So that may be the ultimate catharsis of the death of Handsome Jack. I like to imagine that Lilith dealing the blow is the one I would have liked to offer Angel. ItвЂ™s poetic, in its own way Jack, needing a Siren catalyst to power his Vault Key recharger, first used his daughter, then used Lilith. This is the other option often available to the player: Activating something-in this case the NPC representing the Lilith character-and watching events unfold. A reductive appraisal of shooter games is that all problems are solved by shooting them in the face (or something approximating a face). And, if only because Lilith seems to suffer far more at the hands of Handsome Jack than my interchangeable avatar-protagonist ever has, IвЂ™ve always let her deal that deathblow. Jack accuses the Vault Hunters of being bandits even though he commits many of the same atrocities he accuses them of maybe JackвЂ™s ultimate victory is really over the player, behaving so despicably and unforgivably that I turn into a shadow of him through the deathblow.Д«ut the player can instead offer that deathblow to Lilith. My contempt for this character is such that only his death in a moment of humiliation feels rewarding to me. The true satisfactory defeat of Handsome Jack is not his death, which would result only in his megalomania existing forever in a single moment, but rather utterly crushing him first. He is an arrogant, puffed-up caricature of a man whose entire existence has reinforced his delusions. Merely killing Handsome Jack is not enough.

ItвЂ™s exactly the reaction youвЂ™d expect from a narcissist confronted by his mortality and fallibility-abject denial-and itвЂ™s here that my catharsis against Handsome Jack occurred.ДЄs I have written about Borderlands 2 and Handsome Jack, I have written of how much I love to hate this character and killing him has been my driving force.

Bloodied and broken, he uses his last moments to berate the Vault Hunters and the people of Pandora for their resistance, convinced that his vision of Pandora crumbling beneath the power of The Warrior is righteous, outraged that his victims are not grateful for the destruction. In a surprising aversion of the apparent critique in вЂњShoot This Guy in the Face,вЂќ players are given a choice.ДЄ broken, defeated Handsome Jack experiences no sudden vision or moment of clarity. The true final encounter is what happens immediately afterward when the Vault Hunter encounters a broken Handsome Jack. IвЂ™m sure others elsewhere have expounded upon the shortcomings of this encounter far better than I ever could, but IвЂ™m not that interested in The Warrior as an encounter. The battle against The Warrior is far too easy, even on True Vault Hunter Mode, made to feel formidable only through its astonishing resilience. Fending off JackвЂ™s vengeful attack takes too long, and his catalyst finishes recharging the Vault Key, giving him control of the Eridian superweapon, The Warrior.

But oddly enough, when players finally confront Handsome Jack at the end of Borderlands 2вЂ™s core narrative, they are given a choice.ДЄfter a blistering gauntlet through the most aggravating enemies in the Eridium Blight and HeroвЂ™s Pass, the Vault Hunters reach Handsome Jack too late. The quest itself is either a hilarious parody or a reductive deconstruction, demonstrating how every objective in a first-person shooter must, inevitably, be reduced to shooting something. His sidequest: вЂњShoot This Guy in the Face.вЂќ Its objective: Shoot Face McShooty in the face. When the Vault Hunter player character of Borderlands 2 is sent to Thousand Cuts to recruit The Slab King, they happen across an NPC offering a sidequest.

What up with handsome jack face