Borderlands Is Weirdly One Of The Most Inclusive Games Ever Made

Gearbox's Borderlands isn't just one of the first to usher in the "loot shooter," it is also surprisingly one of the most inclusive series ever.

[Jimboms]

I think I get what you're saying.

[Mulletino]

Obviously, that’s the main reason everyone I play with bought the game.. I also like how they made every “leader” a woman. They should have just eliminated straight males altogether and they could have boosted their sales by 7s of people. Hindsight and all.

[Xaevi]

I've only played BORDERLANDS 2 but I was pretty surprised at just how casual it was about revealing that Hammerlock was gay. It wasn't made into a big deal afterwards either. I think the game handled itself pretty maturely despite it's blunt humor, which I honestly enjoyed.

[rainslacker]

There are quite a few prominent gay characters in the series. Most of it is presented in normal conversation or actions. I think what makes it interesting is that the other characters dont react in ways like you'd see if someone found out someone was gay without warning.

That's the way it should be, and what the gay community should want. Acceptance through normalcy, and presenting it as such, and not making it the main character trait if any individual character is the proper way to do it.

Every good reveal of gay characters, the ones that seem done right, are those that arent made into a big deal. Bill in TLOU being one of the best, and it was easy to miss if you weren't paying attention. He exemplified many of the gay people I know. Just a normal person, who has human emotions, and otherwise is just a normal guy. You connected to him, and his loss. You empathized with him due to how he reacted to a situation. You didnt react to him because he was gay. He wasnt special because he was gay. He was special because he was human

[Abnor_Mal]

Is it all inclusive if they took out the "little people"?

I guess it's alright since now you can shoot big headed babies.

Or, maybe just maybe, I missed something and am completely off mark.

[NicSage]

Wtf the took my midgets out of the game?!

[Ricegum]

No. They're still in. They're called Tinks in this though.

[rainslacker]

Calling them midgets seemed to be a colloquialism of pandora. Game officially called them that, but if the new world changed up the rest of the colloquilisms to make a new world, then fair game

[Spurg]

The intro section starts with the main character saving beta male bandit and finishes with one of the Calypso twins calling the male twin, the useless one. Also, the main character in the intro section is only female like Lilith and Ellie.
This type of writing has been quite common lately where female characters have been saving the male characters or making them feel useless.

It's one thing to be inclusive but then there is this example where it just besmirching male characters just for the sake of inclusion.

[ReVibe]

It's like that in everything these days, but if you call it out, you're a tinfoiled biggot. Commercials, TV and movies, news anchor dialog, everything. Man= dumb, ugly, bearer of misfortune. Woman= smart, condescending, picking up where the man fell. Don't tell me it's a pendulum shift. Sexism is sexism.

But you know what? I'm a mature self-confident individual that moves on to other things when he doesn't get his way. Fuck social engineering.

[rainslacker]

To be fair, the series has always had pretty badass female characters. I mean, lilith was able to kill jack and all that....at least individually. Ellie is kind of the antithesis of typical female tropes. Tina is the one that represented the more normal female societal expectation by talking and doing more female things, only to become a crazy psychopath wanting to blow everything up, so she was representing a breaking away from societal norms, while still adhering to them

[Smokehouse]

“Borderlands also doesn’t call attention to all this diversity. It’s in there as normal as can be and no one ever bats an eyelid at anything, as it should be.”
Says the article calling attention to it.

[Stanjara]

Where are the reviews for this game?

[william_cade]

None of this changes power dynamics in actuality. It's more like slapping a coat of paint on a shitty car. Hit the streets and take some actual action against inequality instead of writing useless articles for your capitalist friends. So sick of social justice larpers.

[bluefox755]

Thank God, I'm not sure I could enjoy a game if it wasn't inclusive...

[Highlife]

What the hell did I read. Pansexual? WTF? Trans gay bi seriously I don't give a crap what you are your not special if you are any one of these I don't need to know. It's a shooteri don't need to know what you screw. So dumb.