The second of Borderlands 3's DLC expansions--Guns, Love, and Tentacles: The Marriage of Wainwright & Hammerlock--has been released and so I figured it would be as good a time as any to jump back into Gearbox's first-person loot shooter. The Borderlands franchise has a decent track record when it comes to DLC and it's been a few months since I played the third mainline installment so, ya know, why not?

However, I wasn't particularly enthused by my time with Guns, Love, and Tentacles, largely because Gearbox's interpretation of H.P. Lovecraft's work incorporates some of the problematic parts of the author's worldview and then does nothing to address them.

It's the DLC's portrayal of black people that irks me the most, largely because of the Borderlands franchise's style of storytelling. Borderlands games traditionally explore concepts or pieces of pop culture through sarcasm, satire, or playful homage. Gearbox takes something that already exists and adapts it to match its style of irreverent Borderlands mayhem.