropologist in describing without judging how other people behave. In this regard, the delivery is super effective in highlighting the underlying values of such a futuristic wild west. The only law in this land of danger and opportunity is that of the gun. Individualism and cut-throat competition are the governing principles as each person is set on a path towards personal enrichment and glory.

There is no such thing as legitimacy in this world. Courts of law, correctness of conduct, and tolerance of diverse opinions are the kind of conventions that have no place in the hypercapitalist normality of the Borderlands. The supreme powers that mobilise resources are private corporations which engage in business deals using either financial or martial means. Kind of how Western Europeans conducted trade in East Asia during the Colonial Age, as both businesspeople and pirates.

In this regard, Borderlands provides commentary on some of the excesses germane to our world. History is, in large part, a record of humanity’s inexhaustible capacity for cruelty. Many insatiable butchers of men are remembered with the epithet “the Great” or variants thereof. The most greedy CEOs are revered as prophets of the one true money-god for their remarkable consistency in sacrificing everything to the altars of profit. The villains in Borderlands are social media personalities with a massive cult following who end up being as shallow as our world’s celebrities.

If anything, the fantasy horrors of the game pale in comparison to the brutality that we can now bear witness to in 4K definition. And that we do with indifference, using it as yet more fodder for our doomscrolling mindlessness. Our politics and social norms are increasingly influenced by pernicious memes. We are made to follow greater-than-life characters qua caricatures who speak nonsense and are dead serious in the same sentence.

It is all jokes and gimmicks until you are sent to the front lines to die for the interests of some lobbyist nerds. They are cowards. They will never lead by example. Instead, they will make you, the desperate yet capable fellow, give up your life for their unholy cause. And in times of peace they will ruthlessly harvest your organs for their evil rituals. At least in the Borderlands you have the option to digistruct yourself for another round. Whereas here you get the middle finger and are even happy to have received some attention.