As you may (or may not) know, today is the 7th Anniversary of the release of Borderlands! We’ve been trying to think of a simple way to commemorate the occasion and thought a forum post asking you guys to share your favorite Borderlands memories would be fun. I’ll go first:
I have lots of awesome memories of Borderlands. I hadn’t played a game like it at that point and I credit Borderlands as the game that made me love “looter-shooters”. Learning the ins-and-outs of the gear, its rarity, and how that affected gameplay was pretty amazing and tons of fun. Like many of you here, this revelation set off a love of farming gear for me, which is also among my favorite BL past times. I’m sitting here trying to remember my first BL legendary and I can’t remember what it was, but I DO know my favorite – the Hellfire SMG. Playing as Lilith with a Hellfire is about the best thing ever in my opinion.
Other than the gear, the environments are pretty amazing too. I have lots of memories tied to specific areas in Borderlands – Jakobs Cove, Sledge’s Safehouse, and of course, Fyrestone just to name a few.
What about you guys? What are some of your favorite Borderlands memories? Share them below!
"Youre down but can get up just fine on your own by second winding off that bandit? I DONT ■■■■■■■ THINK SO. -steals second wind- “Ok. Its safe, i saved the day and can revive you now. Praise me.”
I was the first in my circle of gaming friend to purchase Borderlands. I played it for about a half hour and hated it. I put it away. Then my friends starting playing it. so I decided to coop and that is where the story begins and hasn’t ended… LOL I practically live in the General Knoxx DLC for Borderlands simply due to the fact that it’s the only location to get Pearls. and acquiring Pearlescent gear is my addiction. And killing Ajax’s bitch ass!
For me it not only got me back into video games, but also made a lot of friends with it, and I guess now I’m starting to pay my rent with it as well. Kinda a life changer.
I still remember my first game ever like it was yesterday. My fondest memory was the first time I visited Fyrestone and the surrounding area. I spent so much time taking in the atmosphere, checking every corner, opening every lootable and killing everything that got in my way while doing it. It was amazing. I instantly fell in love with Borderlands.
I… Tried the first one five times… Couldn’t do it. And I had given up… Then when my friend and I finally both had xbox live, he bought us a game we could play together. Bl2. I had no life for several months. While the first one felt a bit too slow for me, the second one is a game I will probably play five more times. I’m on game five, I think. I don’t mean character, I mean set of characters. It has replaced Secret of Mana as my favorite game of all time.
Edit : I didn’t mention a favorite moment because that game has too many. All of that game is my favorite.
I can clearly remember picking up the game when I was… 11, I think. My mom ain’t exactly strict when it comes to video games. Probably a bad thing. But I remember enjoying the grotesque world of Pandora, figuring out the intricacies of the genre blend. I still can’t play regular shooters without feeling like I’m missing something.
My first character was Roland. A horribly built Roland I never finished the game with (I learned to love him as a character in time, though). The second was Brick, and I got much further, as he complimented my playstyle nicely and I learned a bit from my first attempt. Beat the entire game, DLC included. I loved the atmosphere, the gameplay, how various skill made for different approaches, and while the story was somewhat underdevelopped, there is a lot for people willing to slow down and take Pandora in one step at a time. I still get a little depressed by the Reaver sidequest, not to mention T.K. Baha.
The highlights of my entire history with the game? Too many to list. Beating it all with a friend for the first time and acting like an overprotective parent throughout, beating the Destroyer with melee because I ran out of ammo, later killing him in a blindfold for fun (took many, many attempts and a really well armed Brick), finding out about the custom content community (shout-out to @Mr_GJ and @SleepMaster, who are making an unofficial 5th DLC!), discovering one of my favorite bands ever, Cage the Elephant, and it just goes on…
So, a big thank you to Gearbox, Matthew Armstrong and everyone who worked on the game for making my childhood awesome and my psyche slightly demented. I love y’all.
Borderlands has kept my love of Couch Co-Op alive and well. It compliments my love for RPGs, 1st Person Shooters, and a need for amazing loot- Even if I have to grind for days.
The story of the BL franchise is entertaining enough without the combination of my addiction for higher and higher numbers to appear on the screen, numbing the mind as you slaughter hordes of enemies or a raid boss. Honestly, I know I’ll be grinding to complete all of my BL files, but I know I’ll love doing it.
My favorite memories come from that feeling of pure amazement over learning how badass certain skills or weapons are, such as Krieg’s bloodsplosion killing a whole wave of Spiderants just from one Fastball thrown. Or, the first legendary I ever found- An Unkept Herald from Savage Lee, not even understanding how I obtained one.
