There are an exemplery amount of cases where the gameplay will be so much stronger than the narrative tied to it, that even if the writing is bad and the plot is full of holes, it doesn't affect the end product because the game is just that fun. Tons of games depend more on the player getting lost in its gameplay loop rather than the lore, despite the latter usually having an insane amount of work and detail put into it.
And then there's the rare opposite. Where the story itself disrupts the gameplay to such an egregious manner. Where it becomes so hard to ignore. Where the devs want it to be the primary focus rather than the video game itself. And when the writing itself just isn't good enough to make up for all of it.
Gearbox chose to lean heavily into their writing with the release of 2 and that never changed over a decade later, and while yeah there are glimpses of good setpieces in the franchise that became of this like Handsome Jack, fact of the matter is it slows down gameplay. Roadblocks where you're forced to hear characters talk, quests where you're forced into town for a 5 minute unskippable dialogue interactions, and an exhaustive amount of dialogue where, up until post game where you're exclusively farming bosse or running dungeons, there will ALWAYS be a character talking, and with each new release they've tripled down on this problem. I've had people tell me they either download mods that force skip talking interactions or simply play the game on mute, and that really isn't good given how much effort Gearbox has put into the writing and voice talent for these titles. So when the latest release once again doubling down on this issue despite it being the largest detractor from the last game, it reaches a point of being simply intolerable.
Which leads me to believe that I might not be the target audience, despite the gameplay being quite literally right up my alley. The game does a mix of nonstop jokes and occasional virtue signaling in a universe that consistently paints everyone as a garbage terrible person, and I probably smirked twice total in my 60 hours of sitting through paragraph long "jokes" that just weren't funny, despite being aware enough of the context of both Borderlands itself and the setting they were aping off of.
And despite there being a TON of class variety and reasons to replay, I can't stomach running through the story again, even if by means of speedrunning. The game quite literally dies by its own tongue, where even a game like YiiK isn't nearly as verbacious.
Watch a video of the first quest, and if it looks like something you can tolerate for 40 hours, then you'll probably enjoy it.
And then there's the rare opposite. Where the story itself disrupts the gameplay to such an egregious manner. Where it becomes so hard to ignore. Where the devs want it to be the primary focus rather than the video game itself. And when the writing itself just isn't good enough to make up for all of it.
Gearbox chose to lean heavily into their writing with the release of 2 and that never changed over a decade later, and while yeah there are glimpses of good setpieces in the franchise that became of this like Handsome Jack, fact of the matter is it slows down gameplay. Roadblocks where you're forced to hear characters talk, quests where you're forced into town for a 5 minute unskippable dialogue interactions, and an exhaustive amount of dialogue where, up until post game where you're exclusively farming bosse or running dungeons, there will ALWAYS be a character talking, and with each new release they've tripled down on this problem. I've had people tell me they either download mods that force skip talking interactions or simply play the game on mute, and that really isn't good given how much effort Gearbox has put into the writing and voice talent for these titles. So when the latest release once again doubling down on this issue despite it being the largest detractor from the last game, it reaches a point of being simply intolerable.
Which leads me to believe that I might not be the target audience, despite the gameplay being quite literally right up my alley. The game does a mix of nonstop jokes and occasional virtue signaling in a universe that consistently paints everyone as a garbage terrible person, and I probably smirked twice total in my 60 hours of sitting through paragraph long "jokes" that just weren't funny, despite being aware enough of the context of both Borderlands itself and the setting they were aping off of.
And despite there being a TON of class variety and reasons to replay, I can't stomach running through the story again, even if by means of speedrunning. The game quite literally dies by its own tongue, where even a game like YiiK isn't nearly as verbacious.
Watch a video of the first quest, and if it looks like something you can tolerate for 40 hours, then you'll probably enjoy it.