Fast travel vs. New-U spawn

Borderlands 2 Gameplay Discussion (Spoilers!)
#1

I only one-life now, more interesting to me (max level reached one-lifing:57, but still trying).

But something has been nagging at me. Fast travel. I don’t see a conceptual difference between fast traveling and a respawn. Both create a scan of you, at the fast travel station prior to travel, at save points or transit points for respawn. Both re-create you at the other end, either the receiving fast travel or at a respawn save point.

So, what’s the difference? In both cases your “old” incarnation is scanned and either discarded (fast travel) or destroyed by enemies or elements (respawn). Both reconstruct you at the other end.

So how are they different? Both technically involve the “death” of one instantiation of your character, and a “revive” at the other end. Fast travel you plan, of course, but it’s still the same effective sequence as a death and respawn.
And you must use a fast travel station at least once to progress through the story line, specifically you must fast travel to get back to Sanctuary once it’s become airborne. Everywhere else(*) you can use a transit point(walking/driving), which in my head is simply a shortcut for a long walk, I can rationalize that you haven’t de-rezzed and re-rezzed on a transit point.
So, in absolutely nit-picky terms, the transit from the ground (Highlands) to Sanctuary is no different in a process sense than a death & respawn. Which in my ultra-literal mind means that you must become non-existent (die) at least once during a playthrough, so one cannot technically ever complete the game without ceasing to exist once.

Yes, I am overthinking this. But it bugs me. Does it bug anyone else?
–RoA

  • The other questionable times are the three moves that Lilith puts you through, the 10 foot move in the lair of the Firehawk, exiting Sanctuary when it goes airborne, and being moved out of Angels chamber. How Lilith teleports you is never explained, so I can stretch my definition to make the assumption that she is using some hybrid of her phasewalking skill to phase your physical body from one location to another without doing any de-rez/re-rez, so that doesn’t result in a pseudo death.
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#2

So the way the writer tried to explain is that Fast Travels are cannon (canon?) but New-U stations are not - the latter are simply a game convenience and don’t really exist in the story.

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#3

This is an existential crisis!

What am I?
A tangle of the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual?
Or am I pure eternal consciousness residing in temporary physical vehicles?

For your purposes, the latter may be the approach to justify One Life.
Jean-Paul Sartre for the digital age :laughing:

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#4

Noooo. absolutly not… :exploding_head:
Ok. Yes. You, are! :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes: Next drink’s on me.
There’s a world need reshaping.

That I’m pretty sure you’re in a very small club.

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#5

I believe these are questions that the Opportunity University philosophy department seeks to suppress. I, however, feel that Marcus DesKincaid was correct when he said, “Nous tirons, donc Nous sommes. Nous pillons, donc nous sommes.”(If memory serves and Google isn’t playing with me that means “We shoot, therefore we are. We loot, therefore we are.”) And to quote the mad poet of Pandora, La Petite Tina, “Lootsplosion, baby!!!”

In conclusion, you are over thinking it, but given the effort we put into testing and collecting it’s ok.
I’m mad. You’re mad. We’re all mad here. (Why isn’t there a Cheshire cat emoji?)

Correction: a previous version of this post read “Nous tirons, done Nous sommes”. The post was edited to satisfy my OCD to be correct when possible.

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#6

Nous tirons, donc nous sommes.

Beside the typo. It’s all good.

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#7

Autocorrect. The bane of forumers who are always here via mobile. I forget that my phone is American, and therefore Francophobic.

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#8

Not any easier having your machines set to two different languages…
Ask my PS4! :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

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#9

“It’s a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes Google think that people can be happy without French.”

– Albert Camus 2.0

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#10

I’d french kiss you but probably inappropriate :rofl:!

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#11

What does he drop? L’etranger, the sniper that you fire straight on but strikes from the left (full disclosure, I’ve not read it so I’m just making stuff up based on my possibly/likely flawed French vocabulary)? Or is it the Plague, a Vladof AOE nade sort of like a slag Fire Bee?

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#12

I’d rather have a Thoreau (Taureau). You know, the gun of the bull…
Ok, I’m probably trying too much!

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#13

Yeah, I’ve read the “new-U’s aren’t canon” statements, and while I won’t comment on that directly (the authors know best) it doesn’t apply to my question, since one-lifing is a Meta issue itself, non-canon and external to the storyline of the BL Universe. Since all in-game characters accept New-U’s as being part of their reality (canon or non) then conceptually one-lifing is not a concept to the in-game population, just to the exo-game player.
–RoA

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#14

My point being, since the FTs are considered part of the game world and no-one in-game treats using them as an actual death, then there’s no particular reason to avoid using them.

If you want to set a rule for yourself that you don’t use them at all (a hardcore 1-life run if you will) then that’s up to you.

The map transitions are unavoidable, but at least half of them are proximal so you can think of them more as a gate. (The one to The Dust being an exception, since you’re “off the echo for hours” according to Scooter; I’d need to check the map for the others, but the two between the Three Horns maps are clearly just gates.)

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#15

My point ultimately is that you cannot do that, even if you choose to.
You must fast travel to reach Sanctuary after it takes to the sky, there are no longer gates accessible to make the transition.
So my existential dilemma is that you cannot make the decision to avoid a de-rez during Story mode, you must have what I will call a little death to complete the game.
–RoA

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#16

Right. But the characters in the game do not treat fast travels as death so…

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#17

I’ve heard of “No Fast Travel” runs here. Usually the condition they set is that they have to walk/drive to Three Horns Divide and FT from there. It doesn’t really fit your lore/story/reasoning, but it is a way to set a condition to sort of work around it.

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#18

Sure, I can squint my eyes and pretend there is a shuttle from Sanctuary Hole to Sanctuary, will still nag at me. But it’s better’n nothing.
–RoA

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