32nd Annual GLAAD Media Awards
Borderlands 3’s Guns, Love, and Tentacles DLC is nominated for the 32nd Annual GLAAD Media Awards. For over 30 years, GLAAD has been at the forefront of cultural change, accelerating acceptance for the LGBTQ community. 2020 was a groundbreaking year for LGBTQ representation in games. Therefore the nominations for Outstanding Video Game in the GLAAD Media Awards have been more competitive than ever.
This year, GLAAD is incredibly proud to recognize and honor an expanded ten games for their fair, accurate, and inclusive representations of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer community and the issues that affect LGBTQ peoples’ lives.
Borderlands 3: Guns, Love, and Tentacles
It wouldn’t be a Borderlands wedding without a little eldritch-horror-infused mayhem. Borderlands 3: Guns, Love, and Tentacles takes players to the cursed, frozen planet Xylourgos to celebrate the nuptials of everyone’s favorite Borderlands couple, Alastair Hammerlock and Wainwright Jakobs. What impressed us most about this rollicking storyline is just how much it gives a big Borderlands-style crude gesture to the But Not Too Gay tropes that have plagued mainstream depictions of gay couples for too long. Never once does the game shy away from allowing the two men to express their deep affection for each other, nor does it ever resort to euphemistic language or gloss over the nuances of their relationship. And it does all this while staying true to Borderlands’ quirky and irreverent tone. Allowing the player to officiate the wedding is just the cherry on top of what is undoubtedly the most fully realized and authentic portrayal of a same-sex marriage ever to appear in a major studio game.
I am so lucky to work at Gearbox and with @GearboxQuebec. It's not often you get to suggest ending a DLC with (spoilers) a gay wedding officiated by the player inside an eldritch monster corpse and have the only question in the room be, "how many NPCs can we get in attendance?"
— Sam Winkler (@ThatSamWinkler) January 29, 2021
Other Nominees
- Assassin’s Creed Valhalla
- Bugsnax
- Hades
- If Found…
- Ikenfell
- Immortals Fenyx Rising
- Tell Me Why
- The Last of Us Part II
- World of Warcraft: Shadowlands
