I feel I must explain this......
Spoiler alert: Loader Bot was the Stranger the WHOLE TIME! And I'm here to explain why I think this twist works brilliantly and makes sense.
Let's start with a common criticism, "Why is Loader Bot so cruel to Rhys? And bitter towards Fiona?"
Loader Bot is...a puzzle. Since he's a robot without a human face and has a voice that only speaks one tone, you can never entirely tell if he's sad, angry, annoyed, emotional, frustrated, or anything. There's a point in episode 3 where he makes a joke but the way he speaks it makes it sound like he's actually serious, here it is:
Skip to 18:47.
That alone makes Loader Bot unpredictable for me as well as the points where he acts out without Rhys having to tell him to do anything which tells me that he's capable of pulling what he pulled off with Fiona and Rhys and his willingness to bring back someone he cared for.
Which leads to my conclusion that Loader Bot was simply: acting to Rhys and Fiona. (half of it might be taking his anger out on Rhys, but that's up to the viewer)
Loader Bot explains that he never wanted Rhys and Fiona to gather any suspicion of who he was because he was afraid they would lie to him and not give him the honest truth about Gortys, so he puts on a radiation suit and decides to act like someone Rhys and Fiona haven't met before or someone NOT like Loader Bot and asks about the Gortys project.
"Why does he want the whole story from them if he was mostly there?"
Again, he's undercover and as a bonus, in my opinion, it's a way to get to know them better and understand their moral ground to see if he can fully trust them or not in saving Gortys.
"Shouldn't there be some clues that allude toward the stranger being Loader Bot otherwise it comes out of nowhere?"
From the looks of it, it really seems more like this twist was MEANT to come out of nowhere, nobody saw this coming and those who did probably thought of it more as a joke than anything, there are clues to the Stranger's identity but there more so for other characters than Loader Bot which is meant to draw the viewer off from that answer. Is it Vaughn? Maybe, maybe not but there is a really subtle clue in that Vaughn, before episode 3, wore a vest that had a yellow strap on his LEFT side shoulder and the stranger's suit has a yellow like neon strap on his LEFT shoulder, here:
And the point where the Stranger admits to losing someone you care about which can lead to a slew of other possibilities of who it might be other than Loader Bot. Lilith? Vallory? Handsome Jack? Other Borderlands characters I don't know about? It keeps you guessing until it's finally revealed.
So that was my best defense thread of why I feel this twist works very well for what it is and what it accomplished.
Feel free to disagree or agree and say I'm giving the writers too much credit, you maybe right, but that's just how I feel.
Comments
Yeah it made perfect sense to me. I feel like the majority of people, myself included, actually liked the Loader Bot twist.
I agree with everything.
I replayed the game, and it actually made a lot of sense. Especially when he complained that what Fiona said Loader Bot did (flung Athena across the town) didn't sound right.
The Stranger always spoke on the same paused style, too. What could have been a way of hiding his identity turned out to just be the way Loader Bot always spoke anyway. I'm not talking about the voice, I'm talking about how his lines are delivered.
But other than that, he was pretty good at hiding his identity. And it makes sense for him to be good at it, because he isn't human. He didn't have to worry about hiding his posture, the emotion in his voice, his mannerisms, because he is a robot. All he had to do was not letting any information slip, all he had to do to make sure that wouldn't happen was to keep Fiona and Rhys telling the story instead of asking questions.
Also, let me tell you that I love how he just say "noted" when Fiona says the mask looks stupid. Before knowing the Stranger was Loader Bot, I thought it was just sarcasm. But now I actually think we would have seen "[?] Loader Bot will store that in memory" on the top left corner if it was something said after he revealed himself.
You. Are. The. Best.
I loved the Loader Bot twist and it made perfect sense in the end, there where so many clues but nobody suspected that it could be Loader Bot which mad the surprise even better.
I feel as if you posted this because of my disagreement with you. It seems as though LB was the Stranger to be strictly as a shock factor. Early episodes to me personally (as I told you my opinion) doesn't make sense to fit with LB. For heavens sake, Rhys has done NOTHING to warrant such abuse from LB. Fiona was the one that "killed" Gortys without Rhys even being there, for it to make more sense for me to be LB, he would be much more hostile towards Fiona then Rhys, yet he seemed to favor Fiona on every single moment of the game. Now you can call it all a ploy to disguise himself, well I personally don't see it that way. Robot or not, he clearly had feelings and feelings would shine out in the end and his favoritism of Fiona doesn't seem to add up to me.
I understand the wanting everybody together, which is why I stated I personally felt like LB wasn't the choice as the stranger til Episode 4 where it all started to lead towards the end. Then there is the whole thing where Fiona describes how LB saved them against Fiona which the stranger replies "LB's can't do that." Well, who says they can't? If you choose the electric sticky grenades for LB he throws them the exact same way he threw Athena. (There was one in particular that I remember seeing as I replayed episodes 1-3 last night) so how is it that LB's can't do that same type of throw to a person? I personally think you are giving the writing crew too much credit here and to me it doesn't personally add up. Like I said before agree to disagree no harm no foul other then sensing some hostility from your part saying "really now?" as if I am unable to have an opinion of my own that contradicts yours.
