A Podcast About Space Lasers - Let's Play Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel

Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel! It’s the prequel to the sequel to the first Borderlands! At first blush it seems like it’s just more Borderlands 2 (which Panzer and I just finished LPing over here!) but I can give you a quick rundown about this new entry.

Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel is a first person shooter set on the shithole planet moon of Pandora – Elpis! It’s overrun by psychos, mad robots, and wildlife Australians that want to kill you. There’s some kind of story going on where the CEO a programmer for an evil corporation is trying to awaken a mystical beast to destroy the planet stop the moon from getting blown up by a big space laser, but that’s not really that important. Here’s what’s really different about TPS compared to BL2:

  • the playable characters are way better designed!
  • ~MOON PHYSICS!~ you can jump real high and you can attack with your butt!
  • the playable characters talk to each other! and to NPCs!
  • the quest design is? so bad??? oh my god??

Much like Borderlands 2, whenever we finish replaying that game for the dozenth time we hop right back into this one for another go. We love these games, and we’ve wanted to LP them for a while, but every time we tried it just never felt right. For us the comfort in Borderlands was just a way for us to shoot the shit while we shoot the shit. So we figured the best way to retain this casual approach would be to stream it!

For the past several weeks Panzer and I have been streaming Borderlands: The Pre-Squel on my Twitch channel. If you care to catch us live, we usually play on Sundays at 3PM PST. If you can’t be around for them or the streaming thing just isn’t your scene, then this thread is for you! Please enjoy this easily paused and rewound format to watch at your own pace. If you wish to experience our Twitch chat along with the video, simply enable Closed Captions on the video! If you don’t care for chat, don’t sweat-- just leave that sucker off! Panzer and I do our best to explicitly mention if we’re speaking to or answering questions from chat so you shouldn’t find us saying random things out of context.

Due to the casual stream format, videos will typically be around 25-45 minutes long. Like our Borderlands 2 thread, we’re going to start with two uploads a week to build up just a little more of a backlog and then soon after transition to three videos a week. Also, fair warning to the Borderlands purists out there… we cheat our asses off. Where’s the fun in the game if we aren’t getting sick guns all the time? General commentary/video/audio quality might be a little all over the place as we go on due to me not editing this by hand, but the moment we actually start to care about that stuff is when we lose track of why we like to play Borderlands in the first place. Our playthrough is going to be chill as fuck, yo.

We don’t have a game spoiler policy, but all we ask is if you’ve seen our streams to not explicitly tell people what we do in future videos!

Panzer will start playing as Nisha; one of the game’s base characters. Nisha’s action skill is to enter Showdown-- having the game take control of her aim for her as it auto targets all her enemies for several seconds with near perfect accuracy and increased damage. It’s a bit of a far cry from her days as Gaige in BL2! As the resident cowgirl, a lot of her abilities are about making her shoot guns gooder. She is also incredibly horney for violence (and Jack).

If you want to learn more about Nisha’s skill trees, you can find it here. Panzer usually picks skills from the middle and right trees.

Kaubocks - Today at 4:22 PM
gonna add aurelia to the OP
anything in particular u want me to write

Panzer - Today at 4:24 PM
she kicks ass

If you want to learn more about Aurelia’s skill trees, you can find it here. Panzer usually picks skills from the right tree when we’re playing co-op.

I will start playing as Claptrap; another of the game’s base characters. Claptrap’s action skill is… everything? He has several possible abilities it can randomly choose from, but the most important thing is your co-op partners also get these “buffs” applied whether they want it or not. I am picking Claptrap solely to annoy Panzer. He’s also the only character who doesn’t need to really engage in this game’s oxygen mechanic which honestly is kind of so minor it’s barely worth mentioning.

If you want to learn more about Claprap’s skill trees, you can find it here. I don’t plan on playing as him for very long, but I’ll likely stick with the right tree.

I got Claptrap out of my system, so I’ve switched to Athena! She’s another base character, and as we’ve seen from the intro cutscene she’s considered the main character. She’s kind of a three entirely separate playstyles? Her action skill is to pull up her shield Aspis, absorbing all damage taken from the front and releasing it in a Captain America-style throw. Her trees focus on self- and team-preservation, melee damage, and elemental damage.

If you want to learn more about Athena’s skill trees, you can find it here. My favorite is a mix of the left and right trees, and I hope to show it off in full at some point.

We hit our capstones, so I’ve switched to my favorite playable Vaunt Hunter – Jack! (Sorry, Krieg!) The Doppelganger is a DLC character and he’s a blast to play. His action skill is to summon even more (digital) Jacks as turrets to attack your enemies, with skill trees to make them more powerful and another to give you buffs when they kill things or they die. His last skill tree is very flavorful, focusing on the brands of guns you use and the money you pick up.

If you want to learn more about Jack’s skill trees, you can find it here. I primarily focus on the middle with a sprinkle of the left.


