Awesome video, even though I don't necessarily agree with some of it.
I didn't view Jack as a hero in Pre-Sequel. I don't think he gave a crap about saving the innocent lives on Elpis; He just wanted to get his giant death laser back and prevent his vault from blowing up. I think the whole hero thing was an act, because it's way easier to get people to go along with your plans if they think you're a good guy. And then when Jack goes full-on crazy at the end of the game, I think that's when he starts to buy his own lie; that he really is the hero.
Although Jack did indeed have some redeeming qualities in The Pre Sequel. Such as originally allowing The Mariff to live and destroying the echoes of his hired vault hunters so the Dahl soldier couldn't track them once this was all over. But even at the beginning of TPS, he had still at this point enslaved his own daughter at a young age, used her powers to fool others into opening the vault, and then proceeded to build a giant death ray with what was inside. It's like Moxxi said; He's power hungry.
I wonder what Jack was like when he was even younger. Like what really did happen to his wife? Was he once a good father before finding out Angel was a siren? Was he once a relatively normal person? But with the episode 2 line in Tales "I punched my Mother for crissake" I have a feeling he was always pretty bad. I have no doubt that his abusive Grandma was the root of all these issues, though.
Man, even after 3 games, there's still so much we don't know about Jack. I'd kill for some comics about his younger years...
On a serious note, I'm in the camp that believes Jack could have been a good guy, or at least he wouldn't have become a full-blown psychotic megalomaniac if people didn't betray him and push him over that ledge. He was somewhat reasonable in TPS, and I thought he sounded truly regretful when it came to Felicity's situation.
I won't deny he's a monster in BL2, but I can't say I feel it's ENTIRELY his fault.
Okay time for the stupid Batman line: Jack might not be the hero Pandora needs, but he is the hero Pandora deserves.
Pandora is a shit-hole or a planet. Even with Jack enslaving his kid as a major strike against him, Corporations used Pandora as their personal battlefields and graveyards. I agree that Jack eventually believed the lie that he was a hero in the sense of also a good person, but let's face it, no one wants to even waste the time of a janitor to try and bring any semblance of order on the surface of Pandora after Jack died. Bringing some order to Pandora probably would have been in Jack's favor to find more Vaults, selfish yes, but potentially good in the short term.
Yes, on the point that we need more info-dump on Jack's Early Years.
What Jack was like in regards to his wife and Angel, I get the feeling that Jack's reaction/conclusion from the Meriff's betrayal is not the first time that he's had to come to similar conclusions, so maybe he isn't lying about Angel having something to do with his wife's death/disappearance. The best lies are those with enough truth that you accept the whole package.
Hmm, I wonder if someone has a script of BL2 and the PreSequel for Jack. It'd be fun to badly psychoanalyze all his lines and try to piece some inane back story from it.
Awesome video, even though I don't necessarily agree with some of it.
I didn't view Jack as a hero in Pre-Sequel. I don't think he gave … morea crap about saving the innocent lives on Elpis; He just wanted to get his giant death laser back and prevent his vault from blowing up. I think the whole hero thing was an act, because it's way easier to get people to go along with your plans if they think you're a good guy. And then when Jack goes full-on crazy at the end of the game, I think that's when he starts to buy his own lie; that he really is the hero.
Although Jack did indeed have some redeeming qualities in The Pre Sequel. Such as originally allowing The Mariff to live and destroying the echoes of his hired vault hunters so the Dahl soldier couldn't track them once this was all over. But even at the beginning of TPS, he had still at this point enslaved his own daughter at a young age, used her powers to fool others into opening the vault, … [view original content]
Haven't played TPS yet (Hope to remedy that soon), but from what I see Handsome Jack is about as evil as a person can get. Like Rhys said "Too many people died." And they died in awful ways, all so he could have more power and money. This isn't even getting into what he did with Angel.
