As I will tell you all day long, I love Borderlands. My allegiance is to the first (it’s always been my favorite in the series, and one of my favorite games in general), but I’d be remiss if I didn’t explain that I played hundreds of hours of the second installment. That being said, I’m genuinely looking forward to the Handsome Collection’s release on Tuesday. So much so, that I will be attending midnight release (and hey: also Bloodborne!) at my local GameStop.

But a couple things strike me as odd.

I am still marveling at the omission of the first Borderlands from this collection. Sure, they would have had to call this collection something different. Perhaps omit the “Handsome” and throw in “Anthology,” but hey, what do I know. Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford has previously stated that if the Handsome Collection is successful enough, they will consider doing a current gen release of the first entry. I still find that backwards. If there are people out there, like myself, who only really wanted the first, then they wouldn’t be spending their dollars on this collection, thus “proving” (within Pitchford’s logic) that the lack of sales meant lack of interest.

Weird.

I can almost stretch my mind to understand this. Almost. But then I come back to the reasoning that you can’t (solely) base interest in one title on the sales of two others. Especially when the third entry was far less well-received than the previous two.

And just when I thought this couldn’t get any weirder, I saw an announcement that (at least through Amazon) the pre-order of the Handsome Collection comes with the first Borderlands…for PC.

Wait, what now?

The Handsome Collection is releasing for PS4 and Xbox One.

And the first is included for PC.

My laptop couldn’t run that game by any stretch of the imagination. And why would I be interested in a copy of the game on a platform alien to the release of this collection?

Gearbox, you can be incredibly strange.

I’ve written to Gearbox only once, and I actually got a response from Randy Pitchford. It appeared to be a canned response, but still, it was nice to be responded to. And as much as I am mystified by their odd decisions, I’ve not yet written to them regarding this, as I doubt it would make any difference.

It was announced that the Handsome Collection went gold this week, so that sort of finalizes that. I’m wondering what is actually present on the disc, and what will be required to download to the hard drive of my PS4.

I also think it’s moderately funny that at any game convention at which Gearbox appears lately, they keep assuring folks that they are not working on Borderlands 3…yet.

I believe thou dost protest too much.

I suspect, at least in part, that there has been work done on it, and that there is currently work being done on it. It is their most profitable IP. Why would Pitchford be practically boasting that nothing has been done? Part of me wonders if he wants to see just how frantic the community is for another entry. Perhaps akin to his reasoning on how frantic the community is for a current gen release of the first Borderlands.

After giving this more thought, I’m going to go for broke and just write to them. I can at least be one more voice that expresses how thrilled I’d be to have the first entry on current gen. One more vote in the positive column can only help.

And on that note, off I scoot to get a head start on the weekend. I’m knee deep in Far Cry 4 and I adore it. More on that next week.

Has anyone out there ever written to a game company? If so, what did you write to them about? Did they respond?

Have a safe weekend, friends! Cheers.