Crawmerax. I didn’t play BL1 at first, but after HH5 on BL2 I was told that I should play BL1 because the original Craw was significantly harder and rivaled Terra in difficulty. Challenge accepted. I killed him first with Lilith which actually wasn’t hard, full SMG build with Hellfire and two Bitches, but it was the Mordy kill that was the most satisfying. Knowing that I only had a very short window of time to kill Craw made it a frustrating and exhilarating fight, it’s not like many BL2 raids where you have time to set up and learn the fight you’re just thrown into an arena with this thing that wants to kill you dead immediately, and you don’t have a Grog Nozzle to keep you alive. I pulled it off once and haven’t played BL1 since.
I got into series around the same time I found Torchlight (2009). I was hanging out in the Runic Games forums a lot and one of my friends there (Hawkn) clued me in to it. He felt I should check it out since he knew I’d been a big fan of Hellgate:London (RIP) and Borderlands had a similar concept.
At the time I was struggling with depression. My health had gotten really bad due to the lymphedema in my legs and I was spending most of my time in the hospital. It was a really bleak point in my life. I hated myself and couldn’t leave my bed. Thanks to Torchlight, Borderlands and the friends I made playing both it pulled me out of the spiral I was heading down and gave me just enough hope to keep going.
I want to thank all of you at Gearbox for all your hard work. Thanks in part to you I’m still here, have made some of the best friends I’ve ever had and have been able to get past a dark period in my life. I’m a lot healthier now and am eagerly anticipating the next game in the series. Thank you so much…and happy birthday, Borderlands.
EDIT: I will share a funny story though the devs might not agree this is all that humorous. My friend Watercloak and I spent years trying to play Borderlands multiplayer but for some reason we couldn’t. Whether it was a too strict NAT or port forwarding not working we could never figure out so we forgot about it.
Years later after Gamespy’s servers went tits up and the service moved to Steam we were finally able to play together. Final verdict? Worth it. Despite it having taken years the feeling of being able to run n’ gun with one of my best friends more than made up for it.
My first co-op run of Borderlands was one of the better experiences I’ve had in a videogame, period. We were going to run through the story all DLCs in both modes, but life (read: college/jobs) got in the way.
Two highlights so the thread isn’t clogged with images:
I was introduced to BL1 somewhere in high school(2010-11?) and thought it was just ooooooook. Kinda boring, slow, and broowwwwwn. But it was fun and enjoyable. I dunno, the friend who introduced me to BL1 and I beat the game once on 360.
Now I’m sitting here with 690 hours logged on steam, and a healthy knowledge of how the loot system works.
I’ve made friends over this series, and that was certainly worth it.
Specific memory? Friend started filling in all the tier1 skills evenly. That way they’d have everything at a good balance.
That was before we knew skill points were limited.
Well, there’s the time @ACNAero drove me off a cliff because he’s appearantly a very bad driver. I didn’t even notice because I was in my inventory, equiping my mobbing gear.
First time hearing Knoxx, he’s one of my favorite NPC’s in the first game.
Or the times I got my most priced Serpens, and the perfect Rose shield.
That reminds me of a bl2 moment with @CoonTail we were farming King Mong and I was going to fast hit the breaks and just barely didn’t drive off the cliff but the car was half way over the edge, when we got out I exited to the left and was fine, he got out on the right and fell to his death. It was perfect.
That time I killed Crawmerax with my pinky toe.
Wait, that wasn’t me.
If I have to pick any memories, it’d be shotguns.
From the first crummy white shotgun to that perfect badass Bulldog there is nothing quite like taking any character and shoving a barrel or four of pain in to some poor bandits cranium. Good times.
Sm0kerCrew
(<Deep Space Planet Future Gun Action>)
#18
Too many memories to actually choose one to list here.
But I felt an unexplainable urge to play the game again just yesterday.
Started a fresh game as Roland (being my least played character until now) and @Ganjamira had to endure me blocking the TV with a 6+ hours Borderlands session.
I remember attempting to jump out early to get a headstart on KingMong(mainly because Derch and I were having fun attempting to One shot him as quickly as possible) and next thing I know I am falling into the abyss.
Long story short…don’t try to get competitive with Derch if he’s driving LOL
And killing Ajax’s bitch ass! 
This time I used a giant rock to jump a Runner onto a turret. Took several dozen tries…