I’m not good at driving in Borderlands 2. I mean, I wasn’t very good at it in Borderlands 1, but I eventually got better at it. 24 levels into Borderlands 2 and I’m pretty sure I’m no better off than I was at the start. What comforts me the most, though, is that I’m not the only person on Pandora who can’t drive; even the Bandits are kinda bad at it. Tell me, how many times has a Bandit, in his Bandit Technical, plowed into you at top speed, only to veer off course and hit a rock? Or just hit a rock because he wasn’t paying attention? And don’t think the dudes piloting the Buzzards actually know what they’re doing either. They have open sky to fly around in, so their incompetence is disguised as ‘circling around so I can get better aim’.
If Pandora had a driving school, or some quest pertaining to handling a car properly, I’d enroll myself and my character as soon as possible. Then again, maybe my character doesn’t need it. He’s managed to figure out how to turn invisible and use a sword, so maybe I’m the sole reason that he keeps getting whiplash and concussions. There isn’t some auto-pilot that I don’t know about is there? Can I install ClapTrap like an R2 unit so that—wait, nevermind. That’d be a terrible idea.
All that Dubstep? In my car? Nope!
At least, if you’re in a big, open area with few obstacles in your way, the driving isn’t that big of a deal; take The Dust area, for example. Chances are you’re not going to run into something unless you’re headed straight for it. On the opposite side of that, however, we have The Highlands; ironically, one of the many areas that actually has pavement and the one place I’ve had the most problems when it came to driving. To date, I’ve swerved, hit rocks (due to swerving), driven on the water, fallen off a bridge into an army of angry Threshers, and have died more times than I’d like to admit because of it. And driving while trying to finish one of those timed quests? Frantic driving at its finest..
It’d be a much more entertaining story if I was swerving to dodge other people on the road…but I’m not. For one reason or another, no one else seems to be using the roads. It’s just me and my thoughts. Sure, if those thoughts were about driving better, I may not have fallen of a bridge, but that’s not the point. You try to focus on driving when every living creature on the planet wants you dead.
Leave me alone! I have to focus!
I have to wonder if Scooter or Ellie can drive their own vehicles of destruction without crashing. You’d think that, after all this time on Pandora, someone, somewhere would know how to drive. And there are a million and one robots on the planet now, why aren’t the cars more advanced? Strip those robots for parts! I’ve certainly blown up plenty of them.
Then again, in a world where people can sprint forever and teleporters are common-place, maybe I should just stop driving altogether. Or, at the very least, get a chauffeur. Not ClapTrap though; he’d find some way to shoot us into Handsome Jack’s giant Hyperion satellite in the sky.
