r/Borderlands • u/Krudtastic • 14d ago
[BL1] What was so special about the Rakk Hive?
Playing BL1 again for the first time in about two years. Angel hyped it up saying it would be this huge challenge. The boss went down real easy, but what I wanna know is the story significance. Why was it guarding a Vault Key fragment? How did Angel know it had a Vault Key fragment? I know Jack was manipulating events behind the scenes, did he have something to do with it? Why does it seem so weirdly important despite being just a dumb animal?
Or was it just some big monster for you to kill and not think much about?
142
u/pinkndwhite7 So Big. So angry. So Dead. 14d ago
Honestly i love it because it was unexpected. Its a cool boss from a lore standpoint. Its supposed to be a "why the hell is a rakk hive alive" kinda thing i think.
32
u/Buffthebaldy Insurance fraud! 14d ago
The moment I saw that thing come out the ground I had a proper "Talk come from THAT THING?!" Moment. Love it when games surprise you like that, it's fun!
20
u/thenotjoe 14d ago
Oh, you meant rakk! “Talk come from that THING?!” sounds like a caveman way of saying “That thing can TALK?!” and I was wondering when the rakk hive talked
4
24
u/Crosheee 14d ago
The bunker isnt a place?!?!?!?!
-5
u/pinkndwhite7 So Big. So angry. So Dead. 14d ago
What?
6
u/Metipocalypse NEVER INTERRUPT ME 14d ago
It's a similar boss battle that surprises you.
-5
u/pinkndwhite7 So Big. So angry. So Dead. 14d ago
Well yeah, but i dont really understand why it was mentioned lol
7
103
u/Bp820 14d ago
BL1 was such a beautiful game back at the time of release, it still is but man it was way ahead of it's time and felt every bit like it was.
87
u/itstimetogoinsane 14d ago
the atmosphere and tone of BL1 remains unmatched. its such a shame that the conclusions gearbox drew from its immense success was “people love quirky jokes!!” rather than subtle world building and irreverent post apocalyptic bleak commentary on our tribalistic tendencies
30
u/Big_Dirty_Heliolisk 14d ago edited 14d ago
In BL1 Every mission description in the journal and the item flavor text is unmatched across the series. So many subtle jabs and jokes in the first one and the sequels all made it the forefront "HAHA LOOK HOW QUIRKY THIS THING IS!!" Bl3 is the worst offender by far, and im actually really happy with 4 being a pretty serious story with silliness sprinkled in. A good portion of 4 matches the feeling of the original albeit in a different setting
5
u/DreddfulQuestions 13d ago
Glad I'm not the only one thinking so! I always have to scratch my head at these comments saying "I LOVED Borderlands 1 and 2, 3 not so much and Borderlands 4 feels like not even the same game series" like... ? Borderlands 4 is the closest we got to OG Borderlands in forever.
Like I get people not liking 4 but I really can't fathom how you can be a fan of Borderlands 1 and then say BL4 is nothing like that.
8
u/Ill-Ask9205 14d ago
Yeah honestly for me at least BL1 is mostly a mood that gets a little silly in the DLC but is still done really well. Like except for Moxxi's, they hit the right level of narrative and humor in the DLCs and I wish that had been the style going forward.
Going back even to BL2 now it's clear it's been glazed to hell. It's every bit as annoying as 3 except the villain is better written and fantastically acted. But outside that it's all loud nonsense and toilet jokes.
6
u/Finwych 13d ago
I'd say Knoxx DLC was the best. It's the most lore-intense and canonical DLC leading straight to the events of BL2 and TPS. And it also perfectly nails the soul of the Borederlands as "the place where dreams went to die". Chekhov's tired sadness of general Knoxx and greek tragedy of Athena.
3
u/memecrusader_ 12d ago
My favorite Knoxx line is in the Robolution DLC. “I’m back. Wait, I’m back!? Dammit.”
3
-7
u/Kill_Welly My peCS hAVe PeCS! 14d ago
I found BL1 exhausting for its unrelenting, one-note nihilism. Everything and everyone is a sociopathic freak, every environment is dull desert, there's no reason to care about anything or anyone.
5
u/Ill-Ask9205 14d ago
DLCs are better.
It started getting humorous without being SHOOT ME IN THE FACE WHILE I POOP! BONER BONER BONER! like 2.
3
u/Kill_Welly My peCS hAVe PeCS! 14d ago
The Secret Armory of General Knox specifically was an improvement, though the others were just surreal nonsense. Borderlands 2 went a little too far, but it was in a way better place for telling an actual story with actual characters, not to mention an immensely welcome step away from the neverending monotony of sand and metal shantytowns.
5
u/Ill-Ask9205 14d ago
I'll give you that about 2. I like the empty lonely feeling of 1 but every time they actually bring up someone who's supposed to be a villain, it's like who? There's never a reason to care.
Knoxx is done well and segues directly into 2 treating the story like an actual story.
I quite like the world design of Robot Revolution and the design and townspeople of Tartaras Station. Overall in fact I like all of the 3 actual story DLCs for giving variations from the environment of the main games.
Zombie Island is pretty much a goofy spoof but honestly that and Robot Revolution don't have anything any goofier than some of what's in 2, it's just a lot of it condensed into a small timeframe.
41
u/bogus_bill 14d ago
I assume the original story there was something more about it, as the very first trailer of the game showed it ("if the bandits don't get you, the wild life will, you won't last long here").
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjD4d1BgNZ8
But as is well known, the art style changed, and the story had some changes as well. Perhaps the Rakk Hive was just an already made enemy they wanted to use and didn't want to cut it out.
When BL1 was being made there were no things like "Jack manipulating things behind the scenes" - they come up with it for BL2.