Guys are not totally wrong, but after listening to them it feels like we just killed an innocent misunderstood cutie. Which he's not. He's not a villain but also he's not a hero. Of course betrayals made it worse, but saying he didn't deserve it? It's nonsense.
There are many things guys "missed" or didn't include on purpose.
Jack saw the future, but what about Zarpedon and more important,the aliens? We all know what Zarpedon said in her audio. And the fact that the aliens are helping her (or she's helping them, doesn't matter) - what about it?
Also, Jack did many fucked up things long before BL2 and even The pre-sequel. I know that for a lot of people Moxxi's motivation to kill him came out all wrong and out of place, but we have to remember - that girl is smart. And what's more important here, dated him so she knew better than anyone what kind of a person he was. I think even if she and the vault hunters had doubts about his plans they couldn't ignore all the signs any longer after they saw The Eye. He pretty much admited that it's a weapon. And what do you need a huge-ass lazer weapon for? Biased or not, Moxxi was right.
This is what I love about Jack. Instead of a one dimensional villain, we've got someone who we cant just stamp the good or bad card on without some thought.
I think the one certain thing we all know is...he's damn funny!
No one betrayed him in that point where Angel was enslaved. She must've been 12 or 10 or whatever at the momet - it's not a timeline of tps, it was earlier.
I also forgot who it was but I remember someone said that there's a hint somewhere that he killed his wife himself, and it wasn't Angel's fault.
If you try to look at things from the hero angle, sure Jack WAS trying to destroy all the bandits, psychos, cannibals and all the things that make Pandora inhabitable for all except the craziest of the crazy.
But he's also trying to do that to a planet that LIKES it that way. Most of the main characters we know love Pandora and the fight it gives them. It's their home. Salvador for example, wouldn't have his home planet ANY other way than a chaotic, screaming deathball in space. Jack was bound to be put down for trying to change Pandora.
Bringing some order to Pandora probably would have been in Jack's favor to find more Vaults, selfish yes, but potentially good in the short term.
I'm not sure how that would make the situation on Pandora any better than it is. Jack wanted to basically kill every person on Pandora (bandit or not) and build his own cities and so on. That's his idea of order. Throughout Borderlands 2 he claims that Pandora can be a paradise, but that's true only in the case if he managed to wipe out the entire population of the planet beforehand. I agree that people who would get the chance to live in Opportunity or somewhere else would have a much better life than bandits do, but does that really justify the deaths of thousands of civilians on Pandora? Not all bandits are psychos and maniacs.
Also, remember Opportunity's laws? Littering is punishable by death, complaining about Opportunity's laws is considered verbal littering etc. Not to mention the deaths of all the workers who built the city and the conditions they worked in. The city would indeed be a paradise, but only for a handful of people. Everyone else would just get killed, and I think that's even worse than the situation Pandora's in right now.
Okay time for the stupid Batman line: Jack might not be the hero Pandora needs, but he is the hero Pandora deserves.
Pandora is a shit-ho… morele or a planet. Even with Jack enslaving his kid as a major strike against him, Corporations used Pandora as their personal battlefields and graveyards. I agree that Jack eventually believed the lie that he was a hero in the sense of also a good person, but let's face it, no one wants to even waste the time of a janitor to try and bring any semblance of order on the surface of Pandora after Jack died. Bringing some order to Pandora probably would have been in Jack's favor to find more Vaults, selfish yes, but potentially good in the short term.
Yes, on the point that we need more info-dump on Jack's Early Years.
What Jack was like in regards to his wife and Angel, I get the feeling that Jack's reaction/conclusion from the Meriff's betrayal is not the first time that he's had to come to similar conc… [view original content]
Well, all he did to Pandora and his daughter is the reason why he's a douche. Take that away - and he will be just some funny nerd guy, kinda like Rhys.
Yeah, even at the end of TPS he says that he's going to use the Warrior to "scorch the freaking planet in fire". Sounds like he intended to purge the entire planet of all life. That's... definitely not good in the short term. :P
Opportunity may have looked like a paradise, but like you said, the laws and the way workers were treated really wasn't any better than the rest of Pandora.
