User blog:Kaushiktalukdar/The borderlands game we always wanted to play

When The Pre-sequel was announced on 9th April, one of the biggest doubt i had was is this a money grab attempt. When the characters were revealed i was 101% sure my doubts turned into surety but then i had this little tinkering feeling back in my head as why will 2K Australia risk itself to grab some money. It existed mainly as a part of Irrational Games and now its independent (from Irrational) one bad games will force 2K to close that studio. Still i openly expressed my doubts as did many others but i didn't left hope as the effect of a bad game is far bigger and greater than a poorly executed DLC (like hammerlock's dlc was really boring and poor) and will effect 2K, 2K Aus as well as Gearbox. Gearbox will outsource its best game franchise till date only if it was a guaranteed success. Else just postpone it as a bad game will result in loss and may make Borderlands 3 attract less people.

Fast forward to a couple of months and 2K Aus shows preview of Athena. This was enough to make me feel that maybe, maybe this is not the kind of game i was expecting. Maybe this is not a money grab attempt. But (and you know theres always a big BUTT) then why hide Nisha & Claptrap from the game's radar when even Wilhelm was given a quick but small preview. Maybe they suck? Maybe they were not good enough? Maybe they are too good to show so soon? Yah, last one was what i felt when Antonio Burch said he is dissapointed with himself for killing off Nisha in BL2. Why will you tweet this kind of message? To create hype? No, a cryptic tweet doesn't create hype. Because Nisha is AWESOME.

Today Nisha's action skill & trees were revealed and i must say: This is a game made by a fan for fans. This is what we were always waiting for. Not difficult but challenging. There is a small difference but a definite line between these 2. This is a game that is made for non-serious type of gameplay. You have to be careful (hence challenging) not to get ambushed but at the same time the skills open up a ton of options. "Running low on ammo? Pickpocket a guy then shoot him on the face", "Thats a damn powerful pistol. Lets have 2 and double the fun", "too much shitty enemies. TIme for law & order". The game has just the kind of skills that went missing from BL2. The performance boost was mostly rubbish which made the enemies look OP to most gamers.

Though as i said enemies are OP, this is something BL2 fans should be worried about. Most BL2 addicts are used to putting a shit ton of load into enemies to kill them. Things like lv61 has turned into a park for most. Most raid boss are actually scared of vault hunters rather than scary due to how fast they can be killed. But when it comes to BL-TPS the game looks a bit too easy, at least for me. The skills make the new set of classes feel OP right from the get go. So who is TPS targetted at? New players? They will have a hard time understanding why they are playing TPS at the first place and loose interest quickly unless 2K Aus does a great job of prologue. But then what to tell in that part? How the story ends? spoilers? And if its targetted at the same old guys (and girls), this will feel too easy unless UVHM kind of thing appears. Maybe the enemies will be more agressive. Maybe the limited oxygen will give a 4th dimension to the challenge. But then on the positive side, i still enjoy BL1 because the damage on the guns don't run into millions and still the enemies feel difficult without proper strategy.

Both ways i am excited about TPS. Only thing i can wish for, Claptrap better have some kind of mute skill at the top ;)