Recap / Borderlands 2 C 15 C 16 Where Angels Fear To Tread Parts 1 And 2

Recap pages are Spoilers Off by default, so all spoilers were removed. Proceed with caution. You Have Been Warned

Roland: This is it, everybody. Lilith, Mordecai? You're protecting the city. Brick'll provide air support from Thousand Cuts, and I'll climb up to Control Core Angel from the cliff face. Any questions?

Mordecai: Yeah — why ain't I going? I gotta pay Hyperion back for Bloodwing.

Roland: And you will. But for now, I need you protecting Sanctuary in case this is just another trap. You'll get your payback, Mordecai. I promise.

Mordecai: Long as you say so, Roland.

Roland: Vault Hunter. We have a shot at stealing the Vault Key, and stopping Jack from waking the Warrior. All you have to do is get past a forcefield that'll atomize you, destroy a bunker carrying enough firepower to level a continent, and get through a door you can't possibly open.

Mordecai: That's his way of saying, "we're probably gonna die".

— Mission briefing

With Claptrap upgraded, and the Vault Hunters having obtained Jack's likeness via devices, the Vault Hunters of 1 and 2 begin their attack on Hyperion ground.

For this task, Roland leaves Lilith and Mordecai with the task of protecting Sanctuary, while he takes Brick, the Vault Hunters from 2 and Claptrap with them. Brick offers air support from Thousand Cuts, while Claptrap is in charge of disabling the security measures around the Bunker and the Vault Hunters clear the way towards it.

Once at Thousand Cuts, Claptrap clears the first hurdle by disabling the "competition deterrent field". Then, Jack launches hordes of Loaders and Engineers on your way, that also get cleared.

Once the Vault Hunters from 2, Roland and Brick reach the Bunker, it turns out...

Handsome Jack: Do you really think I'd protect Angel with nothing but a couple (of) bots and some flimsy turrets? See, you're not at the bunker right now. The bunker isn't a place. (The BNK-3R lifts off) THAT'S the bunker. Meet the BNK-3R, the greatest defense bot ever built. Designed her myself. Now do me a favor, and DIE.

A boss battle ensues, with the crew fighting against a huge mothership-esque robot with a colossal arsenal. Once the fight ends, the Vault Hunters finally make their way to Control Core Angel, where the second, and most emotionally draining part of the story takes place. Roland and the Vault Hunters from 2 get into the inner depths of the Control Core as Jack gets even more and more enraged about what they're about to do with Angel.

Handsome Jack: Consider this your final warn— no, consider this MY final warning. Turn around and I promise I'll make it quick. But I swear, you take one more step, every soul back in Sanctuary will die staring at their own lungs as I rip them from their chests.

Angel: Eridium alone could never charge the Vault Key. It needs a catalyst — something to awaken its power. It needs... a Siren. Jack acquired his Siren catalyst a long time ago. He kept her hidden from the world for years, but finally — you will be able to set her free.

Still, encouraged by Angel herself, the Hunters keep going deep and deep, until they reach the room, and The Reveal happens:

Angel: The Key is here, but to truly stop Jack from waking the Warrior, you cannot just steal the Vault Key — you must destroy his catalyst. You must destroy... [Angel reveals herself] ...me. Jack's spent years pumping me full of Eridium, using me to charge his Key and manipulate his enemies. Destroying the Eridium injectors that keep me... alive... will stop the Key from charging. And it will end a lifetime of servitude.

Rather than a boss battle, this part of the mission requires the Vault Hunters to damage beyond repair the entire Eridium feeding mechanism that keeps Angel alive. All while Hyperion Loaders keep attacking both Roland and the Vault Hunters from 2. Halfway through, however, Lilith makes her appearance, against all warnings from both Angel and Roland, and helps put Angel out of her misery. As the fight reaches its climax, Jack sends even more reinforcements until all the Eridium injectors are destroyed.

Angel: It's done. It's finally done. Thank you...friend.

Jack, now a grieving father, receives some farewell words from his daughter:

Angel: Dad, I have to tell you something... You're an asshole.

The Vault Hunters turn in the mission to Roland, only to hear a gunshot. Roland is shot in the back by Jack. Lilith rushes him, only for Jack to throw a collar around her neck, putting her under his control. Turns out the reason why Angel didn't want Lilith into her room is to prevent her from being used as a battery the same way she was used all along. Jack now has a Siren and has killed his main enemy. When Jack orders Lilith to kill the Vault Hunters, she instead teleports them back to Sanctuary, where they arrive at the vault of Marcus Munitions.

Then they deliver the bad news to Mordecai. Cue the next chapter.

These missions take place in the second half of "Thousand Cuts", "The Bunker" and "Control Core Angel", and have no associated sidequests. However, the level "The Bunker" has two associated challenges: "BNK-3R Buster" and "Cult of the Vault".

