Everybody’s doing the Claptrap
So I boot up Claptrap’s New Robot Revolution — the new Borderlands expansion — and what’s the very first thing that happens? Hey, look, Dr. Wackypants herself, Patricia Tannis. Tannis was arguably the most annoying NPC in the original Borderlands, and the locus of the most insufferable bits of self-consciously zany Borderlands faux-humour, so I wouldn’t have been terribly sad if maybe I ran into anybody else first. Alas.
No, that’s a lie; the first thing that happens is the intro cutscene, which eschews the in-universe style of the Mad Moxxi / General Knoxx intro cutscenes in favour of the weird "storybook" style used in the original game and in Dr. Ned. I’m in favour of this; the odd narrative bookends kind of give the game a subtle surreality, like the whole thing’s just a wild tale Marcus made up. Which is more interesting than listening to Mad Moxxi’s face or watching the Michael Bay trailer they opened General Knoxx with.
I’ve only sunk a couple of hours into Claptrap so far, but to date, it appears to be Borderlands. So, if you figured that Gearbox was going to sneak Duke Nukem Forever in here somewhere, well hey, crisis averted. As far as I’ve played, this appears to be the "purest" of the four expansions in that it’s the most like the original game; it doesn’t have Dr. Ned’s melee-mob horror-movie focus, Mad Moxxi’s bizarre idea about how the arena encounters in the original game were fun, or General Knoxx’s incessant fucking driving levels. The new mobs are fun so far, and the plot (such as it is) appears to be thick enough to suit Borderlands. It also looks like it’ll be wrapping up some loose ends from the main game’s ending, so I’m guessing this is the last expansion they’ll put out. Borderlands is about two years old now anyhow, so I reckon Gearbox is about due for the sequel in any event.
