Serious beginings

When I wrote the review for Borderlands 2 good four and a half years ago, I did so partly because the soundtrack was pretty good at times and I wanted to offer you guys something interesting (I'm still doing that today, by the way, just a tit more sophisticated). But my main motivation was that I needed a game that started with the letter B. A b-ad decision that would be reprised in games like Neverwinter Nights 2 and The Walking Dead: Season 3 – A New Frontier.

Fortunately, I've matured a bit since then and I've realized that it makes sense to start at the beginning of a series - apart from reboots, of course. The reason is simple, after all, it's the only way to better understand the musical development of a series or a composer. After all, who would have thought, for example, that the theme from Gothic 3 already appeared in the first Gothic ? Certainly not me, an illiterate naïf! It's annoying for me, of course, since by doing so I sometimes have to slog through real snoozes and dust collectors to get to the good stuff, but as I said above: I'm doing it for you!

Other entries in the Borderlands -series

Soundtrack

Borderlands (2009)

Soundtrack

Borderlands 2 (2012)

So my catch-up tour starts with Gearbox's 2009 Lootshooter, whose soundtrack was created by Sascha Dikiciyan, Cris Velasco, Jesper Kyd and Raison Varner, who worked on Borderlands 2 and partly also Borderlands 3 . Thankfully, there is in fact an actual OST: a curated, 27-track album, complete with artist attribution and labeling - love it!

On the other hand, I only find its content 'okay'. The reason: it's a little too unexciting in parts. What would have been an absurd analysis at the time in view of the completely exaggerated game world and gameplay, I feel is entirely justified in view of the further development of the Borderlands-series. The first Borderlands was not yet the brightly colored techno-dubstep shooter orgy we know today. Borderlands 1 was even classified as an 'action role-playing first-person shooter' in the Wikipedia entry. Role-playing game!

The score

No, Gearbox was still a long way from what the later games would become. And so the soundtrack also reflects more Rage as a Castle Crashers . The score is more sedate, less playful. Of course, at its core it's still an action shooter that doesn't want to tell a rousing story, but rather offers us more and more weapons to make pew pew. But Star Trek: The Motion Picture or Alien , which is reminiscent of Traveling to the VaultRaison Varner4 mit seinen sphärischen Klängen und dem entfernten Gesang, das wirkt einfach so viel ernster als das, was uns die Nachfolger bieten.

At the same time, ambient pieces such as Welcome to FyrestoneJesper Kyd2, Enter Skag GullyRaison Varner2, Traversing the DeepRaison Varner1 and Assaulting Krom’s CanyonRaison Varner2 (whose title suggests otherwise) are restrained and correspondingly unspectacular. They outline a western-style game world and turn Pandora into a rip-off of classic movie tropes - exactly what you would expect from a shooter score.

Nevertheless, traces of the different styles of the various artists are visible. While tracks such as Smoking Out the BunkerSascha Dikiciyan, Cris Velasco4 and Burning Rubber and Shooting BulletsSascha Dikiciyan, Cris Velasco5 by the duo Dikiciyan and Valesco exude pleasant Dark Messiah-vibes, Jesper Kyd takes a familiar guitar approach with PreludeJesper Kyd4 and Welcome to FyrestoneJesper Kyd2 , which brings back memories of the first Assassin’s Creed , not least because of the similar instrumentation.

What I absolutely cannot understand, however, is that the song Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked by Cage the Elephant was not included. It plays during the very stylish intro and fits the game so well that, for me, it is synonymous with the score. It may be for licensing reasons, it may have been a stylistic decision, whatever. The song is great and is missing here. Period. 

To bring this review to a conclusion: The score of Borderlands is unexpectedly serious, sometimes even dark ... at least compared to its successors. With a glance at other shooter colleagues, we still have a firework display of action, with songs like Burning Rubber and Shooting BulletsSascha Dikiciyan, Cris Velasco5 already showing the direction the series would take. Would I recommend it? Mhhh well no, at most for the top-rated action tracks. And the intro song!