Borderlands’ Opening Scene Is Nonetheless An All-Time Nice

I do not suppose my most controversial online game take needs to be that controversial, however it’s. I am a online game journalist, so you already know I’ve some dangerous takes on this damaged down serotonin manufacturing facility I name a mind, however this is one opinion that receives common pushback: I do not like online game music. However what about This Orchestra Factor in This JRPG Factor when This Twink Factor fights This Demon Factor with This Sword Factor? Yeah, horrible. Put some Taylor Swift on and get a life. There are some online game bops I can get down with once they’re actively within the sport, working as designed, however the considered opening up Spotify and throwing on some jams from Sonic the Hedgehog makes me really feel nauseous. For this reason I’ve at all times cherished video games that use actual music of their soundtracks, and why I like the opening to Borderlands.

Whoa whoa whoa, maintain up there, buster. ‘Actual’ music? Aren’t you devaluing a complete artwork kind there? Positive, I suppose. Clearly composers and musicians in video video games are beloved, and even when I would not pay attention out of context, they are a essential a part of the general dish. I do not eat uncooked flour however I like apple pie. Composers needs to be effectively paid, protected, and given a union. Do not deal with them like Mick Gordon. However once I say ‘actual’ music, you all know what I imply. Songs that exist already in the actual world, which are woven into the online game moderately than current due to it.

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Video games like Persona, which report typical pop songs throughout the sport’s actuality, get a little bit of a move, however there’s nonetheless the sense that it is online game music. A wierd, barely perceptible movie excessive of it, coating it with one thing bitter. However my favorite online game music will at all times be the Tony Hawk’s soundtrack or the FIFA soundtrack – simply precise songs I already know and like utilized to a online game. However for one-off use of music in a online game, Borderlands’ first scene stays king.

Borderlands opens with Marcus Kincaid, one of many sport’s grizzled retailers, narrating an introduction to Pandora and the concept of Vault Hunters, establishing the sport’s central premise. We then transfer to a blindingly vivid solar, panning all the way down to a dry desert canyon whereas some soiled blues rock chords play. An indication for Pandora is falling aside. A wierd and spiky creature crawls out from the wreckage, an indication that this planet is harmful and barren. It wanders into the highway, and is immediately run over by a passing bus. Ain’t No Relaxation For The Depraved kicks up a notch. Borderlands has arrived.

Within the bus, we see Marcus driving and the 4 participant characters using alongside behind him, the music dipping out for a second for an alternate between them. Then as every character is launched with a reputation splash and instance of their talents, Cage the Elephant roars again, and the digital camera strikes exterior of the bus as BORDERLANDS seems on display in large letters. With a jolt, that very same unusual creature is dislodged from the bus’ entrance grill and rolls recklessly in direction of the digital camera, the place it splatters as “till we shut our eyes for good…” drones out of Cage the Elephant frontman Matt Shultz’s larynx.

Video games like to be labelled ‘cinematic’ and crib the storytelling conventions of films to be able to take in the status of movie, however they’re afraid to actually borrow from it. Using trendy music recognisable to the typical participant, the character names and roles showing on display in stylised credit, the playful use of the digital camera, the title showing on the display as a pure a part of the surroundings – all of those are presentation methods we affiliate much more with motion pictures than we do with video video games, and but the video games that need greater than something to be in comparison with a movie are afraid to make use of them, as a result of they arrive throughout as too playful and foolish.

Borderlands’ opening is not simply spectacular as a result of it seems like a film although. With only a few seconds on display every, and no dialogue, the 4 most important characters immediately turn into recognized to us. We see their persona and their strategy to the approaching battles with out the necessity for flashbacks, lengthy speeches, or another belabouring of the purpose. Extra than simply the characters although, the sport itself tells us who it’s.

Marcus’ voiceover would possibly arrange what is going on on, however Borderlands could be very generic at its basest degree. Shoot issues, discover treasure. It is the charisma of the sport that makes it, and from the whining punk tones of Cage the Elephant, to the slapstick splatter of the critter towards our digital camera, the opening is at all times effortlessly Borderlands. Presumably as a result of Borderlands is considered as just a few steps under the greats within the online game pantheon, the opening by no means appears to get something near the respect it deserves. After a decade of video games endlessly making an attempt to be motion pictures, nothing has come as near capturing the magic of cinema as the primary scene from Borderlands.

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