Bringing some order to Pandora probably would have been in Jack's favor to find more Vaults, selfish yes, but potentially good in the short … moreterm.
I'm not sure how that would make the situation on Pandora any better than it is. Jack wanted to basically kill every person on Pandora (bandit or not) and build his own cities and so on. That's his idea of order. Throughout Borderlands 2 he claims that Pandora can be a paradise, but that's true only in the case if he managed to wipe out the entire population of the planet beforehand. I agree that people who would get the chance to live in Opportunity or somewhere else would have a much better life than bandits do, but does that really justify the deaths of thousands of civilians on Pandora? Not all bandits are psychos and maniacs.
Also, remember Opportunity's laws? Littering is punishable by death, complaining about Opportunity's laws is considered verbal littering etc. Not to mention the… [view original content]
While it is true that the third journal says that Jack's wife disappeared, it also says that Jack's wife suggested that "the Angel" be shut down. For there to be something to shut down, Control Core Angel must have already been active at that time, and therefore Jack's wife's disappearance could not have been the reason for the creation of Control Core Angel. Nor could whatever Angel "did to her mother"--if indeed anything happened at all--have been serious enough for her mother to agree with restraining Angel.
No one betrayed him in that point where Angel was enslaved. She must've been 12 or 10 or whatever at the momet - it's not a timeline of tps,… more it was earlier.
I also forgot who it was but I remember someone said that there's a hint somewhere that he killed his wife himself, and it wasn't Angel's fault.
That's the one. I can't claim anything but it sounds just like I said above - they had a dissagrement over what to do with Angel, her mother thought she was too dangerous(?) but Jack wanted to exploit her regardless. What happened after that is unclear, but I doubt she just left. Sounds like he either killed his wife (we already know how he handles break ups) or did something that forced her to leave and it wasn't peaceful. There's also the possibility that the whole thing involved Angel in fact, but not in the way Jack wanted us to believe in BL2. Why they're saying dissapeared? Why he ddn't say she died? It seems like whatever Angel did (if it was her) it was something... well, weird.
Yup! There are echoes in the game that contradict with Jack's claim of Angel hurting/killing her mother.
From the Borderlands Wiki:
… more While it is true that the third journal says that Jack's wife disappeared, it also says that Jack's wife suggested that "the Angel" be shut down. For there to be something to shut down, Control Core Angel must have already been active at that time, and therefore Jack's wife's disappearance could not have been the reason for the creation of Control Core Angel. Nor could whatever Angel "did to her mother"--if indeed anything happened at all--have been serious enough for her mother to agree with restraining Angel.
If you try to look at things from the hero angle, sure Jack WAS trying to destroy all the bandits, psychos, cannibals and all the things tha… moret make Pandora inhabitable for all except the craziest of the crazy.
But he's also trying to do that to a planet that LIKES it that way. Most of the main characters we know love Pandora and the fight it gives them. It's their home. Salvador for example, wouldn't have his home planet ANY other way than a chaotic, screaming deathball in space. Jack was bound to be put down for trying to change Pandora.
Bringing some order to Pandora probably would have been in Jack's favor to find more Vaults, selfish yes, but potentially good in the short … moreterm.
I'm not sure how that would make the situation on Pandora any better than it is. Jack wanted to basically kill every person on Pandora (bandit or not) and build his own cities and so on. That's his idea of order. Throughout Borderlands 2 he claims that Pandora can be a paradise, but that's true only in the case if he managed to wipe out the entire population of the planet beforehand. I agree that people who would get the chance to live in Opportunity or somewhere else would have a much better life than bandits do, but does that really justify the deaths of thousands of civilians on Pandora? Not all bandits are psychos and maniacs.
Also, remember Opportunity's laws? Littering is punishable by death, complaining about Opportunity's laws is considered verbal littering etc. Not to mention the… [view original content]
This is what I love about Jack. Instead of a one dimensional villain, we've got someone who we cant just stamp the good or bad card on without some thought.