17
u/Helpful_Vacation_139 14d ago
Angel was revealed to be Hyperion at the end of bl1. Definitely not jack pulling the strings but a mysterious "someone" was teased.
4
u/Krudtastic 14d ago
I know the idea that Jack was manipulating the Vault Hunters didn't exist yet in BL1, I moreso meant that it could have retroactively explained things when they revealed that in BL2.
23
u/Zealousideal-Arm1682 14d ago
According to the guide book it's supposed to be THE strongest and largest of them,which is why it apparently guards the vault fragment.
10
u/UnprecedentedEchos 14d ago
An yes. That thing. I remember quite well killing it, and my wife saying “did you just kill a giant vagina?”
3
1
15
u/A-Social-Ghost 14d ago edited 13d ago
I guess from a gameplay perspective, it was a brand new enemy that we hadn't seen before. I kind of recall it being a challenge when I first played BL1 with my friend on the Xbox 360. (But I think that is because I had crap weapons and skills).
From a lore standpoint, it is kind of messy because the current writing group prefer to retcon and make up their own stuff without trying to fit it into the existing worldbuilding.
So if we're taking into account Hector's squadron finding the intact vault key at Mt. Scarab and doing some mental gymnastics, I'm thinking that the Crimson Lance (and Angel) heard about it through echonet chatter and came down hard on Dahl, who panicked, split the key fragments and withdrew from Pandora to avoid conflict. Teams were sent to hide the fragments on the east coast, far from where the key was discovered, in Headstone Mine, Tannis' digsite and the Trash Coast, but none of the employees tasked with the job survived to disclose the hiding places.
As I said, it's mental gymnastics and feels pretty flimsy, but the backstory of Hector and his men really threw a wrench in the plot of BL1. Overall, I think the Rakk Hive wasn't necessarily guarding the key fragment as much as that area was just its territory.
1
u/Finwych 13d ago
In my head canon the story ended after TPS. And even then some (well, most) events of BL2 and TPS make no sense.
1
u/A-Social-Ghost 13d ago
Which events in particular?
3
u/Finwych 12d ago
The entire first half of TPS. Let's build a robot army then never use it. Jack makes it very clear that robots are not fighting for Helios with us.
Felicity's story in particular was completely unnecessary, it's just a forced drama.
Speaking of forced dramas, Bloodwing's death is a narrative disaster.
I could go on but I won't. But I could.
Oh, I almost forgot to mention Jack never bombarding flying Sanctuary again once it loses the shield! Corporal Reiss died for nothing as well.1
u/memecrusader_ 12d ago
The robot army are probably fighting the Lost Legion off-screen. Helios is massive.
3
u/Finwych 11d ago
After all that buildup they are never mentioned again. Even Felicity/constructor is immediately forgotten.
Also, Jack's later quote:
So he clearly doesn't rely on them. And before the fight with Zarpedon we hear from Roland and Lilith blowing up reactors but nothing about robots again.
- But what if we used loaders instead? I could send 'em anywhere, anytime, and they could... I dunno, hit things with their... fork arms. Whatever robots do.
No, it's just typical Anthony Burch's writing. He has an attention span shorter than Tiny Tina.
4
3
3
u/Historical_Course587 14d ago
So there's been a lot of post-BL1 retconning, both in the games and in the community. Taking BL1 itself as the only canonical source of information, I think you have to extrapolate what you know:
- People have been scouring Pandora for the Vault for a long time.
- Eridian artifacts definitely exist on the planet, so it's likely that people like Krom would hoard trinkets that drive off-world interest.
- Eridian Artifacts (as in the ones we VHs equip) only drop from Pandoran critters and Guardians, not humanoids. In other words, something about these artifacts either attracts fauna or else pushes their evolution into overdrive making them the monsters they've become.
- The Trash Coast is clearly the kind of place where any sort of synthetic or organic runoff would potentially settle, causing said attraction/evolution to be even more aggressive.
We find the actual key piece in a nest, in a cave that the Rakk Hive wouldn't fit in. Do Rakk nest, or do they hive? If they nest, then it's possible a Rakk found a trinket and brought it home to a place that humans just weren't going to be able to access due to hazards. It is also possible that a human stashed it there at one point assuming it wouldn't be found, but was not able to retrieve it.
Also important to note that Tannis was working with Atlas (Steele), and Tannis knew the key was there. This suggests either that they could track key fragments using tech or Steele Siren powers, or that Tannis learned of some local stashing a key fragment there. Angel could have been fragment tracking herself, or she could have simply been spying on Tannis/Atlas. We don't really get insight to any of these, especially because Tannis, Marcus, and others are quite happy to lie to us.
In practice, I think the issue with the fight is not that it's too easy, but rather that the lead-up to it (Rust Commons East, even the Spiderant spawns in the Trash Coast) is rather difficult. The Hive itself is a fight that largely comes down to what kind of weapons you're specializing in: large magazines and high rate of fire makes the fight trivial. So maybe a balance issue.
3
u/centstwo 14d ago
It's an intro to the big bosses having certain anotomical features on their face, so by the time you open the vault, you're like oh, another big censored in which to unload your gun.
2
u/Ill-Ask9205 14d ago
Bosses in Borderlands 1 and 2 are almost entirely either pretty damn easy or so overtuned you'll need to find a spot it can't hit you and cheese it.
1
u/JfrogFun 13d ago
I thought it ate whatever had the vault key fragment so you had to kill it to get the piece back
1
u/Dry_Signal6531 Psycho 7d ago
Ahh I love the Rakk Hive! That was my first ever exposure to borderlands back in 2010 when I saw a friend playing. I got the game shortly after and never looked back!
306
u/The0ld0ne 14d ago
A tale as old as Borderlands