The border areas series is full of dastardly mega-corporations doing their best and exploiting everything and everyone they can get their hands on, and the confrontation with these companies forms the basis of many of the franchise campaigns. Whether it’s the groundbreaking Atlas, Handsome Jack’s Hyperion, or the destructive Dahl Corporation, there are plenty of organizations to choose from when it comes to depicting just how bad capitalism can be in the world. border areas universe.
While Hyperion and his charismatic leader during the events of Borderlands 2 is probably the name that comes to many players when they think of the worst mega companies in the series, Dahl is also an unexpectedly underhand contender. From exploiting planets to betraying and abandoning its people, the Dahl Corporation has a long history of bad behavior during the games, and could even be worse than Hyperion when it comes to balancing their various despicable acts. .
Business Greed and Capitalism
One of the themes throughout the border areas games is the destruction big corporations wreak when they put profits on people. With the race to control planets, extract resources and locate vaults and various Eridian artifacts, many of border areasmega-corporations have destroyed both lives and landscapes. Corporate villains like Handsome Jack are some of the most popular and recognizable villains of the series, but while his company Hyperion is a frontrunner when it comes to evil capitalist conglomerates, Dahl is another company that could actually be worse.
The Dahl Corporation is visible throughout the mainline border areas games, either through characters, weapons, or bits of knowledge that players can pick up. After Atlas’ discovery of the very first Vault, Dahl was one of many mega-corporations to join the race to find more, be damned trouble and damage. In an effort to explore more peripheral planets, Dahl created a presence on Pandora and sent a plethora of personnel like researcher Dr. Patricia Tannis to try and locate a long-trumped-up Vault somewhere on the planet.
Dahl had a major impact on Pandora, creating settlements and building infrastructure such as mining facilities and wind turbines to make the planet more livable and (more importantly) profitable. It also created the ECHOnet, which enabled communication over great distances and showed that some of its technology was not so destructive. However, the negative actions far outweighed the positive ones, and this is clearly shown during the events surrounding Sanctuary.
Players can discover ECHO recordings in the Caustic Caverns under Sanctuary in Borderlands 2 detailing the discovery of crystalisks by a Dahl security group. Officer Elyse Booth reported to Dahl Overseer Amelia Harchek that the crystals they had sent to the mine belonged to harmless sentient beings, so they had to move their mining operation to another location. Unimpressed by her reasoning, Harchek ordered Booth to mine the crystals and kill the creatures, but Booth refused. Booth was killed for her insubordination, and her death was used as a warning to the miners, who were forced to collect the crystals and make the previously docile crystals hostile.
Betrayal and bad decisions
Obviously, Dahl has no qualms about killing his workers, especially when there’s a profit to be made. This became even more apparent when the long winter that Pandora had enjoyed while Dahl set up his operations there came to an end, meaning his dangerous wildlife began to resurface. Many of Dahl’s employees were murdered, and to make matters worse, Atlas also tried to bully the company into leaving the planet as well. Rather than send reinforcements or launch an expensive rescue mission, Dahl abandoned his workers on Pandora—most of whom were miners and researchers, not soldiers—and many of them were killed or joined the ranks of bandits and psychos that players would later encounter.
Dahl also made Colonel Hector and his men incredibly dirty – a military group initially sent to Pandora with the promise of rewards for their service to the company. Instead, they were tricked into becoming a mining power tasked with mining the planet’s riches. They reluctantly took on their new roles and even gave Dahl an Eridian artifact they had found. Rather than improve their situation, Dahl took the artifact and sealed the mine, trapping the Colonel and his men and letting them die.
But the company’s history of betrayal and poor decision-making doesn’t end there. The company started another massive mining operation on Pandora’s moon Elpis and planned to strip it of its resources. However, the intrusive and reckless operation caused a catastrophic event called “The Crackening”, which resulted in the loss of the moon’s atmosphere, rendering many parts of it completely uninhabitable. Innocent residents and workers died and the moon was almost completely shattered. Dahl again left the area, leaving people to live with and trying to correct his own mistakes.
Compare Dahl to Hyperion
The Dahl Corporation is undeniably a terrible company, as evidenced by its many transactions in Pandora and Elpis, its constant pursuit of profit over the well-being of its people, and its incredibly exploitative practices. Much of his workforce was made up of convicts and criminals, whom he believed could be used as cheap labor, both in terms of pay and the value Dahl placed on their lives. Dahl, who is quick to abandon his employees as soon as a situation gets tough, is a prime example of a company that lacks loyalty or morals. However, anyone who border areas game knows that Hyperion is hardly an example of an ethical company either.
Hyperion makes no secret of how it works, with its killer business environment showcased in Tales from the Borderlands and his motto of “success requires every opportunity to count” reflects his ambition. It is also responsible for empowering Handsome Jack and allowing his infamous despotic rule over Pandora before his death in border areas 2. Like other companies, Hyperion plans to locate and open Vaults, despite the potential devastating effects on the local population. But Hyperion is almost comically evil, with plans of domination and his overly selfish work culture. In contrast, Dahl has arguably caused more chaos with his carelessness and coldness towards the areas he inhabits and the people he employs, making it seem much more dangerous than Hyperion.
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