Skeletons & Dragons in Borderlands 2 Tiny Tina DLC

As far as I remember, one of the main reason I opened this site was to post my gaming experience in the form of a short, playthrough. I've been writing gaming articles since I was a teen, and I always thought it was a waste to keep them to myself. I haven't post any playthrough for a quite some time, so now's a good time as any.

I got my copies of Borderlands 2 DLCs around October last year but I wanted to save them for my semester break this year. As I mentioned on the previous post, I was busy with my finals. Now's about time I played it. While I'm sure these DLCs can to be played in any order, it would be natural for me or any other gamer to start with the first of the DLCs.

Captain Scarlett and Her Pirate's Booty DLC, one of Borderlands 2's previous DLCs.

But let's try something a little different now, eh? We'll start with the last of the first season DLCs (Borderlands 2 has 2 seasons of DLCs), Tiny Tina Assault on Dragon Keep! Now as we might recall, Tiny Tina is an NPC from the base game who tasked us with weird childish missions, because, you now she's a kid. Except that she's exceptionally good at making explosives, and her screws are a bit loose.

The DLC revolves Tina and the remaining of the first vault hunters; Lilith, Mordecai and Brick; playing a table-top RPG called "Bunkers and Badasses" with the vault hunters being dropped into the game's realm. Tina serves as the narrator of the game and is in charge of controlling the game. Now here's the twist: Tina can change, alter and create locations, entities and items in the realm of the game in real-time as you play! Knowing Tina, you can expect the unexpected while playing the game. Anyway, it turns out that she has a hard time accepting the demise of Roland, and the DLC shall conclude how she will finally come to terms with that loss.

So let's begin.

I arrive at the ridiculously named Unassuming Docks of Potentially Little Importance and immediately greeted by a beautiful view that seems to be out of a fairy tale. Out in the distance, I can see a nice, medieval-looking town. Above stretches a rainbow that's visually complementary to my multi-coloured Maliwan SMG.

As Lilith says, the town is pretty and lovely. Hey, this isn’t so bad. Surely something bad’s gonna happen but first, I have to head to the town to find out. I'll probably meet some friendly townsfolk, maybe get a free pie or something. But enough with narrations. We're not getting into action anytime soon, I assure my turret. So, I begin to walk toward the town, enjoying the view along the way.

Then POOF! , as Tina commands, everything instantly turns gloomy and dreadful. Aww man, I didn’t expect it to turn bad this soon. Now I have to switch weapons since my previously colourful SMG no longer matches the landscape. What a bummer. Then out of a corner of my eye, a stick man appears!

A stick man!

A STICK MAN!!!

Are you serio- no, wait.

It's a walking skeleton.

Owh, okay (Skyrim suddenly comes to mind).

Eh, the skeleton guy shoots arrows! And the arrows seem to trigger a paralyzing effect on me. So it must be a skeleton arch...nah see! There! It says “Deadeye Skeleton Archer”. I returned fire. Bullets vs arrows. Let's see which one's better.

The skeleton is pretty tough (since I'm playing on TVH mode). He survives long enough (or I’m probably just a bad shooter) until his friends appear and come to his aid. Nevermind, I have a friend too. You skeletons want to meet my friend? Here, take this! I exclaim as I summon my turret.

Oh, in case some of you don't know because you haven't played Borderlands 2 yet (emphasis on YET, since I assume you'll play it someday since it's an awesome game, trust me), my character class is the Commando class. His special ability is the turret, which he can summon anytime and anywhere.

The turret. This screenshot was taken on Christmas 2012, and yes, I still carry that sniper rifle around these days.

Anyway, out goes my lovely turret, and about 30 seconds later, to smithereens those skeletons go. I retrieve my turret and move on, heading toward the town in front of me. I reach the entrance to the town when a dragon suddenly appears as Tina commands. Isn't it too soon for a boss fight? I summon my turret and we waste no time and begin to fire away as the dragon circles around us.

"You try to attack the dragon, but your attacks do nothin'!" narrates Tina. I immediately check the dragon's health bar and realize none of my shots hurt him at all! But I keep shooting since- well, it's a first-person shooter, mostly we just shoot and shoot, it's not like I can call down the dragon for a talk or something.

Suddenly, BOOM!

The dragon fuckin explodes!!! EXPLODES! A dragon! Explodes! You don't see that everyday!

Hang on a second, last time I checked, my revolver is a non-elemental weapon. It doesn't have the explosive effect. So how come... Oh shit, no! The dragon doesn't explode! It breathes waves of flames! AOE attack! Argh! Next thing I know, I'm down! Dammit! The dragon is untouchable and there's no other enemy around, so how am I supposed to get a Second Wind! Dammit Tina, why do you have to make the dragon invincible! I haven't even beaten Terramorphus yet!

As if hearing my thoughts, Lilith, who seems to be annoyed by the very sudden appearance of the Handsome Dragon who's meant for a latter boss fight, interferes and asks Tina to remove the dragon and revive me. Yes, good, thank you! They replace the Handsome Dragon with a new boss, the (less handsome) Mister Boney Pants Guy.

