Wherein I talk about the ending

Every night for the last week I've contemplated doing a post or two but then I get tracked by things that are you know, fun or worthwhile (okay I'm lying about that, nothing I do is worthwhile).

Part of the problem is that the times when I'm thinking about post ideas (eg while showering, while trying to fall asleep) are not times when I can easily do something about it.
In addition, while I am thinking up the myriad of posts I will not post, my ideas and concepts seem so very much more sensible and clear. Unlike my paragraphs which frequently change topic jarringly but rather flow from one to another like shining threads of thought (that imagery made so much sense in my head, on the screen it's just retarded).

A lot of this stems from the fact that although I think in complete sentences, I leave out all the detail and grammatical filler. Imagine a movie where all the subtle character development/interaction was omitted and you were left with all the dramatic gestures and profound statements. That's how I think; I don't need to be introduced and become attached to the characters/ideas, I already know everything there is to know and can cut to the chase.

On a side note, if people every develop psychic powers it will either revolutionise all fiction....or destroy it utterly.

Funny, what was meant to be a brief intro somehow turned into four paragraphs (although by now it shouldn't be surprising to me given the state of many previous posts). Anyway tonight I will be discussing the ending of Borderlands.

It goes without saying-

(think about)

The plot of Borderlands is a thin is it can get; if it was ice I would caution you not to walk on it. You play as a treasure hunter/mercenary who has just landed on the planet Pandora, a place that is post-apocalyptic in every way except for the actual apocalypse.

Upon arriving at some joke of a town (pop. 23) a mysterious looking woman talks to you in your head as a distorted image of her flickers in your vision. This is the 'guardian angel' and she urges you to search for the Vault (a rumoured treasure trove of alien tech). Throughout the game she points out where to head to next and politely but insistently tells you to hurry and find it before it opens.

Borderlands supports listening to inner voices

Naturally one assumes there's going to a reveal, twist and/or betrayal by the angel at some point. That's what all but the best and worst fiction in the world does. Further more, having played plenty of games I knew the Vault wasn't going to just be full of treasure and end in smiles and rainbows.

While wasting time on TV Tropes I accidentally came across some spoilers for Borderlands and although I tried to avoid reading it phrases along the lines of 'face full of tentacle rape' tend to attract attention.

From these partial spoilers I assumed that the angel was a small scale cosmic horror trapped in the Vault and trying to trick you into freeing it. Then I got up to the end. And was disappointed.

So what actually happened? Well the Vault turns out to be a portal from this emerges:

Yes we all know what it looks like, get your mind out of the gutter

The angel then informs me that the Destroyer is vulnerable in this world. I kill it, am informed that it's gone for another 200 years, and then the camera zooms out to reveal a satellite with the word angel on the side.

What's annoying is that at no point was there any indication that a god-like being from some other universe was going to come through a portal. I was expecting a twist or some craziness at the end, even before reading the spoiler but I was expecting there to be some foreshadowing and for it to involve previously introduced characters and elements.

Also the last boss was kind of a pushover.

There was one bit of foreshadowing. The planet was called Pandora and I was trying to open a Vault. That should have set off alarms in my head but instead I just assumed it was a case of a random mythological name being used cause it sounds cool. After all, I was playing as Lilith the Siren who specialised in going invisible and elemental attacks; I had good reason to think there wasn't any meaning present.

What I can't decide is if calling the planet Pandora was genius or unimaginative. Did they use the name because they couldn't come up with anything subtle or clever, or did they very sneakily double-bluff me and all the other gamers by making us think that they wouldn't do something so obvious.

And because there can never be enough mentally unbalanced characters played for laughs, here's Patricia Tannis who in my opinion stole the show.

I wouldn't have cared if the entire game had been shoot bandits whilst Tannis goes off on non-sequiturs. Hell I would have loved it.