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She considers conventional definitions of beauty limiting, and ultimately pointless.

Anyone who wants to argue with that, in Ellie’s opinion, is just plain wrong. She definitely has to deal with insults about her body on a daily basis, but she refuses to give them any credence: she likes the way she looks, and that’s pretty much all that matters (this is basically the theme of the sidequest “Positive Self Image” where a bunch of bandits make hood ornaments of Ellie’s likeness in an attempt to mock her size, but she thinks the ornaments are so awesome that she asks you to kill the bandits and bring them back to her). This is why when you first meet her, Ellie is squashing a guy in a car crusher and mockingly ignoring his insults as she pulls the lever. She exists not as eye candy for some assumed type of (heterosexual, male, 18-27 year old) player, but as a character in and of herself – a character who finds herself beautiful, and refuses to be the butt of anyone’s joke. Her look, concepted by Matias Tapia, is considerably more realistic than most female video game NPCs. Let’s talk about characters like Ellie.Įllie specifically bucks against the stereotypes that all female video game characters must conform to mass-market definitions of beauty (not to mention, if I can digress for a moment, the fact that even our more conventionally attractive characters like Lilith and Maya still have infinitely more realistic proportions than most games).

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Please feel free to suggest how I can improve either by hitting the forums or by emailing me at With those hojillion caveats aside: let’s talk about inclusivity in Borderlands 2. Like I said, I’m just a jerkbag writer – I still have a long way to go, and I need all the help I can get.

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After all, I haven’t forgotten that Borderlands 2 was rightfully mentioned in Anita Sarkeesian’s (extremely intelligent and important) Tropes vs Women in Video Games series and I will make it my goal to never be highlighted in such a context again. I wanna talk about inclusivity in Borderlands 2, but I also wanna point out that the following examples aren’t perfect, by any means. Again: this may all come off as irritating and self-congratulatory, and I’m sorry about that. Discussions about inclusivity can get pretty hairy pretty quickly, and I don’t want to put words in anyone’s mouth. You’re going to see a lot of “ I wanted to do this” and “ I feel that this is important,” not because I want to take credit for all of the things mentioned in this article (the vast majority of coolness I’m going to discuss comes from our artists and the voice actors), but because I don’t want to speak for anybody else. I can only speak for myself, of course – I’m just a jerkbag writer who’s been in the industry for less than five years – but I believe that you can see evidence of attempts at inclusivity throughout Borderlands 2.Ī WARNING: It’s entirely likely that this article will come off incredibly arrogant, self-congratulatory, and condescending. Regardless of your race, gender, religion or sexual orientation, I personally want Gearbox to be an open and welcoming place to you. Upon hearing that, I wanted to clearly state the following: you are welcome here. “… are not explicitly saying “you are welcome here,” and because not, we assume we aren’t welcome. I went to the #1ReasonToBe panel at Game Developers Conference this year, and something Mattie Brice said stood out to me:

And today I’m going to talk about inclusivity. Hi, I’m Anthony Burch, lead writer of Borderlands 2 and its DLC.

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The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Gearbox Software or any of its individual members outside of the author. Gearbox Software projects are created by a diverse range of individuals spanning a spectrum of different backgrounds, interests, objectives and world views. Inside the Box serves as a forum for individuals involved in the production of Gearbox Software content to share personal motives, methods, process and results.