To preface this, I already know the abridged version of what all happens in the story, and I also know what the internet thinks of Ava. So I wanted to play it for myself and see if I can find these so called unforgivable sins the character does. I’m up to Eden-9 (rescue Jakobs planet, right after Maya gets merced), and I haven’t really seen anything Ava does as offensively bad yet, and I feel everyone hasn’t done anything out of character.
So essentially from what I’ve played so far, she hasn’t really done anything deserving of hate yet.
i dont remember enough for hate but i remember an unfunny annoying kid.
the whole game is incredibly mid and i didn’t even bother pirating the dlc
NGL I wanted to throw that kid off a fucking cliff - Maya’s death is essentially the start, with Ava’s insistence that she “help” directly leading to Maya having to sacrifice herself to save Ava. If that was the start of some sort of personal growth plot I wouldn’t have minded, but for most (all?) of the remainder of the game, Ava is completely useless as an NPC, just being there to blame you and Lilith for Maya’s death.
As a reward for sulking and blaming you, she eventually gets Siren powers, which she can instantly weild as competently as someone who’s had them their whole life. As a reward for doing literally nothing else in the story, Lilith then makes her king of Sanctuary because she’s a siren I guess? Any other member of the crew would have made more sense to me. Fucking Marcus has more relevent experience and motivation. She’s also literally still a child and has not matured in any way since her first appearance - I assume that happens in a DLC, spin off game, or supplementary comic book, but I never saw it.
Borderlands characters aren’t exactly the most deep and complex, but she gave off the most Mary Sue vibes in a series filled with Mary Sues, being a generic annoying child that’s inexplicably put on a pedestal and labelled as Very Important and Powerful and Cool.
I think the other thing is that on a series with a lot of hateable characters, she’s not even fun to hate. The calypso twins were annoying as shit, gloating at your cutscene induced powerlessness, but they really worked that hate and drove it home with their streamer antics. Handsome Jack has his megalomaniacal bragging that gradually turns into a meltdown, to the point that killing him ends up being as much putting him out of his misery as getting revenge. Even claptrap, who I also want to throw off a fucking cliff, finds exciting new ways to be annoying, but Ava spends so much of the story being completely inactive that it’s easy to forget she exists until she turns up to receive the rewards that you did all the fighting for.
A lot of the hate was probably just nostalgia rage combined with Ava being kind of the annoying bratty kid archetype and doesn’t really do anything except talk at you on comms in a game that already has way too many annoying people on your comms all the time.
But really she’s far from the worst character in that regard, it’s just that the more annoying characters like Vaughn are shielded by being returning characters and also not a girl with short hair dyed blue or whatever. Basically just became the easiest target to complain about.
The only characters I’ve genuinely hated in borderlands would be claptrap and handsome jack so much so i wish the game had an option to mute specific characters or simply erase them from existence. Everyone else is just mid in comparison
I understand claptrap, but I’m surprised that you’d want to mute handsome Jack. I’ve always considered him to be one of the best written characters in borderlands
I’ve heard this viewpoint from a lot of people who played borderlands 2 and I just don’t get it. I guess the bit is he’s supposed to be taunting you the whole way but its just so tiring to listen to. Borderlands is my podcast slop game so dialogue gets muted
It’s less about the taunting and more about the twisted hero complex he has that makes him well written imo. He does completely deranged stuff like making his own daughter a lab experiement but when you put an end to her suffering he behaves how you’d expect a proper father to when his daughter is killed.
Then the presequel shows his descent into madness, and how he actually was a “hero” at one point, but gave into his bloodlust through the course of the story
The Ava hate is absolutely unwarranted imo. I thought she fit right in with the rest of the zaniness of the character roster.
Her DLC missions are basically her starting a podcast and you help her and that’s when her character really develops imo. You get to know her a lot more. Also her reaction to Maya dying is good character development too.
E: Maybe flip that. Her reaction to Maya is probably when her character shines and her podcast helps flesh her out.
Personally, I don’t like Ava as a character because the narrative gives her zero options/opportunities to grow. She is a victim of a story that doesn’t give her (or anyone else) any depth or complexity. Don’t get me wrong, I totally understand that she is a teenager and teen characters tend to act as teens do which is fine to me. Even a zany world like Borderlands kids are gonna be irksome and immature, that I totally get and actually kinda dig.
The reason I don’t like her is the same reason I don’t like the majority of BL3, she is full of narrative potential that doesn’t really go anywhere. Ava doesn’t go much beyond teen siren. She remains two dimensional in the same way that the rest of the cast remains two dimensional. Though I suppose it is worth noting that some of the cast is one dimensional when they don’t have to be.
She is annoying yes, but I don’t think she is in any way a worse character than anyone else in the game. I think she unfortunately, is a girl and gamers hate girls existing or speaking or thinking or being. I think the whole cast (except for maybe Wainwright) has the same issues that she does but because she is a girl people latched onto her.
Borderlands 3’d base game narratives and characters never really clicked for me. I do think the stories and characters in the DLCs are much better mostly because they are slightly smaller and scale and scope. The game doesn’t need to be super deep or radical, but games stories should have some nuaince even if they are trying to a loony tune.