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This mission, the related sidequests and challenges, and the "The Bunker" and "Control Core Angel" areas show examples of:

• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Angel subverts the trope. At the beginning of the game she tells you she's an A.I. (as the first game's ending hinted). Later on it's revealed that she's working for Jack - but she keeps helping you anyway, defying his orders. Finally, though, it's revealed that she is a human siren (and Jack's own daughter, no less) with free will (though constrained by Jack), not an AI at all.
• Badass in Distress: Lilith gets kidnapped by Jack and requests a Mercy Kill in the event you can't rescue her.
• Berserk Button: Handsome Jack when you're trying to free Angel from his control. Although he seems to lose his cool during other quests from time to time as well. In addition, merely speaking about Angel or his wife is enough to piss Jack off, to the extent that he strangles an aide to death just for bringing it up.
• Cutscene Incompetence: Roland, Lilith, and the player character, all three confirmed as major badasses in their own right, at the end of the quest to get to Angel in the Core. Jack pops up out of nowhere, shoots Roland in the back and kidnaps Lilith while the player character stands like a lemon doing absolutely nothing. Even if you anticipate Jack's arrival and place a turret or release Deathtrap, they will simply idle the entire time (or possibly continue attacking nearby enemies if there are any.)
• Cutscene Power to the Max: Jack's gun kills Roland in one shot, completely bypassing his shields, and he captures the most powerful Siren in the universe single-handedly.
• Developer's Foresight: When the player is sent to the Marcus Munitions backdoor after the events of "Control Core Angel", if you don't loot a single chest Marcus will only wonder how the hell you ended up there, instead of berating you for robbing him.
• Disc-One Final Dungeon: The mission has vibes indicating it might be the game's final mission - assaulting a base of the Big Bad, support from a lot of your allies, said base is filled with mooks, several Elite Mooks patrolling, and a large enemy as the area's boss fight. Nope, it ain't the final one.
• Dirty Coward: Angel occasionally tells you that Jack is too much of a coward to face you directly and relies on others to do his dirty work. After she dies, Jack is pissed off enough that he wants to kill the players himself, though he still relies heavily on backup.
• Driven to Suicide: Angel is driven to do this after being pushed too far. Unfortunately she cannot kill herself, so she has you do it.
• Dying Moment of Awesome
  Angel: Dad, I have to tell you something... you're an asshole.
• Foreshadowing:
  • At the briefing, Mordecai demands to be in the frontlines in order to take revenge for Jack killing Bloodwing. Roland insists that he stays on the city protecting it in case the whole things turns out to be a trap, promising that he'll get his revenge, eventually. Mordecai eventually gets another reason to revenge on Jack and Hyperion once Roland dies.
  • Mirroring Lilith's tendency to "translate" Roland's words, after Roland tells the Vault Hunters that they'll go through "a forcefield that'll atomize you, destroy a bunker carrying enough firepower to level a continent, and get through a door you can't possibly open", Mordecai replies "That's his way of saying, "we're probably gonna die"." Effectively, Roland bites the dust at the end of the chapters.
• Foreshadowing: Very small and easy to miss but Angel frequently apologizes for swearing or cuts herself off before she can. It's repeated at several points that Jack considers profanity a punishable offense. One might think that she's apologizing because Jack programmed her with the same aversion, however the pattern is much closer to a repeatedly-disciplined child than the hard programming one would expect from an A.I.
• Game-Breaking Bug: The BNK-3R can get stuck in the geometry. If you kill it, nothing happens, forcing you to reload your game.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: Roland's death. From being able to tank high caliber bullets, rockets, lightning, fire and globs of superacid in 1, to dying from a single shot from a pistol into the back in this game.
• Gosh Darn It to Heck!: The Guardian Angel occasionally gets frustrated and utters a minor swear word, then acts mortified and changes it to "darn" or "heck" or so on. This may have something to do with the fact that Jack, Angel's father, who is keeping her a prisoner to use her as a living battery, admonishes both her and other characters for "language" later in the game (having presumably done so for Angel's entire life) and has no compunction about inflicting serious pain to reinforce this.
• Hero Killer: During Roland's final speech, Jack appears from behind and shoots him in the back.
• I Die Free: Angel, whose life has consisted of being used to charge the Vault Key because she's a Siren. The player(s) destroy the machinery keeping her alive both at her request and to stop Jack.
• Ironic Echo: Lilith is fond of teleporting around, surprising enemies, and killing them. She most commonly says "'Sup." while doing this. Handsome Jack later teleports in behind Roland and shoots him in the back, greeting a surprised Lilith with "'Sup."
• It's Personal:
  • Roland guesses that convincing Claptrap to help will be a bit difficult... only for Claptrap itself to instantly and happily agree to go to Thousand Cuts, because it also wants to take revenge on Jack.
