Where It Fits

Borderlands 3 is the fourth and most recent game in the series to be released. In the story, it comes after Tales from the Borderlands.

Plot

Borderlands 3 was in development for seven years, but it the story makes it feel like it was only in development for 6 months.

The vault map that was lost in the Fight for Sanctuary DLC from Borderlands 2 is found by Tyreen and Troy Calypso, our villains and the leaders of the Children of the Vault cult (COV). They could only dream of being as good of villains as Jack was.

They're siren twins. It was already established that sirens can only be female, but I guess since they're twins, Troy got some powers too, but he has to leech off Tyreen to not die.

Lilith can't find the map from her room, so she hires four vault hunters to do all the work for her. We meet them through an epic bar fight scene. This time, they each have three skills to chose from, or four if you have DLC.

• FL4K, the beastmaster, a robot who can choose one of three Pokemon to fight for him.
  
  His skills are:
  • Fade Away, which allows you to go invisible, for 15 seconds with three shots, or 5 seconds, with infinite shots
  • Rakk Attack, which allows you to summon rakks to divebomb upon enemies
  • and Gamma Burst, which mutates your Pokemon into a disgusting monster and infect enemies with radiation poisoning for a short amount of time
  With DLC, your fourth choice is Gravity Snare, a small trap that makes an invisible bouncy castle for your enemies to get trapped in.
  His Pokemon are:
  • Broodless, the spiderant, which will regenerate your health while either digging or spitting fire, your choice.
  • Meat-Thief, the jabber, which can have a pistol, a shotgun, or an RPG, again, your choice.
  • and Mr. Chew, the skag, which will either be kinda big, big, or very big.
  With DLC, you have another option; Loaderbot, the loaderbot, which can have a sniper rifle and nothing, shotgun and riot shield, or fire shotgun and missile barrage.
• Moze, the gunner, who summons a mech with six possible weapon choices that you can mix and match on it's two arms, making 12 combinations.
  
  The attachments are:
  • Minigun, a minigun
  • Salamander, a flamethrower
  • V-35 Grenade Launcher, a grenade launcher
  • Vanquisher Rocket Pod, a rapid fire launcher
  • Railgun, a railgun
  • and Bear Fist, a melee thing
  With DLC you get Iron Cub, a mini version of your mech that will do it's own thing, as long as that thing isn't fighting because it's A.I. is bad.
• Amara, the siren
  
  She had three mystical powers:
  • Phasegrasp, a better version of Maya's Phaselock from Borderlands 2
  • Phasecast, where Amara sends an projection over herself damaging whatever is in it's path
  • and Phaseslam, where Amara grows six additional arms and ground-pounds enemies.
  With DLC, you get Phaseflare, a giant orb you can punch.
• and finally, Zane, the operative. He's an alcoholic Irish hitman with the best writing in the game. He's also related to Baron Flynt from Borderlands and Captain Flynt from Borderlands 2.
  
  His skills are:
  • Digi-clone, where he deploys a holographic clone of himself. It's like Zer0's skill, but he can't go invisible, or Jack's skill, but only one.
  • SNTNL, a drone that attacks with machine guns
  • and Barrier, a barrier.
  Of course, with DLC, you get the MNTIS Shoulder Cannon, a laser for your shoulder.

After making your not at all complicated choice, you get off the bus and meet Claptrap. Claptrap's voice actor left Gearbox, so they had to get a new voice and it's really offputting.

Claptrap immediately gets captured by Shiv, who you kill without reloading your level one pistol.

You meet Lilith, and go to her makeshift standing room. She tells you that Vaughn has the vault map, so you save him.

Turns out, Vaughn doesn't have the vault map, and the Calypso twins stole it.

Lilith sends you to infiltrate the COV's Holy Broadcast Center and kill Mouthpiece, a guy who plays piano, to get the vault map.

Tannis examines the vault map and puts some new AA batteries in it. You go to meet Ellie, who's been working on a spaceship Lilith cleverly named Sanctuary III.

While getting fuel for the ship, the Calypso twins show up and Tyreen squeezes the siren juice out of Lilith, and takes the map for herself.

Lilith gets kinda sad, but she's really annoying in this game, so she deserves it.

At last, we leave Pandora and go into space.

You do some filler content, and you head to Promethea, an urbanized planet and HQ of the Atlas corporation, who Rhys has taken over.

Katagawa, Maliwan's head of Mergers and Acquisitions, wanted to acquire Atlas, but they said no, so Maliwan does what Xbox did to Zenimax, and held their entire company at gunpoint and asked again, but slower.

You answer the distress call of Lorelei, who needs coffee. She takes you to hologram Rhys and he tells you to find Zer0.

You find Zer0 and kill Gigamind to steal his brain.

Rhys thanks you but says he doesn't want to help you, so you threaten him and he agrees to help.

You go back to Sanctuary, and Lilith is on the phone with Maya, so you wait for them to stop talking before Lilith tells you to you go help her out.

You go to Maya's home planet of Athenas, meet Maya and her apprentice, *shivers* Ava.

