Current Events > Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel is loaded with Australianisms

(+) Yeah! (+)

After that other user played through the games in chronological order, I decided to do the same thing and play the Pre-Sequel for the first time before playing 2 again. And despite having a meh first leg with Deadlift - my god, talk about the dregs - I'm finding a lot of familiarity in the location names and even in one of the quests.

For example, the Jolly Swagman quest. I don't know how well-known Australian folklore is outside of the country, but the Jolly Swagman quest is a (cringy and meh) telling of Waltzing Matilda.

The plot of that song is that a swagman - a travelling labourer - is camped by a small river or lake known as a billabong. While he's camping, he notices a sheep, which he gets up and steals away in his tucker bag - "tucker" meaning food, meaning he was gonna keep the sheep to eat at a later date.

However, a police officer comes along and tries to arrest him for taking the sheep. The swagman, rather than lose his bounty and go to jail, decides to jump into the billabong and drown.

The in-game quest made next to no sense, and the "jumbuck" ended up being a shrunken Kraggon model. But it got me thinking about Australiana and about whether Americans got any of these references.

Another thing that's getting me are the place names. Burraburra is absolutely a town name we would have here in Australia. I'm sure I saw somewhere like Lawson's Point at one stage - Henry Lawson was a famous bush poet from the turn of the century, writing the Australian poem The Man from Snowy River. That's also why Miranda and her father from Mass Effect have the last name Lawson.

And the last thing I wanted to mention is RedBelly. First of all, the name is in reference to an Australian snake called the Red Belly Black Snake. Secondly, when Red and Belly are acting as one opponent, their armor is reminiscent of Ned Kelly, a notorious bushranger from back in the day.

I wonder what happened to 2K Australia before they shuttered. This game is much more of a love letter to our nation than I expected, and I'm really enjoying it.

They even got a Shrimp on the barbie reference on one of the loading screens.

I'm gonna keep this topic bumped as I play, though I just took on a writing assignment that I'm gonna be hammering out as a priority for the time being.

Wait until you find 'that shotgun'.

Glad I could inspire you.

I'm still stuck on Borderlands 2 because I can't be assed to continue with it.

TerrifyingRei posted...

Glad I could inspire you.

I'm still stuck on Borderlands 2 because I can't be assed to continue with it.

I can only imagine. Borderlands 2 was kind of a slog for me because Borderlands 1 is one of those formulative games that I know inside and out, and 2 has so much more background noise and the focus is on being this world-saving hero instead of being a bandit douchebag killing even worse bandit douchebags because you want to be richer than your wildest dreams. I don't even like Handsome Jack as a villain until two thirds of the way through the game, and even then the stuff about killing off former Vault Hunters just kind of sucks to me because like. These guys died hundreds of times and came back through the New-U stations. I don't see how killing Roland is like a serious stepping up point y'know. "he's meant to be hated" - but for most of the story he's mostly just annoying. Like long story short I kind of prefer the basic simplicity of the first game over the people making dubstep noises with their mouths in the second game and the focus from looting and greed to "oh jeez gang we gotta stop the bad guy!".

And then there's the DLC, which is like - it's probably pretty good, but there's so much of it. And combine that with you playing every prior Borderlands game and their respective DLC campaigns, and that's a recipe for burnout.

The Waltzing Matilda one was hamfisted enough that it went across, but I'd honestly be surprised if someone from outside the country got every reference they made.

How about the mission where you collect 200 white rarity weapons, is that reference, or an original idea of tedium? Well, maybe it wasn't really 200, I forget the amount but I remember you could drop off like 10-12 at a time in a mailbox and it would trigger simple upkeep/progress quests.

MrMallard posted...

I can only imagine. Borderlands 2 was kind of a slog for me because Borderlands 1 is one of those formulative games that I know inside and out, and 2 has so much more background noise and the focus is on being this world-saving hero instead of being a bandit douchebag killing even worse bandit douchebags because you want to be richer than your wildest dreams. I don't even like Handsome Jack as a villain until two thirds of the way through the game, and even then the stuff about killing off former Vault Hunters just kind of sucks to me because like. These guys died hundreds of times and came back through the New-U stations. I don't see how killing Roland is like a serious stepping up point y'know. "he's meant to be hated" - but for most of the story he's mostly just annoying. Like long story short I kind of prefer the basic simplicity of the first game over the people making dubstep noises with their mouths in the second game and the focus from looting and greed to "oh jeez gang we gotta stop the bad guy!".

And then there's the DLC, which is like - it's probably pretty good, but there's so much of it. And combine that with you playing every prior Borderlands game and their respective DLC campaigns, and that's a recipe for burnout.

i've always been able to justify it in my brain as "they've never died" but yeah burnout is a hell of a drug

DuneMan posted...

Wait until you find 'that shotgun'.

Yeah that's not a gun, IM A GUN