I think the one certain thing we all know is...he's damn funny!
Um, yeah it's better. This way you have a chance to live. And leave the planet. And Jack just wanted to wipe them all off the face of Pandora, bandits and normal people alike. He never gave them a chance to just leave he killed everyone who tried to escape. It's so nice to talk about anarchy when you're not the one being killed just because you happen to live on a planet which contains eridium and a special vault.
Here is a massive discussion that was on the old gearbox fourms. It was pretty awesome, but some people genuinly raged over this topic. One of my favorite threads.
I don't think anyone in Borderlands is a hero as they are either greedy, crazy or chaotic. I just think that Jack, out of all of the evils, has good intentions. You can't say he is the good guy because he did a lot of bad to many people yet his main intention was to save Pandora. So yes, I agree that Jack is the hero but he is not the good guy.
I don't think anyone in Borderlands is a hero as they are either greedy, crazy or chaotic. I just think that Jack, out of all of the evils, … morehas good intentions. You can't say he is the good guy because he did a lot of bad to many people yet his main intention was to save Pandora. So yes, I agree that Jack is the hero but he is not the good guy.
100% agree. The Vault Hunters are basically murderous thieves, Handsome Jack is a psychotic ass (who started out with good intentions), and … morethen you have all your psychos, raiders, etc. There's no 'good' guys in the games. I think at most, the Vault Hunters are Chaotic Neutral.
100% agree. The Vault Hunters are basically murderous thieves, Handsome Jack is a psychotic ass (who started out with good intentions), and then you have all your psychos, raiders, etc. There's no 'good' guys in the games. I think at most, the Vault Hunters are Chaotic Neutral.
I don't think anyone in Borderlands is a hero as they are either greedy, crazy or chaotic. I just think that Jack, out of all of the evils, … morehas good intentions. You can't say he is the good guy because he did a lot of bad to many people yet his main intention was to save Pandora. So yes, I agree that Jack is the hero but he is not the good guy.
Comments
Misunderstood? The guy was a monster who killed a LOT of innocent people some children
Did somebody think they could get away with this thread without hearing about my #JusticeForJack campaign? You thought wrong.
Did you post this video there then? You should c;
Awesome video, even though I don't necessarily agree with some of it.
I didn't view Jack as a hero in Pre-Sequel. I don't think he gave a crap about saving the innocent lives on Elpis; He just wanted to get his giant death laser back and prevent his vault from blowing up. I think the whole hero thing was an act, because it's way easier to get people to go along with your plans if they think you're a good guy. And then when Jack goes full-on crazy at the end of the game, I think that's when he starts to buy his own lie; that he really is the hero.
Although Jack did indeed have some redeeming qualities in The Pre Sequel. Such as originally allowing The Mariff to live and destroying the echoes of his hired vault hunters so the Dahl soldier couldn't track them once this was all over. But even at the beginning of TPS, he had still at this point enslaved his own daughter at a young age, used her powers to fool others into opening the vault, and then proceeded to build a giant death ray with what was inside. It's like Moxxi said; He's power hungry.
I wonder what Jack was like when he was even younger. Like what really did happen to his wife? Was he once a good father before finding out Angel was a siren? Was he once a relatively normal person? But with the episode 2 line in Tales "I punched my Mother for crissake" I have a feeling he was always pretty bad. I have no doubt that his abusive Grandma was the root of all these issues, though.
Man, even after 3 games, there's still so much we don't know about Jack. I'd kill for some comics about his younger years...
Jack is the goddamn hero.
Handsome Jack did nothing wrong.
On a serious note, I'm in the camp that believes Jack could have been a good guy, or at least he wouldn't have become a full-blown psychotic megalomaniac if people didn't betray him and push him over that ledge. He was somewhat reasonable in TPS, and I thought he sounded truly regretful when it came to Felicity's situation.
