Mathematically, Borderlands 4 has, give or take, 30 billion guns and plenty more shields, class mods, ordnance, and so on to bump that number to an even more incomprehensible level. For some godforsaken reason, there are a handful of items that talk. During use, certain legendary gear pieces are right chatterboxes, and I found this out the hard way when I unknowingly equipped the Cindershelly shield.
The Cindershelly isn’t the best shield in the game, but after getting my Harlowe build into the endgame, it’s the best I’ve got while I farm for a new Super Soldier or Firewerks. In other words, I’m stuck with it until I get a better equivalent to drop. Unfortunately, it has the annoying trait of being…ummm…horny?
Every 30 seconds or so, the Cindershelly will let out a moan, call you a worm, or one of many more rather promiscuous voice lines. You could be exploring a vault or listening to a quest—like, perhaps, the Timekeeper invading your friends’ brains and threatening you—and your shield will randomly pipe up to put you in your place.
This only gets worse in combat, where these voice lines trigger even more often, like if you take damage or kill enemies. In some cases, you could even get cursed with two horny outbursts back-to-back.
Here are just a few of the voice lines I’ve been subjected to:
- “Touch that barrel and scream for me”
- “Did you let go without asking first?”
- “Don’t stop till I allow it”
- “Worship me”
- “Show me how close you can get, worm”
- “What an obedient worm you are”
Not only is the Cindershelly unsurprisingly disruptive and annoying, but I’d rather not have the people around me questioning what exactly it is I’m playing. The clip below is a supercut of about five minutes of game time as I clear an abandoned Auger mine, giving you an idea of what I’ve been going through for the past 10 hours of using it. Of course, I don’t recommend you watch this video on full blast on public transport, or you’ll end up with a few odd looks.
Funnily enough, this is far from the first time Borderlands has included a talking piece of equipment. Nay, it’s not even the first time one’s been incredibly sultry. Here are a few of the best examples (I’m sorry in advance):
- The Messy Breakup legendary shield in Borderlands 3 would scream, “Oh yeah! Keep murdering, I’m almost there” in combat and “You always bust too early” when your shield broke, which are both somehow even worse than the Cindershelly.
- Borderlands 2’s Hot Mama effervescent sniper says lines like “Ready to go again, huh?” when reloading, “Like what you see?” when aiming, and “Ooh, no happy ending for them” when you get a kill.
- Another Borderlands 2 great is Moxxi’s Good Touch SMG…which vibrates, increasingly so the longer you fire it (and actually causes your controller to rumble too).
- The Bane, a cursed (literally) unique SMG in Borderlands 2, would slow you to a crawl and scream so incessantly when firing that I think it really would make you go mad if you used it for more than a few minutes, just as its in-game lore implies.
Come to think of it, maybe I’m lucky the Cindershelly is somehow an improvement. Nevertheless, if I don’t farm for a new shield soon, I might just be forced to turn the combat voice volume all the way down to save my sanity, but then I’ll miss out on other dialogue too. I guess the Cindershelly wasn’t lying when it claims it’s not about my pleasure after all, as there’s no perfect solution. This is the price I must pay.
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