Ava is the most annoying character in the entire series, and possibly the entire history of video games.

You kill Captain Traunt for the Promethea vault key fragment, and go back to Sanctuary with Maya and *shivers* Ava.

You go back to Promethea, and wait for Rhys to stop talking so you can go to his space rock.

You put Rhys in a ball, destroy Katagawa-ball, and get the second key fragment.

You meet Rhys and he gives you the last fragment. You kill Katagawa, and Rhys asks you if he should keep his mustache or get rid of it.

You brutally insult Rhys' facial hair, you head to the vault with Maya.

You and Maya kill the Ravager and *shivers* Ava comes out of nowhere and annoys Troy so much that he sucks Maya's siren juice too hard and reduces her to rubble.

You go back to Sanctuary, listen to Ava tell everyone it's Lilith's fault, Lilith starts to believe her, and question why the writers cut out Maya's funeral, which would have been the only piece of good writing in the game.

The Calypsos call Lilith and mock the death of Maya. She calls Sir Hammerlock, but his soon-to-be husband and CEO of Jakobs, Wainwright, tells you he's in Bowser's castle so you have to go save him on Eden-6, a bayou planet that serves as the HQ of the Jakobs corporation.

You meet up with the B-Team, which consists of Tiny Tina, Brick, and Mordecai, blow up a door, kill the Warden and save Hammerlock.

Hammerlock hates his sister, Aurelia, who was playable in the Pre-Sequel, and wants you to kill her.

Before you can do that, you have to go to the Jakobs Manor find a vinyl record for Wainwright collection.

Troy phaselocks you, Wainwright calls him a rat-boy, and they go off to play a game of cat and mouse while you find the record.

You kill Troy's right-hand man, Billy, and return the record to Wainwright.

You meet Clay, a friend of Wainwright's and giver of filler content, fight what feels like 30 waves of enemies, find an obnoxiously convoluted way around a small door, bail his friend out of jail, all to get one of the worst guns in the game.

Wainwright lets you listen to the record you gave him, then tells you to save a teddy bear voiced by Ice-T. You navigate your way through a giant crashed ship, kill Ice-T's clingy ex-girlfriend for the vault key fragment.

You go back to Sanctuary with Ice-T, and his ex hacks the ship. Ice-T puts her in a hard drive and ejects her, and Marcus turns her into a gun that you sell for $10,000.

Clay gives you more filler content, you get another fragment, Tannis superglues it together, and go to the Jakobs gunpowder cellar to kill Hammerlock's sister.

You and Tannis open the vault, Tannis flees and leave you alone to kill Graveward by yourself.

You kill Graveward and Tannis gets captured by the Calypso twins, which means a long mission chain of saving her.

You meet up with Vaughn on Pandora, and he says Tannis is probably on Carnivora, a murder festival hosted by Pain and Terror, who are voiced Penn and Teller, except it's just Penn because Terror doesn't talk.

It seems like all the money for this game's writing was taken and given to celebrities to voice characters.

A robot says your car tastes bad and doesn't let you in the festival, so you steal a solid gold car, which would be terrible for racing, and the robot swallows you whole.

You find Tannis, find out she's an artificial siren, kill Penn and Teller, and go back to Sanctuary.

Vaughn overestimates your power and goes to rush the Calypsos, but you fail miserably and retreat. He banishes you to the mines. While you're there, you should get Tannis' nuclear reactor to fuel your car.

You do some more filler, and go to Sanctuary to watch as Troy envelops Elpis in a purple shroud, and Lilith decides it's time for you to kill him.

You, Tannis, and *shivers* Ava infiltrate the Calypsos' Cathedral and find Troy leeching Tyreen to charge Elpis.

You kill Troy, Tyreen is happy because she didn't like how her brother was having fun for once in his miserable life.

She kills you, and your screen goes black until the words "To be continuted in 4" appears and you get mad that you waited seven years for this short, garbage game until a countdown from 4 starts. Then, you're not as mad because you don't have to wait, but the game is still bad.

Tyreen drops her phone on the ground, and a stranger tells you to come to Nekrotafeyo.

You go to Nekrotafeyo, and that stranger ends up being Typhon DeLeon, the first ever vault hunter. You show off your vault key collection and he totally gets jealous.

More filler content, you find out Typhon is the father of the Calypso twins, dig up his dead wife's grave, get the vault key, and Typhon gives you a gun that shoots guns.

Even more filler content, flex your vault key collection some more, Tyreen gets mad that you and her dad are getting along better than the two of them ever did so she kills him, *shivers* Ava comes out of nowhere, and Tannis makes a portal to the final vault.

You get to the final vault, and the vault monster is a disgusting hybrid between Tyreen and the Destroyer from Borderlands, so you kill her.

Lilith flies into the moon for some reason and kills herself, *shivers* Ava says some dumb stuff, credits roll with Alicia Keys' Girl of Fire playing in the background, and you get some after-credits stuff.

You talk to Tannis and *shivers* Ava, and Tannis lets you play the game again but this time it's a little harder.

And now, you've completed the entire Borderlands series. Go repent for your sins, and stop torturing yourself.