Too Many Spoilers to Fit into One Lootcrate for Borderlands 3!

This column is a reprint from Unwinnable Monthly #196. If you like what you see, grab the magazine for less than ten dollars, or subscribe and get all future magazines for half price.

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Finding digital grace.

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There will always be someone looking to exploit others’ feelings of inadequacy and anguish into a weapon of hatred. For the coward, it’s the only way to truly persuade people. They convince these people that they need them, that everyone else is the enemy. They drive their followers so far into the shadows that their believers can scarcely remember the light, let alone who they once were. These are not the kind of sentences one expects to write when talking about Borderlands 3, a game that has an extended series of fart jokes about a cyberpunk subway.

It’s no secret that Borderlands is a series that has long struggled with having tact. For every step they’ve made to be more inclusive and respectful, there’s another stumble that rubs people the wrong way. I am in no way endorsing the latter. Truth be told, I went into Borderlands 3 rather trepidatiously, expecting to play for a couple of hours before never thinking about it again. My past experience with the series hasn’t been the best.

Instead, over eighty hours later, I’m left pondering a great deal more than I ever could’ve anticipated. Borderlands 3 is a complicated game, yet between its more genuine moments, I’m reminded a great deal of the Harley Quinn show. Which is to say, someone realized they could use all the crassness to smuggle in both thoughtful and discomforting topics we often avoid. Namely: grief, manipulation, failure, existentialism, identity and religious heritage.

First and foremost, amongst these is the heritage and duty of the Sirens. Now a Siren has always been a class in the main Borderlands games, only absent in The Pre-Sequel. To the average player, Sirens are just the magic alt-goth class. Except if you do some digging in Borderlands 3, it’s established that Sirens are metaphysically ordained, kept to a select number that must always exist. If one dies, either their powers or new powers manifest in another chosen individually. Almost all of them being women. They’re functionally holy women incorporeally chosen through means set by ancient aliens known as the Eridians.

The Sirens are among several massive, cosmos-shaping echoes left in the wake of the Eridians. These ancient beings experimented with things they shouldn’t have, and when the dire consequences arose, they sacrificed themselves to save everyone. They’re a rare, rather direct contrast to something like the Reapers of Mass Effect. It’s made clear from the diaries of an ancient siren that the Eridians deeply regretted their mistake, and tried their damnedest to ensure all other life was protected.

To contain this threat, the Eridians built all the Vaults that players have been fighting to find across the various games. Despite many myriad promises, the Vaults actually contain their people’s greatest works – also, inexplicably modern weapons for the player, don’t think too hard about it – but yet each houses monstrosities to fend off those who would repeat the Eridian’s mistakes. The lesser monsters serve as guardians, alongside actual synthetic guardians outside each Vault. However, the Great Vault, the one players unwittingly sought out in the first game, isn’t meant to be plundered. It holds something that would consume the universe if let free.

Unable to destroy it for whatever reason, the Eridians sacrificed themselves as fuel for the Sirens of that era to at contain the Destroyer. This isn’t to say the Eridians are wholly benevolent. The reason the Great Vault on Pandora keeps opening every so often is to effectively feed the Destroyer with whomever tries to enter it. Granted, nobody seems happy about this arrangement, but it’s a brutal measure on an already hellish planet of murder and mayhem. It’s a rigged system not unlike Cabin in the Woods, and just like at the end of the movie, the would-be victims succeeding helps set off a chain of events that brings us to a nigh-cataclysm in Borderlands 3.

This backstory is important, because the antagonists of Borderlands 3 are Sirens gone wrong. The worst nightmare for the Eridians, were they alive to witness it. Continuing the subversion of typical sci-fi tropes, despite being the young inheritors of a legacy, the Calypso twins aren’t some benevolent next generation. They’re self-serving upstarts who co-opt everything for themselves. Tyreen and Troy have the unique ability to siphon life out of anything, including people. So, when they land on the barren planet Pandora, a land full of murderers and worse, they create a death cult, the Children of the Vault, to attain what the pair describe as godhood. And they’ll get it by any means necessary.

The bandits of Pandora are a population driven to the brink long before players ever arrived in the first game. It’s little surprise when Tyreen promises these broken masses a chance at not only the Vaults, but a better life, with the space-magic to seemingly prove her word, they sign up in droves. Her gleeful flock throw themselves into the jaws of death whenever it pleases their idols, with the promise that finally, their deaths serve a purpose. She can give them a target to lash out their pain upon with an absolutism on par with the Crusades.

Which is where you come in, as one of a handful of heretics who reject the Calypsos as you try to unite a worn down, fraught galaxy of disparate allies. Everywhere you go, you’re chased by the hatred and violence the Calypsos sow, danger licking at your heels like an undying inferno. They’ll do anything, including robbing series mainstay Lillith of her powers in a rather unsettling scene, and later outright killing a beloved friend of Lillith’s, all out of a lust for power. No mercy for anyone who stands in their way, or even who helps them – as Tyreen famously says with pride “I’m just not that kinda god!”

Now obviously the player characters here aren’t merciful beings of virtue. They’re Vault Hunters for goodness’ sake, in it for profit as much as ensured survival. My chosen character, Moze, is a mech pilot with PTSD and survivor’s guilt from leading new soldiers to their deaths in a corporate war. She hides it with a chipper facade, but the scars are evident. It’s to the point that when she’s told a pistol has secret powers, she starts to asks if it can remove memories, before playing it off as a joke. Her playable compatriots aren’t particularly well-adjusted people either, even the most heroic, Amara, having narcissistic and violent tendencies.

