Where It Fits

Borderlands 2 is the second game in the series to be released. In the story, it comes after Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, and before Tales from the Borderlands.

Plot

Borderlands 2 has an actual story, and only has 19 main missions instead of Borderland's 43 as it has very little filler content.

Once upon a time, the Hyperion corporation had a "bring-your-child-to-work" day, and Jack, our villain, brought his daughter, Angel. Angel liked it so much that she never decided to leave, and definitely want held there by Jack against her will.

Angel, as it turns out, was the voice in your head that told you to commit genocide for a couple chests in Borderlands. Apparently, Jack told her to tell you that so he could use the eridium in the vault to his advantage.

Then he did some other stuff and in a matter of minutes he was put in charge of the entire corporation, and absolutely did not murder the President of Hyperion to become the President himself.

Jack was very grateful for this opportunity and wanted to give back by turning the bandit-infested deserts of Pandora into a futuristic utopian society.

There was just one problem: a little town named Sanctuary with less than 20 residents didn't want to be changed. Now, Jack could do a Siege of Leningrad with the thousands of robots that his company manufactures, or pretty much anything but the ridiculously convoluted plan he ends up doing, but that wouldn't make a very good game, would it?

So, Jack lists an ad on Craigslist for Vault Hunters, and six people respond. They get on a train, but Jack blows it up and leaves them for dead.

Now it's time to pick your character. This time, there's six choices instead of one.

• Axton, the commando, who can spawn a turret, but unlike Roland from Borderlands, it's actually good.
  
• Salvador, the gunzerker, who can hold two weapons at once and absolutely abuse the game mechanics to do an insane amount of damage.
  
• Zer0, the assassin, who can deploy a holographic decoy of himself to become invisible, which isn't as good as Lilith's invisibility, but he can do way more damage.
  
• and Maya, the siren, who can lock enemies in a different dimension, turn them against their allies, and feed off of their blood.
  

As well as two DLC characters:

• Kreig, the psycho, who can explode and die.
  
• Gaige, the mechromancer, who can spawn a bloodthirsty robot and will also abuse the game mechanics.
  

After choosing your character, you slowly regain conciousness and Angel tells you everything will be okay, but Claptrap starts talking so you immediately know she's lying

Claptrap takes you to his house, and gets his eye ripped out by a bullymong named Knuckledragger, the first boss. You take a three minute hike and retrieve it.

You get to a small town and meet Sir Hammerlock. He hesitantly repairs Claptrap and immediately regrets it. He tells you to go to Sanctuary.

Before you can do that, you must defeat Captain Flynt and his underlings, Boom and Bewm, which would be kinda hard if the Game of the Year edition didn't start you off with the most overpowered grenade mod in the game.

You board Claptrap's boat and head for Sanctuary, before you can enter the town, Roland wants you to find Corporal Reiss, who's died to a level 3 psycho.

When you get to Sanctuary, you'll find everything you would ever need. A fast travel station, a costume station, a bunch of vending machines, and most importantly, a slot machine to fuel your gambling addiction.

After wasting all your money to get a grenade in the slot machines, Roland sends you off to find the Firehawk, who's actually just Lilith. She tells you that Roland has been kidnapped by some bandits, but she has to stand in a room for the rest of the game, so you're the one that has to go save him.

Before you can infiltrate the bandit camp, you need a bandit-styled vehicle from Scooter's sister, Ellie.

After fighting your way through the labyrinth of a stronghold, you find Roland, who is promptly taken to the end of another labyrinth.

Roland announces that Jack is trying to awaken some ancient alien thing, but in the meantime, you go meet Tiny Tina and Mordecai, both very helpful characters.

Tina builds a bomb for you to hijack a train that contains the vault key, while Mordecai sits up on a mountain sniping all the varkid pods you're trying to farm.

You find a train, but it's being guarded by Wilhelm (yes, the same Wilhelm from The Pre-Sequel), who's seemingly very dangerous even though you kill him before Roland can finish telling you how very dangerous he is.

The train ended up not having the vault key, but at least you get a cool power cell to replace Sanctuary's shield. But then, plot twist, Angel was working for Jack the whole time and she lowers the shield. Jack's death star gun starts destroying the town, but it doesn't matter that much because it only does 10 damage.

