There's a sidequest in Borderlands 4 based on a meme making fun of Soulsborne games and it's great

A cave with a skull and a waterfall where the Forgive Me quest begins

(Image credit: Gearbox)

Borderlands 4 is in a tough place when it comes to tone. The over-reliance on literal toilet humor in Borderlands 3 was so universally disliked that a follow-up was always going to pare it back a bit. Which Borderlands 3 does, though sometimes too much. The villains in particular end up feeling like personality-free zones, some of them not even having enough going on to fill the empty space on their introductory title cards. They're just names and hit points.

The sidequests squeeze in some of the personality the main questline leaves out, and even (whisper it) reference the occasional meme. My favorite so far is Forgive Me, a quest based on a viral joke about the storytelling in Soulsborne games—a joke tweeted by Borderlands 4 head writer Sam Winkler back in 2022.

Dark Souls revolutionized games, in the sense that instead of a story now you can just have some guy with a big sword named Myrmidon of Loss who gasps "Zanzibart... forgive me" when he dies and then twenty YouTubers will make an hour long video about how deep your lore is — (Image credit: Sam Winkler)

Because the internet is the way it is, Winkler ended up having to explain in the replies that he actually likes FromSoftware games, saying, "I am begging anyone who thinks I'm dunking on fromsoft to learn how to make fun of the things you love". And if you needed further evidence, the Forgive Me quest in Borderlands 4 is an extended gag about Soulsborne storytelling that clearly comes from a place of deep knowledge and appreciation.

Forgive Me isn't marked on your map. It begins in a cave in the Cuspid Climb area of the Terminus Ranges, with a waterfall pouring out of a giant skull at the entrance. Near a sword embedded in a fire a badass psycho attacks you, dropping a Desecrated Bolt as he dies. When you pick it up you hear the words "Zanzibart… forgive me" and begin an unmarked quest that instructs you to "Find Zanzibart's resting place", though it doesn't add a marker for it.

You'll need to find another cave in the Terminus Ranges, this one in Stoneblood Forest to the north and accessible by grappling point. There you'll face the Cursed Myrmidon of the Cruel Dawn in combat and be left wondering if you can possibly have a crumb of context.

A cave in Stoneblood Forest where the Forgive Me sidequest concludes — (Image credit: Gearbox)

At which point Vycarias, the Lore-Singer, a character who is a cross between a fantasy sage and a YouTuber who reads out flavor text will emerge from out of nowhere to monologue at you for nine minutes straight about the Shatterglass Plain, the Nevergreen, the Red Requiem, and a bunch of other proper nouns you've never heard before. It's like reading a dense wiki entry for a game you haven't played, and I applaud the voice actor who plays Vycarias for nailing the tone. It's the kind of commitment to the bit that I enjoy about Borderlands, and I hope I keep finding it in Borderlands 4's sidequests and inevitable DLC.

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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.

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