Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel (2014)
Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel is a 2014 shooter video game made by 2K Australia and Gearbox Software.
Pandora's moon Elpis is a low-gravity junkyard of laser weapons, oxygen masks, and corporate greed. Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel rewinds to the years before Borderlands 2 and hands the story to Handsome Jack, tracing how a mid-level programmer curdles into the series' grinning villain. You pick a Vault Hunter, chain jumps across the moonscape, and shoot through crowds of enemies for ever-better loot. Gearbox keeps the crude jokes, the cel-shaded chaos, and the drop-in co-op, then adds ice guns and butt-stomps that turn the thin gravity into a weapon in its own right.
Quick answers
What is Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel about?
Pandora's moon Elpis is a low-gravity junkyard of laser weapons, oxygen masks, and corporate greed. Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel rewinds to the years before Borderlands 2 and hands the story to Handsome Jack, tracing how a mid-level programmer curdles into the series' grinning villain. You pick a Vault Hunter, chain jumps across the moonscape, and shoot through crowds of enemies for ever-better loot. Gearbox keeps the crude jokes, the cel-shaded chaos, and the drop-in co-op, then adds ice guns and butt-stomps that turn the thin gravity into a weapon in its own right.
When was Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel released?
Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel was released on 14 October 2014.
Who made Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel?
Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel was made by 2K Australia, Gearbox Software and Aspyr Media.
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A few thoughts on Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel
The irreverent ultraviolence and corporate cynicism land close to The Boys, which skewers superheroes the way this game skewers megacorporations. Mad Max: Fury Road brings the vehicular wasteland spectacle any Vault Hunter would love, and Guardians of the Galaxy shares the wisecracking, misfit-crew energy.
Space comedies that play the apocalypse for laughs
The Pre-Sequel turns Handsome Jack's climb toward villainy into slapstick, cel-shaded and profane, set on a moon running out of air. Guardians of the Galaxy and Rick and Morty share that same trick of playing cosmic disaster for punchlines, while City Hunter and Dr. Slump bring the same rapid-fire, crude gags to their own chaos-prone heroes.
Wastelands where corporations replaced the government
Pandora's moon runs on corporate scrip and grinning greed, the same rot that fuels Mad Max: Fury Road's War Rig chase and the sun-baked crime sprees of Grand Theft Auto V and San Andreas. Half-Life 2's occupied city shares that same sense of a broken world where the company logo matters more than any law left standing.
Open worlds that hand you a bigger gun every hour
The Pre-Sequel's loot-chase, ice guns and grenade mods piling up mission after mission, sits in the same tradition as The Witcher 3 and Skyrim's overflowing armories, Red Dead Redemption 2's slow accumulation of gear, God of War's climb from axe to something heavier, and The Last of Us's habit of scavenging every scrap. Each one turns hoarding into its own kind of progress.
Loud, irreverent rock and electronica for a lawless frontier
Muse's Black Holes and Revelations and Simulation Theory bring the same widescreen, faintly ridiculous bombast as Elpis itself, all conspiracy and cosmic dread played completely straight. The Prodigy's The Fat of the Land and Zappa's Sheik Yerbouti and Apostrophe add the same snarling, juvenile energy, and Tenacious D's mock-heroic riffing matches the game's own gleeful self-parody.