Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel asks a question most shooters never bother with: what if the villain was the guy handing you the missions? The 2014 game, built by 2K Australia with Gearbox Software and published by 2K Games, takes the series off Pandora and onto its moon, Elpis. It fills the gap between the first Borderlands and Borderlands 2, and it does so with low gravity, laser weapons and a story that turns Handsome Jack from a name into a person.
It mostly works. It does not always work.
Trailer, via IGDBcom.
Jack Before the Mask
The Pre-Sequel opens after Borderlands 2 and right after Episode 3 of Tales from the Borderlands. On the flying city of Sanctuary, Lilith, Brick and Mordecai interrogate the ex-Atlas assassin Athena. She tells them how she met Jack.
Athena joins Claptrap, Nisha, Wilhelm, Timothy and Aurelia on a ship bound for the Hyperion moon base Helios. The Lost Legion, former Dahl marines under Colonel Tungsteena Zarpedon, ambushes them. They crash. Jack sends them to Elpis by moonshot rocket while he stays behind to hold off Zarpedon.
On the moon, junk dealer Janey Springs points them toward the spaceport town Concordia. Jack’s ex-girlfriend Moxxi helps them hunt a jamming signal. The signal belongs to the Meriff, Concordia’s administrator and Jack’s old Hyperion underling. Jack confronts him and kills him in his office.
That killing is the hinge. It is not the last one.
Zarpedon and the Eye of Helios
Zarpedon fires Helios’ main weapon, the Eye of Helios, at Elpis. She says she will destroy the moon to stop Jack from opening its Vault.
The Vault Hunters raid a Lost Legion base run by two Dahl officers, the Bosun and the Skipper. The Skipper renames herself Felicity and turns out to be the military AI Jack wanted. At a robot production facility, scientist Gladstone offers his Constructor prototype, a bot that can build endless robots. Felicity agrees to become its AI, hesitates when she sees the violence required, is forced into the Constructor anyway, takes it over and fights the Vault Hunters. She loses. Her personality is deleted.
Jack gets his robot army. He also kills Gladstone and other Hyperion scientists on Helios after suspecting a spy.
The Eye, it turns out, is the eye of the Destroyer, the monster freed from Pandora’s Vault in the first game. Jack cut it out and made it a weapon. Moxxi, Roland and Lilith betray him and destroy it before he can reboot it, which is the right call and also the reason he becomes what he becomes.
Low Gravity, Real Consequences
The moon changes how the game plays. You jump higher, hang longer, and shoot down at enemies from above. Ice and laser weapons join the arsenal. New lunar vehicles carry their own guns. Grab two or three friends and the co-op still holds.
The shooter-RPG fusion is intact. Loot drops, skill trees, four-player co-op, first-person perspective, single player or multiplayer. None of it is a surprise to anyone who played Borderlands 2.
The Table
| Element | Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel | Borderlands 2 |
|---|---|---|
| Setting | Pandora’s moon, Elpis, and the Helios moon base | Pandora |
| Place in the timeline | Between the original Borderlands and Borderlands 2 | After the original Borderlands |
| Central figure | Jack, before he becomes Handsome Jack | Handsome Jack as the villain |
| Signature mechanic | Low gravity, ice and laser weapons, lunar vehicles | Slag, and the villain’s running commentary |
| Vault Hunters | Athena, Claptrap, Nisha, Wilhelm, Timothy, Aurelia | A different roster |
| Framing device | Athena’s interrogation on Sanctuary | None |
The comparison is not flattering in every row. Borderlands 2 had a villain already at full power. The Pre-Sequel has a villain being assembled, and that is the more interesting idea.
The Punch That Burns
Near the end, Jack enters Elpis’ Vault and finds nothing of value except a symbol floating in the air. It shows him a vision of the Warrior. Lilith phasewalks in, punches through the symbol, and burns it onto Jack’s face.
She teleports away. What is left is a scarred, insane man swearing vengeance on Lilith and every “bandit” on Pandora, set on waking the Warrior and taking the planet.
Athena sees it. The hero who once saved her on Helios is gone, so she leaves Jack’s employ.
Back in the present, Lilith orders the Crimson Raiders to execute Athena. Brick and Mordecai object. They open fire. The alien warrior who stood with Zarpedon on Helios saves her, revealed as one of the legendary Eridians, and warns of a coming war — they will need “all the Vault Hunters they can get.”
The credits show the aftermath. Wilhelm and Nisha stay with Jack. Wilhelm is turned further into a machine and destroys New Haven. Nisha becomes Lynchwood’s sheriff and takes up with Jack. Athena throws away Jack’s money and leaves Elpis. Claptrap is dismantled and left for dead at Windshear Waste. In a post-credit scene, Jack — now Handsome Jack, wearing a synthetic mask over the scarring — kills his CEO, Harold Tassiter.
That is a lot of story for a game that also wants you to farm loot.
What Holds and What Sags
The Pre-Sequel’s best asset is its premise. Making the player complicit in Jack’s rise is a sharper idea than another round of shooting a cartoon villain. The Meriff’s death lands because you were there for it. Felicity’s deletion lands because you did it. The Eye of Helios is a genuinely good reveal, tying the first game’s monster to the second game’s villain in a way that feels planned rather than patched.
The combat is the weaker half. Low gravity is a real change, but it is one change. Ice and laser weapons are welcome, and the lunar vehicles are fine, yet the loop underneath is the Borderlands 2 loop. If you wanted more of that, this delivers. If you wanted it rebuilt, it does not.
The framing device is also thinner than it looks. Athena’s interrogation gives the story a shape, but the present-day thread only exists to set up a war the game never shows. It is a trailer for something else.
What the Moon Is Worth
Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel is a bridge game, and it knows it. It runs on the same engine, the same loot math and the same co-op, and it spends its ambition on story instead of systems. That trade is defensible. The Jack material is the best writing the series had done to that point, and the ending — the punch, the burn, the mask — is the reason to play it.
The cost is that nothing here changes how the series plays. You get a moon, a jump arc and a set of laser guns. You do not get a new Borderlands.
For a game wedged between two bigger ones, that is an honest deal. It is not the entry to start with, and it is not the one to skip.
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