I won't deny he's a monster in BL2, but I can't say I feel it's ENTIRELY his fault.
Okay time for the stupid Batman line: Jack might not be the hero Pandora needs, but he is the hero Pandora deserves.
Pandora is a shit-hole or a planet. Even with Jack enslaving his kid as a major strike against him, Corporations used Pandora as their personal battlefields and graveyards. I agree that Jack eventually believed the lie that he was a hero in the sense of also a good person, but let's face it, no one wants to even waste the time of a janitor to try and bring any semblance of order on the surface of Pandora after Jack died. Bringing some order to Pandora probably would have been in Jack's favor to find more Vaults, selfish yes, but potentially good in the short term.
Yes, on the point that we need more info-dump on Jack's Early Years.
What Jack was like in regards to his wife and Angel, I get the feeling that Jack's reaction/conclusion from the Meriff's betrayal is not the first time that he's had to come to similar conclusions, so maybe he isn't lying about Angel having something to do with his wife's death/disappearance. The best lies are those with enough truth that you accept the whole package.
Hmm, I wonder if someone has a script of BL2 and the PreSequel for Jack. It'd be fun to badly psychoanalyze all his lines and try to piece some inane back story from it.
he also enslaved his own daughter since she was a child
Haven't played TPS yet (Hope to remedy that soon), but from what I see Handsome Jack is about as evil as a person can get. Like Rhys said "Too many people died." And they died in awful ways, all so he could have more power and money. This isn't even getting into what he did with Angel.
I reckon He's redeemable. He was a pretty good-ish character in The Pre-Sequel.
Only thing left to redeem is his AI
As expected of a person driven crazy by his closest companions betraying him over and over and a bad case of child abuse. He's mental, but not evil.
Guys are not totally wrong, but after listening to them it feels like we just killed an innocent misunderstood cutie. Which he's not. He's not a villain but also he's not a hero. Of course betrayals made it worse, but saying he didn't deserve it? It's nonsense.
There are many things guys "missed" or didn't include on purpose.
Jack saw the future, but what about Zarpedon and more important,the aliens? We all know what Zarpedon said in her audio. And the fact that the aliens are helping her (or she's helping them, doesn't matter) - what about it?
Also, Jack did many fucked up things long before BL2 and even The pre-sequel. I know that for a lot of people Moxxi's motivation to kill him came out all wrong and out of place, but we have to remember - that girl is smart. And what's more important here, dated him so she knew better than anyone what kind of a person he was. I think even if she and the vault hunters had doubts about his plans they couldn't ignore all the signs any longer after they saw The Eye. He pretty much admited that it's a weapon. And what do you need a huge-ass lazer weapon for? Biased or not, Moxxi was right.
This is what I love about Jack. Instead of a one dimensional villain, we've got someone who we cant just stamp the good or bad card on without some thought.
I think the one certain thing we all know is...he's damn funny!
Oh please no. He's awesome the way he is. Redeeming him means to ruin his character completely.
No one betrayed him in that point where Angel was enslaved. She must've been 12 or 10 or whatever at the momet - it's not a timeline of tps, it was earlier.
I also forgot who it was but I remember someone said that there's a hint somewhere that he killed his wife himself, and it wasn't Angel's fault.
If you try to look at things from the hero angle, sure Jack WAS trying to destroy all the bandits, psychos, cannibals and all the things that make Pandora inhabitable for all except the craziest of the crazy.
But he's also trying to do that to a planet that LIKES it that way. Most of the main characters we know love Pandora and the fight it gives them. It's their home. Salvador for example, wouldn't have his home planet ANY other way than a chaotic, screaming deathball in space. Jack was bound to be put down for trying to change Pandora.
Just because he can be redeemed doesn't me he can stop being the douche we all know and love.
