Greed and Obsession in Borderlands 2

I have clocked an embarrassing number of hours in Borderlands and its sequel, but both are games about being an extremely unpleasant human being (or robot/alien/thing as the case may be for Zer0). Not a terrible human being in the style of Grand Theft Auto where running over scores of pedestrians is just a day in the life. Rather, the player slips into the standard Western RPG role of a questing and looting adventurer. An unrepentant avatar of greed and violence in a space where those values can be celebrated and questioned. For those who are not aware, Borderlands 2 is a cooperative, first-person-shooter-RPG-hybrid, with an emphasis on random loot drops and humor. The game casts the player in the role of a “Vault Hunter,” one of four mercenaries who travel to the planet Pandora in search of a legendary Vault full of loot. Upon arrival the Vault Hunters quickly become embroiled in the struggle to free the planet from the grip of the Hyperion Corporation and its CEO, Handsome Jack. The combination of randomized loot and an impressive procedural weapon generation system makes Borderlands a wonderful exercise in Skinner Boxing wherein the acquisition of better loot and EXP become the player’s primary goal. Granted, that description could be applied to just about any loot centric RPG. But unlike World of Warcraft or Phantasy Star Online or Diablo, Borderlands 2 makes greed and lust for power a central part of its narrative. Its heroes are unabashed anti-heroes; they are a living embodiment of suicidal greed in a world that not only accepts but nurtures such greed.

 

Psychos, trains, shanty-towns, and guns that shoot fire.
Just another day in the life.

For the most part, the Vault Hunters are characterized by their propensity for violence. While each has their own unique appearance, “barks,” and special abilities, they are functionally identical on a narrative level. All four—or six with DLC—share a willingness to shoot lots of poorly equipped bandits or heavily armed robots if it means more loot. By their actions these characters should be reviled rather than celebrated and Gearbox is clearly aware of this tension. Early in the game, the perpetual butt of the robotic joke Claptrap (C14P-TR4P) calls the player out for slaughtering a group of bandits by saying “Minion, what have you done? They were humans with lives and families!” only to laugh and say “just kidding, screw those jerks.” This line serves to establish multiple important themes of the game. First, it highlight’s the player’s subservient relationship to the “questing system” by having one of the lowliest characters in the game refer to the player as “minion.” Second, it serves to briefly engage, and ultimately dismiss, the reality of the player’s actions. C14P-TR4P's comment establishes Pandora as a space in which the cognitive dissonance that should exist within the game’s cycle violence and greed does not exist.

This guy is a jerk and those guys in the back need to work on their fight choreography.

In point of fact, death is a meaningless state for the Vault Hunters, and for most bandits it would seem, thanks to the abundance of the “New-U” respawn stations. For the Vault Hunters, their own death has no consequences beyond a sarcastic quip and a deduction of a fixed percentage of the player’s wealth, a loss that can easily be ameliorate with more violence. The result is a mechanic in which death is simply a momentary setback, one that encourages the player to continue the cycle of death and resurrection. Furthermore, the respawn stations often attempt to nudge the player back into the cycle of death and resurrection with comments like “Hyperion recommends swearing vengeance against whatever killed you, unless it was an inanimate object.” Ultimately what makes the Vault Hunter, and by extension the player, into an unstoppable force is their own suicidal greed. The Vault Hunters are willing to experience a constant cycle of murder, injury, death, and resurrection—with each new death sending a portion of their finances to the corporation they are fighting against—just to get more money and guns to keep fuelling the cycle. It is fitting then that the framing device for both Borderlands games is the hyper-capitalist, arms dealer Marcus telling a bedtime story to an unseen child. In telling the story of the Vault Hunters, Marcus crafts a world in which his own values reign supreme. Marcus is no hero, and neither are his protagonists. Yet they exist in a fictionalized world in which anti-heroism and greed are the most celebrated traits. The protagonists are plot devices more than characters, manifestations of suicidal greed which can save the day because their lust for adventure and wealth puts them on the right side.

 

Not even with valid receipt.

In point of fact, anti-heroism and obsession are major thematic components of both Borderlands games. The original Borderlands introduced its four Vault Hunters while Cage the Elephant’s “Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked,” played over the speakers of a bus driven by Marcus, who asserts “It’s a beautiful day full of opportunity!” Borderlands 2’s intro continues the musical introductions with The Heavy’s song “Short Change Hero,” followed by Handsome Jack commenting “It’s cute that y’all think you’re the heroes of this little adventure, but you’re not.” In fact, Handsome Jack spends most of Borderlands 2 calling the player characters “the bad-guys.” To the player, who sees all the cruelty and oppression Jack revels in, the assertion that Jack is a “good-guy” or “hero” is utterly ridiculous. Yet Jack’s characterization of the player as a bad-guy may be justified considering how willfully they wipe out entire bandit settlements in the name of loot and experience. The bandits are also aware of the player’s greed and sometimes die saying “don’t steal my stuff.” 

