Considering that the point of Borderlands 2 is to use the biggest possible gun on the biggest possible dude, it sure is a chatty game. Even the guns talk! It's basically a comedy; a machine-gun barrage of riffs, references, and cheeky toilet-humor. The jokes are pretty good, generally speaking, even though they have a tendency to rely on LOLspeak and juuust barely dated internet humor.

So it's a shame that the writing comes up short in such a crucial area—the main characters. Plainly put, these people are annoying as fuck.

Again: The other stuff is pretty good. The enemies? They're funny. (I particularly like the Goliath's "Welcome to die!" cry, which would be great even if it weren't also a video game reference.) Your allies? Good times. (Okay, Brick is kind of a dud, but I enjoy how Lilith is just so pumped about her new powers, and Claptrap is a gift that keeps on giving.) And your enemy? Why, Handsome Jack, his voice dripping with condescension and privilege, is probably my favorite character in the whole game.

Those men/women/robots are all written with authority and verve; the jokes are dense and the performances are strong. And yet the one character who accompanies you through the whole game—your protagonist—is an annoying loser who spouts the same few catchphrases over, and over, and over. My soldier Axton, who I thought would be a strong, silent type, will not stop carrying on; he's a fool on a level that rivals Duke Nukem. Even he doesn't sound convinced half the time.

Kudos to Gearbox, then, for anticipating this issue and giving players a way to do something about it. I didn't know about it for the longest time—I thought I was stuck with Axton for the first, oh, 30 hours with the game. By the time I started digging into the new DLC, I was well and truly exhausted by his constant mugging.

And yet right there, in the "Audio" menu, stands a single toggleable switch for "Player Callouts." I turned it off, and suddenly, Axton became the strong, silent type I had always hoped he'd be. Victory!

Perhaps you love the callouts in Borderlands 2—if so, more power to you. And hey, maybe Maya and Zer0 are less annoying than Salvador, Gaige and Axton, the three characters I've played. But as DLC continues to come out and Borderlands 2 gets bigger and bigger, I sense that more and more people are going to get sick of hearing their character yell the same dozen lines. Thankfully, we have the power to shut them up.

Shhh, Axton. Go shoot that bandit over there. Quietly. Thanks.

The first campaign add-on to Gearbox's sequel is Captain Scarlett and Her Pirate's Booty. There are a lot of things that are great about this new DLC: the loot, the characters, the awesome, awesome new vehicle.

Some vague plot line spoilers follow.

But one thing that got me to sit up in excitement while playing was this damn song above, composed by Raison Varner. I loved it so much that I'd stop right there in my tracks to listen and savor. I noticed this particular track—that Gearbox was so kind enough to send to us—just before reaching the lighthouse that Captain Scarlett sends you on a mission to find. The music changes when you transition from in combat to out, so I lingered before jumping down to what I knew was going to be a chaotic battle just so I could listen a bit longer.

The overall smooth track starts off slow, hitting peaks here and there. It feels like a good Western movie complement, and I can totally visualize a cowboy dragging his clinking metal boots towards the horizon where the fire-glowing sun shines down on his dusty, rugged outfit. I imagine he's just come out of a tough battle, looking for water but too proud to show his exhaustion. Music lets my imagination run wild, and that's why I love it so much.

But the end of the song (at around 1:10 in) is where it really gets good. (Unfortunately you can only hear a fraction of it in our sound clip. Fortunately, I found the most quiet YouTube video I could—to your left, courtesy of ShockBlastMedia—that features a lengthier listen. Just be wary of some message in the bottle location spoilers.)

It feels more romantic. I wanted to close my eyes and dance my head along to it. The gentle yet rapid guitar stringing reminded me of classical middle eastern music: soft and exotic all at once. It dips and rises with fluidity. My musically-influenced imagination traded the Western picture to something more resembling the plight of an assassin: subtle, hidden in the shadows, yet powerful and deadly. And, happily, that's exactly what a lot of Varner's work entails. This one is just my favorite. So far.

Like I mentioned yesterday, I felt like I was in a rut for a little while with my Borderlands 2 arsenal. But suddenly, upon starting the first, pirate-themed DLC, I wound up with an embarrassment of great weaponry. When it rains, it pours (bullets).

Among the guns I got was a unique Hyperion sniper rifle (not actually tied to the DLC) that does 1,000 damage (!) and is super shiny looking, to boot. But there's a catch… every time I reload, it lambasts me in a shrill, nagging tone.

"Well at LEAST you stopped SHOOTING for a little while!"

"If you were a better shot, you wouldn't need to reload!"

"You're a bad person."

You can get a sense of the gun in the above video, uploaded by YouTuber Daniel Turnbull. The best thing about this gun, called the "Auditing Morningstar" (??), is that while it's annoying, it's not too annoying to use. Unlike the cursed "Bane" submachine gun, which both makes a hellacious racket when firing and restricts your movement, the Morningstar is actually a great weapon, with that one… minor… caveat.

"Oh great. Now you're wasting ammo!"

Stop judging me, gun! You think you're so great? God!

X marks the spot.

I'm playing Borderlands 2's effortfully-titled new DLC Captain Scarlett and Her Pirate's Booty for a lot of reasons, I guess. I'm playing it for the colorful new locations, for the goofy new pirate enemies, for the sweet new sand skiff (though boo on Gearbox for not unlocking it across the entire game). But really, as with all things Borderlands, I'm playing for the loot.