This is crucial. You’re playing as the Calypsos’ target demographic. People adrift who solve problems with violence. Except your refusal to play ball keeps being a problem, so the twins even try to co-opt your efforts. They’ll either swoop in to steal your thunder or use your actions to fan the fervor of their most devoted followers. No matter if you’re winning or losing, they twist it around to their own ends. The Twitch streamer-isms and influencer tactics aside, there’s a darker level of manipulation of real cult leaders. Instead of just killing you, they lean on every opportunity to sow doubt, discord and destruction from within. To make themselves the only alternative. It’s mostly played for laughs, this is a Borderlands game after all, only to feel uncomfortably real when the explosions die down.

It actually reminds me of a verse I was recently reading in II Timothy 3:5. Like it says there, they have a “form of godliness but denying its power.” Tyreen in particular wants to have so much power, yet the best thing she can imagine doing with it is wiping out all the stars in the sky so that only she remains. She’s willing to break a planet wide open only to reap more misery out of heedless greed. Unlike the antagonists of prior games, her plan doesn’t have a real endgame. I don’t think that’s poor writing though, because with this kind of self-serving malice, no end is worthy enough. She’s determined to keep going until she can’t, and when that moment comes, she’d rather burn it all down.

Like so many who hunger for power, she has no goal beyond the desire to own and consume. She and her brother seek, only to ensure they’ll never truly understand. That’s a perfect irony given they were raised by the first Vault Hunter, Typhon Deleon. They had so many secrets of the universe at their fingertips, yet they chose to be monsters. Their father, like the Eridians of old, was merely curious, and humble enough to know when to stop.

That’s the heart of Borderlands 3. Whether it’s the main campaign or the DLC, it’s a condemnation of self-serving excess. Yes, that’s a weird message for a game all about grinding for dozens of hours to accrue a ludicrously large arsenal of weapons, but it works. Nobody is perfectly heroic in this series, yet those who try to actually do right in Borderlands 3 tend to be the ones who are content to recognize that our grasp of the world is finite. Typhon, after all his journeys you listen to via audiologs, embraces humility, kindness and a gentleness that his universe desperately needs.

It goes back to what I was talking about with Bioshock 2. Unlike his children, Typhon never lost all of his innocence. There’s a genuine enthusiasm for life that underlies every quest featuring Typhon. He trusts that no matter what, things will eventually be okay. It’s quite the embodiment of the faith of a child, as well as an incredible amount of mercy with regards to the player.

By the time you meet Typhon you’ve killed one of his children, and instead of being furious, he grieves. He acknowledges that his kids have become monsters; that he failed. He quietly owns that, stepping up to help you stop Tyreen. He tries to talk her down, then fights her. Yet even in death, Typhon leaves behind messages to his robotic assistants so that they live their lives to the fullest in a rather touching epilogue to his personal arc.

Even the infamously disliked Ava, apprentice to Borderlands 2’s Siren, Maya, does eventually shed her obstinate defensiveness. By the end of the Director’s Cut missions, Ava starts to embrace a healthier path forward, and as a result, actually uncovers significant lore revelations. Together you discover that the secret final boss of the entire game is themselves another control-obsessed manipulator trying to play God with people’s lives. Despite being created by the Eridians, the Seer refuses to embrace the balance the Eridians left behind.

This isn’t to say it’s a story with a message of never getting involved. If anything, the efforts of your allies keeps everyone afloat together. Each has their own quirks, but they unite for the collective good. Their approach can be far from idyllic at times, yet it’s earnest in a galaxy that is often anything but. Doing good in this setting is hard, sometimes thankless work. It still needs doing though, and the Crimson Raiders are intent on seeing it through. No matter what’s thrown their way.

It once again echoes II Timothy, in this case verse 3:12 “In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evildoers and imposters will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.” Rather on brand given the series’ first intro song, Cage the Elephant’s “Ain’t No Rest For The Wicked”.

And the thing is, I’m abridging a lot here. The extent that Gearbox committed to the bit of religious themes still feels surreal to me. Enemy barks heavily emphasize everything from bandits dismayed at dying before the Great Vault is opened, to swearing they can see it. Characters actually discuss concepts of the afterlife, whether Tyreen could actually become a god, and what that even really means.

Then the DLCs that go even further with subjects ranging from redemption to existentialism and mortality to Jungian concepts of therapy. Yes, really. All of this in the same game where you can get a poop rocket launcher. Yet thanks to the consistency in the absurdity, it’s all delivered with a verisimilitude that defies typical ludonarrative dissonance in action games.

Borderlands 3 did not need to try this hard to make the player think, let alone feel. It’s not perfect by any measure. It has plenty of moments where I sighed at a bad joke or a frustrating combat encounter, don’t get me wrong. Yet, given how the last 2K published FPS with religious themes went, Borderlands 3 gets points for trying. If a series famous for being so low brow can approach such topics earnestly, then maybe there’s hope yet for more AAA productions to be mindful and eager to explore such themes.

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Elijah Beahm is an author for Lost in Cult that Unwinnable graciously lets ramble about progressive religion and obscure media. When not consulting on indie games, he can be found on Bluesky and YouTube. He is still waiting for Dead Space 4.