Only reason I am replying to this thread is because I feel as though it was made because of our brief discussion and how you basically tried to question my intelligence by disagreeing with you. (This is how I perceived your "really now?" comment, if it was not meant that way then fine but it was how it came across.) Like I said in that thread, agree to disagree.
I personally thought it was an excellent twist. I didn't expect loader bot at all and if I did, I did so as a joke. It was great though, played out perfectly.
no need for explanation, loader bot is awesome, i didn't think i could love his character more, but BOOM, twist! i can.
and it makes total sense, the story of a robot learning what love is and learning what the motivations for the actions of humans are is a great story.
You can have an opinion, but there's no way I'm going to support the crowd thinking this twist was just as terribly written as the 'traitor" twist in GoT. It feels more like your personal interpretation of Loader Bot didn't entirely match up with what Loader Bot was like in the game. The "Loader Bots can't do that" line can easily be chalked up as Loader bot is playing a character and acting like he was never there because he doesn't want Fiona and Rhys to gather any suspicion. Loader Bot may have feelings but he's still a robot that's constantly evolving throughout the course of the game and he doesn't entirely understand how humans act or feel especially since his two friends were a con artist and a Hyperion employee that worked for a nutcase killer. My opinion, sure, but I felt I needed to explain some things.
There was a point where it hinted at Loader Bot, episode 2, where you go to Hollowpoint. "Loaderbots can't do that."
Yeah, there are probably some clues to Loader Bot that I missed, but I was mainly talking about why this twist makes so much sense to me.
I was still shocked, didn't see it coming till it happened.
I really liked the twist since there were a few clues. For example if you say that you tried to throw Rhys and Vaughn out the Stranger thinks you're lying, while he thinks the diplomatic thing was the truth, which would take anyone in the caravan off the suspect list. The Stranger's mask only having one eye also makes sense. When the Stranger says that Loader Bots can't throw people across towns, who better to know that then Loader Bot himself? As well the Strangers clinging on to anything Gortys related hinted towards LB. The Stranger saying he knew what it was like to lose someone he cared about made sense after Gortys' supposed demise in the fifth episode.
There were a lot of clues we didn't pay attention to.
My favorite part about the entire thing was that the only reason Rhys and Fiona were taken hostage and dragged through Pandora by an unknown man to eventually fight a giant monster, is because Loaderbot wanted his friends back. It's maybe my favorite aspect of this whole game now.
Now I know the true, I feel like the Stranger being any other character wouldn't have made any sense. Excellent twist and, in hindsight, there were many clues I totally missed at first and I just now realised.
Also, I'm so so glad Loader Bot didn't die. The bastard made me tear up.
Thanks but why am I the best?
You've explained it so clearly!
I feel that there were hints and clues. For example, while I had been hoping the Stranger would be Pollux, there were a couple things that bothered me about that theory. The biggest one I can think of was when the Stranger woke up Rhys and Fiona at the start of Ep. 2 by shooting his gun into the air. Fiona told him to just use his words because he was wasting bullets and the Stranger was just like "Okay". To me it seemed almost as if he wasn't actually used to using a gun. A general like Pollux would be used to using a gun and probably wouldn't waste bullets like that, especially with someone like Athena out to kill him. But it makes perfect sense that Loader Bot wouldn't be very experienced with guns.
I'm sure if I went back and played through it again I'd see plenty of other little clues like that.
To be fair a couple of weeks ago you said there was no one you'd be shocked to find out was the stranger and he was not on you'r list of people you did not want it to be.
that literally changes nothing. LB was never a suspect for me. I never thought "hey if LB is the stranger I'll be upset" because at no point did it seem like that was even an option. Now that he WAS the stranger? You're damn right I have an option of disliking it. To me, it didn't make sense.
I was indeed wrong that LB shocked me, that does NOT make the shock good however. LB never crossed my mind as a possible stranger, which in sense goes with my argument that it was done for shock factor only. Which I personally did not like.
and you obviously feel like you need to explain why you think that I am wrong when I tried multiple times to solve this with "agree to disagree". People may not have the same opinions, you however seem to be the type of person who if somebody disagrees with you then they are wrong and you want to prove them so, when in fact what you're trying to prove wrong is AN OPINION!
I read the AMA and Nick mentioned something interesting that is just pure heartwarming.
I couldn't agree more. I just love that everything that the Stranger/Loader Bot did, his motivations to bring his friends back together, his goal to opening the vault. It was all out of love.
Why was the stranger a jerk to them? Well simple he felt betrayed.
A quote about Babe Ruth is applicable to Loader Bot:
"God, we loved that big sonuvabitch. He was a constant source of joy."
I thought telltale was joking with us when the stranger was revealed as LB. it was way too random.
Right, that was totally the intention.....
I never said you were you were wrong, I'm just trying to point a few things that some naysayers didn't catch up on. If it still doesn't make sense to them then fine.