There is a lot of good loot in the new DLC, which I guess makes sense, as "loot" is actually a word I associate more with pirates than any other subgenre of enemy. See, I'm probably about 2/3rds of the way through the story missions in Borderlands 2, and I'd started to feel a bit stuck with my current weapon loadout. I had a decent assault rifle, a middling sniper rifle, and a really good shotgun. Every weapon I found was in some way inferior to what I had—I hadn't had that somewhat sad somewhat awesome "Oh eff yes, this amazing shiny thing completes me" feeling for too long.

Right off the bat in Captain Scarlett, I snagged an $8,000 corrosive assault rifle. Nice. Shortly afterwards, I found my first message in a bottle. As it turns out, the bottle-message missions are the easiest way to get a crapload of great loot—but they're a little bit trickier than they seem.

First you have to find the bottle—easy, since they're always marked as orange exclamation marks on your map. After finding the bottle, you have to head to the treasure site and find the treasure. At first I thought this would be easy, but on the second one, I got a bit stumped—don't judge! Environmental puzzling isn't something I'm used to doing in Borderlands.

So, in the interest of helping out anyone else who's gotten stuck, let me give you this piece of advice: X marks the spot. Makes sense, no? These are pirates we're talking about!

When you come upon that second treasure location, and think, "Hmm, maybe that crate with the shields in it was the treasure…" It wasn't. You've gotta find the X, and then you've gotta do what treasure hunters have been doing since time immemorial: You've gotta dig.

The folks over at Gearbox sure love their easter eggs and hidden secrets. Borderlands 2 is chock full of them.

But while playing the first campaign add-on to Borderlands 2, called Captain Scarlett and Her Pirate's Booty, I stumbled on what might have to be known as my favorite.

Easter egg spoilers follow

Because it's a reference to BioShock, and I absolutely squeed when I saw Big Daddy come through mid-battle. I hadn't noticed his midget companion, named Lil Sis, but fortunately SquishyMoobs did in the video above.

The first official trailer for Borderlands 2's newest playable class—the Mechromancer—shows off how versatile her three skill trees are.

You can get a sense of the kind of play style you can mold Gaige towards, as well as how she looks in action. I already told you she feels great, but here she is backing it up with kills alongside her powerful, metal companion.

I've got a golden ticket!
I've got a golden chance to make my way!

When Charlie Bucket opened up that golden ticket, he probably wasn't thinking that Willy Wonka was going to give him a sweet-ass sniper rifle, or a shield that generates ammo. And yet, in Borderlands 2, a similar golden key can give you those very things.

I'm late to the party on the whole golden key thing. I got a press copy of the game, which is the same as a pre-ordered copy, and so it came with a golden key. Immediately upon arriving in Sanctuary, I found a big weapon container.

"Yay," I thought. "A weapon container!"

I did what you usually do with weapon containers in this game: I opened it. Inside were two beautiful sniper rifles, far more glorious than anything I had picked up in the first few levels of the game. I used one of those sniper rifles for the next six or eight hours of the game, until I finally found something better.

I didn't know at the time that I'd used my one and only golden key, which allows me to open that single loot chest and get two super-rare pieces of gear. I figured it out much later, and felt a little disappointed. I wanted another golden key!

Fortunately, there's a really easy way to get one. (Well, there is also a hack that lets you generate infinite keys, but I haven't tried that, as well as an Xbox glitch, but I don't want to go THAT far, and I'd imagine that stuff will be patched out of the game eventually, anyway.) My way involves no trickery or profile.bin finagling.

It's simple—so simple, that I'm sure you hardcore Borderlands 2 players have already done it. But if you haven't, I thought I'd let you know: All you have to do is sign up for Gearbox's free "Shift" service and you'll get a free golden key. You can even just delete your account immediately afterwards, if you don't like having that kind of extraneous gaming account (I sure don't.)

Here's how: First, go to Gearbox's "Shift" online service and sign up. You'll get a confirmation email, so go ahead and confirm.

Then, go into your Borderlands 2 game and find the "Shift Code" option. You won't have to enter a Shift code—you'll just have to enter the login info you just made.

You'll be prompted to enter a code, but you already have your free golden key. When you boot up the game, you should see this dialogue box:

Hooray! You can now go get a sweet piece of kit anytime you want.

If you don't want to keep your shift account, it's very easy to delete:

And there you have it. I got a super powerful shield that sometimes will absorb bullets and add to my ammo count. Sweet!

Rumors swirled yesterday about Borderlands 2's first piece of big downloadable content. They're true. The game's first official campaign add-on is all about pirates.

It's called Captain Scarlett and her Pirate's Booty. It will take you to an entirely new area of Pandora, a wasteland that was once a beautiful resort by the ocean called Oasis. There you will meet new characters, embarking on a journey to find Captain Scarlett's treasure and battling pirate bandits and sand worms along the way. Don't worry, you can run most of them over with a sand skiff, the DLC's new vehicle (pictured below).

The DLC will be out on October 16th—same day as the original release date for the Mechromancer character class—and available for $10 on the Xbox 360, PS3 and PC. Or, if you have the $30 season pass, it comes included with that bundle. Hooray!

We'll have hands-on impressions of the campaign DLC next Monday.

Yes, I know some of those words, Gaige.

The third ECHO recording released by Gearbox—erm, Gaige—today reveals new improvements in the DT project. Until, that is, Gaige interrupts her monologue with news that her school/science project rival seems to be ripping off her mech designs. The result is the humorous rant you can listen to above.

The Mechromancer class is already available to download, and you can read my impressions of her here.

Listen to the first and second ECHO recordings.