Mister Boney Pants Guy wastes no time and springs quickly into action. He may be small but he's fast and swift. And his attacks are powerful as well for someone his size. His charges took off a huge chunk of my health bar, so I decide not to fight him close and personal. He really wants to prove something here.

I have to move more than I shoot fighting this little guy. I figure that since he's a skeleton, he must be vulnerable to corrosive damage (just why didn't I figure that out earlier?). So I take my Maliwan SMG out, since it's the only corrosive weapon I have other than my launcher (which would be inaccurate against this fast-moving midget) and as I run backwards, I open fire.

Mister Boney Pa- alright, let's just call him Mister Boney from this point- gives chase along the shore of the beach. Eventhough he's not invicible like the Handsome Dragon, my gun seems to do very little damage to him. I need to come with a new plan. Well, it's not actually a plan, it's more of insticts. I quickly summon my turret for backup.

Now, while turret distracts Mister Boney, I take my time to reload and switch to a better weapon. But before I can do so, Mister Boney's friends leap out and charge at me. Damn, I completely forgot about them. They're not much of a threat though, and it doesn't take long for me to finish them.

Mister Boney seems pretty mental about it.

Well, they were his friends, so I understand that. He quickly charges into my face and starts beating me like crazy. Lil' guy must be very pissed I killed his friends. If my character could talk, I would have apologized to Mister Boney. Unfortunately, he can't. So I'll just let my gun do the talking.

Now that Mister Boney is out of the way, I can safely continue my journey to the town.

But wait, what's this?

Looks like somebody's been waiting for my arrival. Relentless Skeletaur, level 47... sounds dangerous. After what happened back then with Mister Boney, I'm not going to underestimate these skeletal beings again.

The Relentless Skeletaur notices my presence (took you long enough) and starts attacking in a similar fashion as Mister Boney's. And the skeleton has friends, too. Luckily, me and me turret manage to put them to sleep. But just when I think it's all over, something odd happens.

The skeletaur goes back to life (technically, it's dead, but for dramatic purposes...) and has gained a level! This must have something to do with that weird sword sticking out from its back. I remember that when it was lurging me, a prompt flashed but I don't know what it was, since it happened so quickly. My best guess is that it must be a "pull" prompt. King Arthur, anyone?

A'ight. Change of plan. The sword is probably the source of power of the skeletaur. I need to get close to that sword and pull it out. If I manage to do that, I can probably weaken the skeletaur. Or maybe I can wield the sword to gravely wound the skeletaur!

It takes several attempts before I finally manage to execute the "pull" prompt on time. My guess is proven wrong though. I didn't just weaken the skeletaur, I put him to sleep! Well, this is much better than I hoped for.

Anyway, I finally reached the end of the rather small town. There are two paths, the one on the right I reckon leads me to my main objective, since it's further uphill. So I decide head to the other path, the one on the left, which is closer to the exit of the town, on which I'm standing. Turns out, this path leads me to the beach.

Hey look, the skeletons are having a fight with a couple of rock golems.

I didn't know that Borderlands monsters are hostile to each other. The skeletons are no match against the golems, obviously. We all know how this is all going down to. I have a good laugh watching the skeletons smashed to smitherens by the golems.

I'm not sure if they actually heard my real-life laugh but then they realized that they've got company.

Oh crap. The skeletons and one of the golems are heading toward my direction now. Damn, is it this quick and easy for them to put all their differences aside and work together to kill me? Am I that hated? The skeletons I understand, since I killed their friends, especially their dear Mister Boney but the golem, I did nothing to him.

But the golem obviously thinks that their skirmish back there isn't over yet, so the big guy rams every skeleton that stands on its way. Although it isn't sprinting, it seems to be pretty fast on its feet. Or maybe because of its size. Either way, if I keep walking backwards instead of sprinting, the golem will catch up with me in no time.

Oh, did I mention that as I was walking backwards, I was shooting at the golem at the same time? And I just hit its critical spot.

The golem is obviously angry and starts throwing rocks at me. Unlike the rocks thrown by bullymongs, the larger and darker rocks thrown by the golem are indestructible (or perhaps my current weapon at that time doesn't have enough damage to destroy them).

OK now the golem sprinting towards me! Big guy slams its fists onto the ground, and smash!

I'm down! Shit, I got to do something before I bleed to death. There's no way I'm going to respawn and have a portion of my hard-earned money spent in the process. No way. My only hope now is to get a second wind by killing the golem. So I spray bullets into the golem's critical spot, hoping to score as many critical hits as possible.

Then... zuupp!

My laptop suddenly shuts down due to overheating. 

Dammit, I really need to do some cleaning next time! Last year, I could play Far Cry 3 for 10 hours straight without any issue. I even spent my entire Christmas alone in college playing Borderlands 2 non-stop for an entire day (yeah, that's 24 hours) without crashing.

Anyway, to be continued... I guess? Oh, and don't forget to grab a copy of Borderlands 2 and play it. It's awesome. Til next time, guys.