Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel’s Season Pass Delivers More Frustration Than Content

When Gearbox released Borderlands in 2009, I’m not sure many people would have accurately predicted what the series would become. It wouldn’t even surprise me if Gearbox had no intentions of a sequel at that point. But, the company did want to make a massive impression with its new IP, and helped that by releasing four high-quality DLCs after its release.

The true value of DLC can vary wildly from game to game, but with Borderlands, I think most fans would agree that DLC was worth whatever they paid for it. After all, the game itself could take any first-time player 40 hours to complete, and it has a ton of replayability. Even if you consider that a season pass might have cost $30, it didn’t feel like a rip-off.

Admittedly, when Borderlands first came out, I paid no attention to it. For some reason, it just didn’t jump out at me as a game with potential. When I finally did give the game a go, I fell in love. In fact, it helped revitalize my love for co-op games. Beyond that, I considered some of its content DLC to be truly fantastic, with The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned and The Secret Armory of General Knoxx being my personal favorites.

For a brand new franchise, the sheer amount of content featured in Borderlands was a real treat for fans. Had the game foregone those DLC packs, it would have been a shame. While the game itself would have still felt worthy of its original $50-ish price tag, players would have been begging for more. By now, the series has become synonymous with “second” or even “third playthrough” – many of us just can’t get enough.

With Borderlands 2, I admit I was quite skeptical – I just couldn’t see Gearbox being able to replicate the epic highs of the original title, or match its level of content. Borderlands 2 quickly proved me wrong, however, as the base game itself is simply enormous, and all of the DLCs felt quite meaty. Because of that, the small “Headhunter” packs that came out post-release that weren’t part of the season pass still felt welcomed – more content FTW.

But then we have Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, a game that was shrouded with uncertainty right from the get-go. For starters, it was developed by 2K Games Australia, not Gearbox directly, and it wasn’t called “Borderlands 3“. The game’s announcement also came about a week or so after Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford said that his company wasn’t actively working on any Borderlands title. I don’t think he was fibbing; I think 2K Games Australia handled almost all of the development, with Gearbox listed as a developer just to appease fans.

It wasn’t even until just before the game’s launch that a season pass was announced. You could also argue the fact that the game itself doesn’t look to offer that much variation; many of the locales look very similar. And then there’s the UI, which is a spitting image of the UI in Borderlands 2. Many prior to the TPS launch commented that the game should have just been a DLC pack for the previous game, and post-launch, the game’s UI didn’t help sway those opinions.

And, as if even more complaints were needed, now we have a fresh debate about the value proposition of the game’s season pass.

As I mentioned above, the season pass for the original Borderlands was well worth it. Aside from the second DLC, Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot, which I rarely played because I find arena / survival gameplay to be quite boring, I found the season pass to explode with value. General Knoxx is without question the best piece of DLC I’ve ever played, and overall, the value of the season pass only increased with every playthrough.

Not much changed with Borderlands 2. Here, the season pass once again included four content DLCs, with each one adding about 8 hours of gameplay. On the side, further DLC was made available, such as two extra characters. That’s a decision I found a little bizarre in itself; $10 for a character? At least they weren’t included as part of the season pass – which is what The Pre-Sequel suffers.

Last month, Gearbox announced the first piece of season pass DLC, which is a doppelgänger version of Handsome Jack from the second title. I didn’t have too much of a beef with this, because while I had no intention of making use of that DLC, I knew that three more pieces were en route. Well, I ended up losing what confidence I had left when yesterday, the company announced the second piece of season pass-targeted DLC, The Holodome Onslaught.

As Athena tells the tale, you’ll play through The Holodome Onslaught, a new challenge arena where you’ll fight wave after wave of foes, including some of The Pre-Sequel’s most memorable badasses as well as several new enemies. You’ll also be able to earn new weapons, new class mods, and some radical new heads and skins.

I’ve already mentioned that I don’t care for arena / survival type combat, but I’ve accepted its inclusion in the past – I can’t expect to like everything after all, and those who do enjoy it should certainly get it. But again, we’re dealing with a value concern here – is a piece of DLC that focuses around arena combat without an actual campaign actually worth one of the season pass slots, or $10 on its own? After reading around the Web, I’ve seen “no” as the dominant opinion.

Gearbox officially considers The Holodome Onslaught to be the second part of the season pass, which means that so far, half of the season pass is dedicated to an arena and an extra character – two things that many players are not going to take much advantage of.

What I didn’t realize until this DLC’s announcement is the “Characters” mentioned on the promise of what the season pass will bring. With the release of the first DLC, Handsome Jack’s doppelgänger, fans discovered that a second character was en route, Aurelia, “the Baroness”. As it appears, this season pass will be featuring not one, but two characters, an arena, and then finally some content DLC.

As a big fan of the Borderlands series, I am a little appalled at this. Many people who purchased the season pass for The Pre-Sequel were expecting tradition to continue – for it to include a lot of extra content. Instead, for people like me who don’t care about arena gameplay or extra characters, it looks like that $30 season pass will deliver about $10 of its actual value.

Considering what previous season passes included, I think it would have been fair of Gearbox / 2K to be up-front about what the one for The Pre-Sequel would include. Of course, if transparency were the case there, it goes without saying that far fewer passes would have been sold.