  "I enlisted you as my minion, then Angel just happened to attack Sanctuary. Don't you get it?! Jack was coming after ME! It's time to take the fight to him! I'll meet you in Thousand Cuts!"
  • After Handsome Jack kills Bloodwing, kills Roland, and kidnaps Lilith, Mordecai and Brick are hit hard by the events and they swear they will make Jack pay for what he did.
  • After the Vault Hunters kill Angel, Jack gets extremely angry and promises he will kill them himself.
• Kilroy Was Here: While on Thousand Cuts, you can see Claptrap drawing a graffiti of himself with "Claptrap was here" on a metal plate just near the entrance of the Hyperion base.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: A villainous example with Handsome Jack. After the Vault Hunters kill Angel, he goes from a petty, insulting jackass to killing Roland and dedicating his life to making the Vault Hunters' lives as miserable as possible.
• Mercy Kill: Angel, held prisoner by Jack, her own father, asks to die to both end the torment and stop Jack's plot to use her as a power source—disconnecting her ends her life but also prevents the Vault Key from charging.
• Mood Whiplash: After the part where Handsome Jack kills Roland and takes Lilith hostage, there's a part where you're teleported into some closet with a ton of chests. Upon exiting, you see that it's Marcus' storage area, and he sees you coming out and admonishes you for being in there. It might have been more amusing, hadn't it been for the previous scene.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Lilith qualifies for one when she ignores Angel's warning to stay away from Angel's core and gets kidnapped by Jack as a battery to charge the vault key.
• Permanently Missable Content: The level "Control Core Angel" can be accessed exactly once, during the main playthrough of the base game. Afterwards, the entrance to the area in "The Bunker" is sealed, even if you defeat BNK-3R.
• Precision F-Strike: After spending the whole game utilizing Gosh Darn It to Heck!, Angel calls Handsome Jack an "asshole" in her final moments.
• Profane Last Words: Angel's last words are "Dad... I have something to tell you. You're an asshole." Notable in that this is the only time she ever curses.
• Senseless Sacrifice: Angel has the Vault Hunters kill her so Jack can't use her Siren powers to charge the Vault Key. Unfortunately, Lilith happens to be present when it happens, against Angel's advice not to have her present, providing Jack with a replacement Siren.
• Slave Collar: Jack uses one to control Sirens.
• Storming the Castle: When you're charging up a hill to take out an indestructible bunker.
• Surprisingly Sudden Death: Roland gets killed by Jack via gunshot while on the middle of a speech after the Vault Hunters assisted Angel her death.
• Tranquil Fury: Handsome Jack, of all people, will occasionally slip into this after you've killed Angel, his daughter. It's. rather unsettling, given his usual Large Ham / Jerkass antics.
  "You killed my baby girl..."
• Unintentionally Unwinnable: Angel starts with three initially invulnerable Eridium Injectors that you have to destroy at various points in the fight, and they will lose invulnerability one by one at the appropriate times. However, like every other area in the game, the boss's arena has a reset timer that repopulates the area with enemies after it expires... which also breaks the trigger that removes the injectors' invulnerability, hard-locking the fight. The only real work-around is to reload, do the fight all over again, and try to win faster. (Of course, in the average playthrough you'll almost certainly beat this fight long before the timer becomes an issue.)
• Villainous Breakdown: Handsome Jack has an epic and completely understandable one following these events. In one moment, the Affably Evil Psychopathic Manchild is gone, and you see what ''really'' lies behind that hilariously immature facade: A ruthless and competent sociopath who blackmailed, exploited, and killed his way from a shack on Pandora to ownership of the most powerful MegaCorp in the known universe, and then spent five years working to stripmine a Death World into his vision of a safe, civilized Pandora...one razed frontier settlement at a time.
• Walking Spoiler: It's impossible to talk about these chapters without mentioning The Reveals related to Angel, Jack and the fate of one of the Vault Hunters from 1.
• Wham Episode: "Where Angels Fear to Tread," the quest where you invade Angel's core. To sum up: Angel is a human Siren, not an A.I. Jack is her father and has been pumping her full of Eridium 24/7 for five years to recharge the vault key. She asks you to kill her. Roland and Lilith help out, despite Angel's warning that Lilith should stay away. After you kill Angel, Jack shoots Roland then kidnaps Lilith, intent on using her to finish charging the vault key. Holy shit. Oh, and all of this happens in 10-15 minutes.
• Wham Line:
  • A short term one:
    Jack: Did you really think I'd protect Angel with nothing but a couple bots and some flimsy turrets? See, you're not at the bunker right now. The bunker isn't a place. (The chunky block of metal suddenly starts levitating, transforming, then makes an Evil Laugh.)
  • Later, during the same chapter:
    Jack: You get the hell away from my daughter!
• Would Hurt a Child: Handsome Jack enslaves his daughter to work his schemes and charge the vault key. She mentions that she is suffering due to this abuse.

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