Lilith decides to teleport the city a couple miles to the left, which means Jack can't shoot it anymore for some reason, but unfortunately that takes Sanctuary off the fast travel network, so you have to do some filler content that involves defending a beacon from robots for 10 minutes before you can get back.

Angel somehow convinces everyone to trust her again. She tells you that she has the vault key and you need three magic ingredients for her to give it to you, which means more filler.

The first ingredient is a software update for Claptrap.

Bloodwing, Mordecai's bird, has the update, but she got captured and put in Hyperion's zoo. Jack ends up mutating her and popping her head, but it was worth it because Claptrap gets to go invisible.

The second ingredient is the favor of the Slab King, who's just Brick in a mask. To get on his good side, just kill all his men.

The final ingredient is the vocal cords of Jack's body double (but not the one from the Pre-Sequel).

Now it's time for the final assault, for which Lilith and Mordecai stay in Sanctuary to stand in that one room from earlier, but Roland, Brick, and, for whatever reason, Claptrap, aid you in your fight.

After getting to the top of the mountain, a giant floating robot starts attacking you. It'll take a while to defeat it, unless you're Zer0 and are spec'd into the B0re skill.

Finally, Angel's chamber is open, and she asks you to assist in her suicide. Jack is understandably upset by this, and, like any good parent would, sends in a bunch of robots that have already proven ineffective against you while he sits in the next room and watches.

Lilith shows up when she hears you get to kill Angel. After you kill her, Jack one-shots both Roland and the most powerful being in the universe with a shock collar.

Lilith teleports you back to Sanctuary, and Brick and Mordecai concoct a plan to hack the Hyperion mainframe to find out where Jack took Lilith, but they just saw what happens when they leave that room so you have to go do it.

Now it's time to go to the Arid Nex—

Oh yeah, you have to go to Sawtooth Cauldron and blow up some guy.

Anyway, when you finally get to the Arid Nexus, you have to die 16 times to Saturn before you can hack the mainframe, and you discover that Lilith has been hidden on New Super Mario Bros. Wii World 8.

You reach the vault, and Jack is using Lilith to charge the vault key. You shoot Jack in the face a couple times, but he uses his cutscene powers to not die and summon the Warrior, the vault monster. Thankfully, the ancient aliens that created the Warrior left a giant weak point on it's chest so it only takes a couple minutes to kill.

Jack loses his cutscene powers, so you can kill him before he finishes his monologue.

Lilith goes to pick up the vault key, but it projects a map of vaults throughout the galaxy, which means more filler content in Borderlands 3!

Like Borderlands, you can get to max level by playing through the story twice more, and if you hate yourself, play it three more times for the other five characters.

Commander Lilith & the Fight for Sanctuary DLC

Commander Lilith & the Fight for Sanctuary is the DLC that sets up the story for Borderlands 3. This comes after Tales from the Borderlands in the story, so if you want to go in order, read that one first.

The Crimson Raiders (that's what the side characters are called) are doing their signature move of standing in that one room, when suddenly, Sanctuary gets attacked by a guy who makes gas that turns people into plants, so Lilith teleports everyone away.

Then, Hector (plant man) takes the vault map. Him and his soldiers want to turn everyone on Pandora into plants for some unknown reason that is never explained.

Back on the surface, you meet up with Vaughn, who lets the Crimson Raiders take shelter at his camp. Lilith declares that you need to take decisive action against Hector while she stands at a table.

You play Plants vs Zombies while Vaughn calls his sciency friend Cassius, who can make an antidote, but you have to blow up a door to reach him.

You team up with Brick to fight your way through the Helios space station, which was destroyed in Tales. To arm the giant moonshot cannon, you have to kill Saturn's brother, Uranus.

Tina helps you blow up the door, and you fight your way to Cassius, who turns on you and deploys the plant gas, which backfires and poisons himself, so you have to kill him, and get the antidote from the microwave.

Now you can enter Sanctuary and take down Hector and his vine tentacles. Lilith uses her eridium powers and blows up Hector and Sanctuary, and loses the vault map in the process. She gives an inspirational speech about how they need to find the key before it falls into the wrong hands, that definitely won't be the villains of Borderlands 3.