Where It Fits

Borderlands is the first game in the series, and comes before all the other games. In the story, it comes before Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel.

Plot

Borderlands begins with a cinematic introducing the playable characters with Cage the Elephants Ain't No Rest for the Wicked playing in the background.

• Mordecai, the hunter, who has a pet bird
  
• Roland, the soldier, who can spawn a turret
  
• Brick, the berserker, who can get very angry and punch things
  
• and Lilith, the siren, who can phase into a different dimension to become invisible and move extremely fast, while also shooting fire and lightning at people, and when her skill concludes, a huge explosion occurs that deals a massive amount of damage.
  

So after choosing Lilith, you are greeted by a voice in your head that tells you to murder hundreds of people in search of a mystical treasure. When you get off the bus, you listen to the voice and kill the bandits attacking the town of Fyrestone. The town's only resident, Dr. Zed, thanks you after whacking a dead body with a buzzaxe.

You are jumped by more bandits before you can leave the town, and they kill Claptrap, who the voice in your head tells you to repair.

You pay Zed hundreds of dollars for a shield that does absolutely nothing. Zed then tells you to meet T.K. Baha, a blind old man who threatens to kill you and laughs as you fear for your life. Baha wants you to face the first boss, 9 Toes, a legendary bandit who you kill in 3 seconds.

At this point, you should be getting pretty annoyed by having to walk everywhere, so you help Scooter repair his "Catch-A-Ride" station by killing Bonehead.

Zed tells you to find his friend Shep Sanders, and you kill more bandits.

In order to reach the treasure the voice in your head tells you about, you need the Vault Key, which has been broken into four pieces, because of course it has.

To get the first part, you have to kill a mutated psycho to get the key to his boss' office. You will die several times before you realize he can't hurt you if you stand behind a wall.

Now it's time to face Slegde. The voice tells you about how much of a bullet sponge he is. You kill him in 5 seconds and take his level 20 shotgun to use for the rest of the game.

After getting the key part, it's time to leave the Arid Badlands, with its endless rolling deserts, and enter the Dahl Headlands, and its endless rolling deserts. This area is from the early development of the game, before the devs realized their vehicle combat sucked. The main reason you are here is to repair the Fast Travel system so you can do less driving.

To leave, you must defeat Mad Mel, which is very annoying until you find out your pistol does more damage than the turrent mounted to your vehicle.

You can finally enter New Haven, another town, but this time it's at least kinda good because you can rob the residents of what little they have.

After accepting a bunch of side quests, you revisit T.K. Baha to find that he has been killed.

Then, you meet Crazy Earl, who wants some alcohol. Now, you could go buy some with the hundreds of thousands of dollars you stole, but Earl doesn't think that's very interesting. So, you go kill a bunch of beach-going "bandits" and rob them of the only simple pleasure they had in life.

The next piece of the vault key is being held by Krom, who camps at his turret and shreds you with pin-point accuracy as soon as any part of your character model is exposed.

When you finally get close enough that he can't hit you, and you bask in the pleasure of slowly murdering him.

After some very unnessecary filler content about killing some brothers, it's time to get the third piece of the vault key. It is held by a Rakk Hive, a disgusting mass of flesh that gives shelter to screeching carnivorous flying beasts.

After killing the Rakk Hive and revolting at its corpse, it's time to retrieve the final piece of the vault key from Baron Flynt. But before that, you'll have to save a Claptrap from the Crimson Lance.

After murdering what seems like 100 of those guys,it's time to go to the Salt Flats and wait an eternity for the bandit patrols to respawn.

You kill Flynt, but, plot twist, he doesn't even have the vault key! Tannis, a side character I didn't mention because they don't really do anything until the next game, betrayed you and gave it to Comandant Steele, another uninteresting character that won't be seen in any of the other games.

Steele turns off everyone's wi-fi, so you'll have to go turn it back on.

After that, you set off to find Steele, but you have to kill a bunch of alien guys that give more XP than nearly all the missions in the game, so it's totally worth it.

You find Steele and she gives a boring monologue about how the Atlas corporation owns the vault in a Dracula-esque voice. Thankfully, the vault monster kills her in the middle of the speech.

The vault houses the Destroyer, a giant tentacle monster that doesn't move, but does some decent damage. Good thing there's a wall that you can hide behind so you don't take any of it.

After defeating the Destroyer, you recieve your great reward: 7 red chests that weapons that are inferior to everything in your inventory, including Sledge's level 20 shotgun that you still have.

At long last, you have completed Borderlands. But you could go on to play all the DLC and repeat the story again to get to max level. Or you could not torture yourself and play a good game.