As I continue to play through Borderlands, after having completed the main quest, I notice more and more the external influences that must have affected the game’s design. For example, the pillar of light that appears when you activate quick travel looks very much like the pillar of light coming from City 17’s Citadel in the Half-Life 2 episodes. And the game’s scythids are very much like headcrabs. There are probably many more influences I’m missing.

But by far the thing I’m noticing most about Borderlands is that it’s a heck of a lot like Fallout.

In many ways, Borderlands is more like Fallout 1 and Fallout 2 than the new 3D Fallout 3 game is. Of course, Borderlands couldn’t use Supermutants and Deathclaws, but there are so many other factors omitted from Fallout 3 that are present in Borderlands.

Aside from the fact that both games take place in a wasteland, the most apparent thing is the music. The ambient drum-heavy music sounds like it could have been taken directly from one of the original Fallout games.

Another thing is the irreverant, often adult humor. In one of the original Fallout games, you could have sex with a girl, after which her father would force you to marry her at shotgun-point. In Borderlands, Scooter calls the Catch-A-Ride “more busted than my momma’s girl parts”. Things like this crack me up.

Both the original two Fallout games and Borderlands have a penchant for Easter Eggs and intertextuality. In Fallout, I stumbled across Dr. Who’s Tardis and found a velvet Elvis. In Borderlands, “Mad Mel” is an obvious combination of Mad Max and Mel Gibson, you can find the leg lamp from A Christmas Story, and when you choose an orange vehicle there’s a “00” painted on the side. Dukes of Hazzard, anyone?

Fallout 3 obviously had more of a plot, whereas Borderlands has multiplayer gameplay, which is one of the main draws of the game. I could go on comparing and contrasting them, but the most interesting comparisons have already been made.