1. Uses Its Story Inventively
Having a beloved and geeky game use Dungeons and Dragons as the framing device for a DLC is a quick way to win brownie points with fans. Even just mentioning Dungeons and Dragons in the right circles is a quick way to be accepted by a group of strangers. However, those brownie points could well turn into rotten tomato points if not used properly and exploitatively. At least from the hour I played, I can report that this doesn't seem to be the case. In fact the best thing about the game I played with was the visual inventiveness of its framing device. For example, Tiny Tina will set up the world to be a place of death and gloom after forgetting the setting of the world is happy wonderland. As Lillith corrects her, Tiny Tina will make a correction and the whole world will change around you. These kind of visual jokes are a plenty and help really sell those common, improvisations that a Dungeon Master has to make during any DandD game. But even on top of the humour that Gearbox play with, there is a ton of flair here. Gearbox seem to have opened up a whole new colour palette into this world, from purples, to deep blues, greens and reds, the several settings I played through were all nicely distinguished and felt significant;y different to one another. Obviously, I can't speak for the whole game, but it never stopped being smartly designed, inventive and pretty. If I had one word for the whole preview I played, it would be nifty. The whole story seems non-essential but also a barrel of fun to play. It has a nifty narrative device, nifty humour, nifty enemies, nifty humour, and a nifty setting. Nifty Gearbox, nifty.