“no” ~ wilhelm

Episode #1: The Only Video with Wilhelm in It
Episode #2: Deadlift Time
Episode #3: Space Sanctuary
Episode #4: Contractually Obligated to Reference Australian Things
Episode #5: Borderlands Austin Powers
Episode #6: Sleepy Sidequests
Episode #7: The Pickle Part
Episode #8: Literal Fart Jokes
Episode #9: One Weird Elevator
Episode #10: Let’s Build a Robot Army
Episode #11: Light Buzzass
Episode #12: Helios Assault
Episode #13: Exit Through the Airlock
Episode #14: Veins of Helios
Episode #15: Haunted Blood
Episode #16: Destroyer of the Eye
Episode #17: Combat Fatigue
Episode #18: Let’s Do Guns
Episode #19: Tiny Tick’s Story Time
Episode #20: What’s Pre-Planning?
Episode #21: It’s Not a Bug, It’s a Feature
Episode #22: Deadly Jump Pads
Episode #23: Reasons We Love Claptrap
Episode #24: Reasons We Don’t Love Claptrap
Episode #25: Beginning of the End
Episode #26: Cutie Kitty
Episode #27: The Worst for Last

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These two things are like a cursed gift exchange.

It’ll be interesting to see the Pre-Sequel, since I have no idea what happens in it at all. I do wonder what uh…what Claptrap’s actual ability is. Like, I’m not sure what to expect with the way it’s described. Good to see it’s what I thought…though I imagine that can be quite annoying if you use it and get…like, a bird or whatever.

…okay yeah I don’t get the Lilith hate. She’s done…nothing? At all?

Is this Clap Trap the same one in two?

Yep.

Kaubocks, idk if you already got the community patch working but if not: unlike the BL2 one it doesn’t spit any messages at you or anything after you activate it. This threw me for a loop until I looked at my character’s skill trees and saw they were in fact updated.

the great news is that by the end of this video game it will have made several strong arguments for why she is, as they say, “the bad”

nah i was just running into issues getting BLCMM to hex edit what it needed to for Pre-Sequel. i hadn’t installed TPS until after i had sett up BLCMM and it’s been weird about it, but i’ve been too lazy to reinstall BLCMM or whatever. honestly TPS is short enough that i may be too lazy to install it just to fix the ammo shops lmao, dunno what other changes the TPS community patch brings

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The main reason I got it was Moonstones are now auto-pickup.

To be fair, she did fuck up the whole endgame of BL2 by allowing Jack to open the Vault and get the Warrior after being explicitly told to stay away because people were afraid exactly that would happen. Not exactly her most shining moment. I don’t personally hate her character, but there are some strong arguments, and they start from pretty much the moment she gains actual characterization.

That sounds like a good reason

the great thing about the pre-sequel is it pretty quickly shows you all the fun new mechanics you have available to you now that the game is set on the moon

Episode #2: Deadlift Time

3 Likes

The small kraggons are cute and should be friends instead.

Yeah this is looking a lot more fun than Borderlands 2, so far. And Claptrap somehow…perfectly embodies “lolrandom” in a way that isn’t terrible? Impressive.

i almost forgot to post this episode because it’s christmas! then panzer yelled at me to post it before i go over to her place before christmas!! i dunno who’s gonna watch this today because it’s christmas!!!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Episode #3: Space Sanctuary

2 Likes

The post mortem quests in Borderlands have always been my favorite I think, thanks to how…they do at least try to be inventive with em.

I wonder what Nel did to deserve his dick-calling.

did you guys know that the pre-sequel was made in australia?? :scream:

Episode #4: Contractually Obligated to Reference Australian Things

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I’m not gonna lie for about a month I thought Kaubocks was Dan, just because I’d never heard the latter speak before and you guys just have such fantastic comedic chemistry.

The OZ stuff really seems like a “why even bother with this mechanic then?” sort of thing, given how much they trivialize it. Why even make it a thing?

getting pretty far ahead of my video backlog, so let’s bump this up to three updates a week! Let’s see

  1. how well i remember this when i don’t have a job to keep me on routine
  2. how much i regret this when i travel next week

Episode #5: Borderlands Austin Powers

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“No UI, whatsoever”

YEah that’s how we get Fable 2. Let’s not make Borderfable 3.

Thats some good SEO

Maybe you should double down on this brand.

I’ve always liked the idea of claptrap’s support/healing tree in this game but could never get anyone to play it for long enough before they got bored of the pacing, I don’t think that tree works when you’re alone.

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what a strange throwaway use of an identical twin story hook. this game is weird.

I remember when I first played that identical twin quest, I was expecting at least some kind of twist, like maybe Dierdre would be the evil twin after all. I mean, she commands a bunch of scavs and whatnot, and she immediately went to murder to solve her problems. It could’ve been a joke about how this new batch of Vault Hunters have a tendency to help bad people!

But no, the “evil twin” is really evil after all, and that’s it.

Anyway, thank you Kaubocks for showing me what kind of chaotic nightmare Claptrap is without making me play him myself. Thank you, and bless you for your sacrifice.

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in today’s video, panzer and i get real sleepy as we knock out a few of what little sidequests this game has to offer

Episode #6: Sleepy Sidequests

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