Borderlands 3 Director's Cut includes a deleted scene that would have made it a better game

The Director's Cut DLC for Borderlands 3 adds a variety of bits and bobs, including a raid boss, a short series of side missions, and a collection of behind-the-scenes bonuses like bloopers and cut content. Among that cut content is the animatic for a cutscene that didn't make it into the finished game, presumably for reasons of budget or time.

What cutscene's that? Only a funeral for one of the Borderlands 2 protagonists that would have given her a send-off frustratingly absent from the actual story, as well as making one of the most hated new characters introduced in Borderlands 3 seem far more likable.

After watching the animatic above it's baffling this was cut rather than perhaps being trimmed or otherwise altered to squeeze it in. Ava's seen as the Scrappy-Doo of Borderlands by a lot of its fandom, but with this one scene she became relatable. And as well as giving Maya a goodbye rather than rushing past her death so fast it seemed suspicious, the funeral gives the rest of the cast a humanizing moment—even Krieg's there. Part of the appeal of Borderlands 2 is that what initially seems like just a goofy action-comedy full of one-liners actually lands some emotional beats once the story gets going. Seeing that Borderlands 3 could have been similar is gutting.

Anyway, this is more evidence that the best parts of Borderlands 3 are all hidden in its DLC.

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.