Much as the Vault Hunters are characterized by their obsessive greed, many other characters are consumed by their obsessions. Dr. Tanis’ obsession with The Vault drives her to madness—a hilarious madness but madness all the same. The bandits that inhabit Pandora were convicts driven mad by exposure to alien technology. Corporate lust for alien technology is a prominent background element. And Handsome Jack’s obsession with opening the Vault and acquiring greater power drives him to commit atrocities across the planet.

The game’s loot mechanics further emphasizes the game’s anti-hero elements. Whereas loot-driven games like Diablo III and Phantasy Star Online 2 have begun moving towards an individualized loot system, where by each player gets their own separate loot, Borderlands’ “early bird gets the worm” approach to loot creates a space where the players either communicate and cooperate for loot or compete for it. As Gearbox Creative Director Paul Hellquist pointed out in an interview with IGN, “[the] potentially antagonistic experiences [between players] with the loot are very in line with the world of Borderlands… it’s gonna’ be every man for himself, which is exactly [the kind of place] Pandora is” (“Borderlands 2: The Future of Loot”). In essence, individualized loot creates a systemized system that communicates underlying fairness. It declares, each player shall get what is theirs by rights. By contrast, a so-called “shared loot system” like Borderland’s fosters the “every man for himself” mentality, further incentivizing and nurturing greed and obsession.

Loot is the root of all evil.

 However, Borderlands 2 also present an example of what lies beyond the greed and destruction that the Vault Hunters engage in. Upon meeting the new Vault Hunters, Roland notes "I used to be a Vault Hunter like you, until I formed the Crimson Raiders" (Borderlands 2). Skyrim and internet meme reference aside, this statement makes Vault hunting and construction into mutually exclusive activities. In point of fact, all of the old Vault Hunters approach community building from different directions. Roland's small army of ex-Crimson Lance soldiers and their construction of the city of Sanctuary provides the most obvious example of construction after Vault Hunting. Lilith and Mordicai both join Roland's effort though they choose to do so by isolating themselves. Lilith creates the persona of "The Firehawk" in an effort to protect Sanctuary from the bandits. However, Lilith's actions accidentally inspire a cult, another community which the Vault Hunters must destroy. Mordicai and his bird Bloodwing act as a community unto themselves, while still acting as spies and informers for Roland and Sanctuary. Brick organizes a large group of bandits into a tribe known as "the Slabs." While the Slabs are still prone to the extreme violence that characterizes all bandits on Pandora, they represent a hybridization of the Vault Hunters and Sanctuary, still hyper-violent but able to come together and help others when needed.  In essence, construction and community are not foreign to Borderlands, they are simply incompatible with the role the player must fill. Organization and construction is acknowledged as an eventual maturation for the Vault Hunters, but also something that is incompatible with the greed the Vault Hunters. 

Roland, Lilith, Mordicai, and Brick: Old softies.

In the quest, “Kill Yourself,” Handsome Jack asks the Vault Hunters to either throw themselves from a cliff in exchange for a reward upon respawn or call a suicide hotline and forfeit the reward. Calling the suicide hotline has no intrinsic reward beyond the player’s pride. Granted, the pride in question is a gendered and juvenile sort of pride, highlighted by Jack’s statement that jumping makes you “his bitch” but the quest still asks the player to wager something which is systemically unrecognizable against something that has empirical valuable: Eridium. In terms of reward calculus, Eridium should win out because it cannot be purchased in game and is only available through random drops or quests, but the introduction of an intangible element into the calculus creates space for introspection. Unlike quests in World of Warcraft and Diablo which unrepentantly Skinner Box the player while telling him that he is the hero, “Kill Yourself” creates a space in which the player can confront his obsessive greed. This may be the closest the player can ever come to being heroic in Borderlands 2. It is an opportunity to momentarily reject the obsessive greed or accept it before continuing on, fully aware of the role the player fills. This is not an uncomfortable revelation as it is in Spec Ops: The Line, but it provides a level of catharsis and open honesty that is lacking from most loot oriented games. Like other western RPGs, Borderlands provides a space in which the player can enjoy their obsessive greed but asks that they acknowledge their role before they inevitably accept another quest to go out and collect exoskeletons from five more varkids. This moment of introspection into something intangible beyond Vault Hunting, provides a window into the eventual evolution of our Vault Hunters from the perpetual destroyers they are and into constructors rather than destroyers.

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Clements, Ryan. "Borderlands 2: The Future of Loot." IGN. Oct 4, 2012. Accessed: Aug 1, 2013
Gearbox Software. Borderlands 2. 2K Games. 2012. Xbox 360.