I'm not sure how that would make the situation on Pandora any better than it is. Jack wanted to basically kill every person on Pandora (bandit or not) and build his own cities and so on. That's his idea of order. Throughout Borderlands 2 he claims that Pandora can be a paradise, but that's true only in the case if he managed to wipe out the entire population of the planet beforehand. I agree that people who would get the chance to live in Opportunity or somewhere else would have a much better life than bandits do, but does that really justify the deaths of thousands of civilians on Pandora? Not all bandits are psychos and maniacs.
Also, remember Opportunity's laws? Littering is punishable by death, complaining about Opportunity's laws is considered verbal littering etc. Not to mention the deaths of all the workers who built the city and the conditions they worked in. The city would indeed be a paradise, but only for a handful of people. Everyone else would just get killed, and I think that's even worse than the situation Pandora's in right now.
Well, all he did to Pandora and his daughter is the reason why he's a douche. Take that away - and he will be just some funny nerd guy, kinda like Rhys.
Yeah, even at the end of TPS he says that he's going to use the Warrior to "scorch the freaking planet in fire". Sounds like he intended to purge the entire planet of all life. That's... definitely not good in the short term. :P
Opportunity may have looked like a paradise, but like you said, the laws and the way workers were treated really wasn't any better than the rest of Pandora.
Yup! There are echoes in the game that contradict with Jack's claim of Angel hurting/killing her mother.
From the Borderlands Wiki:
That's the one. I can't claim anything but it sounds just like I said above - they had a dissagrement over what to do with Angel, her mother thought she was too dangerous(?) but Jack wanted to exploit her regardless. What happened after that is unclear, but I doubt she just left. Sounds like he either killed his wife (we already know how he handles break ups) or did something that forced her to leave and it wasn't peaceful. There's also the possibility that the whole thing involved Angel in fact, but not in the way Jack wanted us to believe in BL2. Why they're saying dissapeared? Why he ddn't say she died? It seems like whatever Angel did (if it was her) it was something... well, weird.
Well, I reckon that good people aren't in favor of anarchy.
Alright, might have forgot the whole "glass the surface and rebuild" part of the plan.
At times, he feels more of a friend rather than an enemy.
Telltale captured it very well when they called him "Frenemy" on his intro screen in Tales.
You just wait...
You don't have to be a good person to have a right to simply live.
I think good people are not in favor of military dictatorship either.
And anarchy is better? Sure, lol.
Um, yeah it's better. This way you have a chance to live. And leave the planet. And Jack just wanted to wipe them all off the face of Pandora, bandits and normal people alike. He never gave them a chance to just leave he killed everyone who tried to escape. It's so nice to talk about anarchy when you're not the one being killed just because you happen to live on a planet which contains eridium and a special vault.
Here is a massive discussion that was on the old gearbox fourms. It was pretty awesome, but some people genuinly raged over this topic. One of my favorite threads.
Link to the thread: http://oldforums.gearboxsoftware.com/showthread.php?t=387455&page=4
It is quite a few pages long. It may be on the 7th page where this discussion starts
The good, peace wanting people are still unfortunately the Pandoran minority. The planet isn't ready for that kind of a change.
Well, yes, at first. My view is-was a bit of a jerk, BUT had redeeming traits and was actually rational.
Then the Meriff did something stupid and Jack began to slowly drift towards "Fascist Dictator."
"sure its a tough universe but thats no exuse for being an asshole"
..Unless you are funny with it..
then its kinda totally fine
I don't think anyone in Borderlands is a hero as they are either greedy, crazy or chaotic. I just think that Jack, out of all of the evils, has good intentions. You can't say he is the good guy because he did a lot of bad to many people yet his main intention was to save Pandora. So yes, I agree that Jack is the hero but he is not the good guy.
Save it how or from what exactly.
Welcome To The Forums!
I'm gonna give you your first like, welcome!
100% agree. The Vault Hunters are basically murderous thieves, Handsome Jack is a psychotic ass (who started out with good intentions), and then you have all your psychos, raiders, etc. There's no 'good' guys in the games. I think at most, the Vault Hunters are Chaotic Neutral.