It is the only game in the series where you feel the weight of gravity’s absence. It is the only game where you watch the charming corporate stooge become a monster. And it is the only game where you can play as Claptrap, whose action skill (the maddeningly random "Vaulthunter.exe") is a meta-joke about the unreliability of heroes.
The pivotal moment—witnessing the murder of the innocent scientists and the subsequent strangulation of the traitor—is masterfully clumsy. It’s not heroic. It’s the sound of a psyche breaking. For players of the RELOADED version, who might have missed the day-one patches, this raw narrative edge remained intact. Jack’s line, "These pretzels suck," is still funny. But you remember it because it follows him burying a man alive. It is impossible to discuss The Pre-Sequel ’s long tail without acknowledging the RELOADED release. In the mid-2010s, 2K Games employed aggressive DRM strategies. The RELOADED crack became the definitive way for many to play the game on older hardware or without mandatory internet. Borderlands.The.Pre.Sequel-RELOADED
You play as one of four (later six with DLC) "Vault Hunters" hired by the ambitious Hyperion programmer, John, who will become Handsome Jack. The framing device is a flashback: a captured Athena being interrogated by the Crimson Raiders. As you watch Jack descend from a charismatic, if arrogant, corporate man into a paranoid, vengeful tyrant, the game refuses to justify his actions. It explains them. It is the only game in the series