One quest offers players a “tax refund” if they visit every exhibit in a museum allegedly telling the story of how Jack came to Pandora and defeated the Destroyer (look closely in a corner here to find Bloodwing’s corpse, the latest trophy in the heavily embellished Legend of Handsome Jack). In a move whose true significance won’t be revealed until “Where Angels Fear To Tread,” one kiosk dismisses the existence of Angels and Sirens-things Jack knows exist as fact.īut it is two sidequests in particular that reveal the true narrative intention of Opportunity.
We only get hints of anyone else living there by Jack’s information kiosks, which offers advice and “facts” that transfers children’s faith in their parents to Handsome Jack, warns that littering is punishable by death (and complaining about Opportunity’s laws is considered “verbal littering”), and implies that Jack is struggling so much to get people to move to Opportunity that people are actually paid to live there. It quickly becomes apparent that something is deeply wrong, though the city is populated exclusively by the Engineers busy building it and an army of robot minions. Ostensibly a city for the Hyperion Corporation’s employees, Opportunity would appear to be a nice upper-class neighborhood. Opportunity is unlike any other area in Pandora the player encounters no bandits, no psychos, and no violently ravenous wildlife there Lynchwood is much like the rest of Pandora, home to a large population of bandits, assorted freaks, and wild Skaggs, all eking out an existence in spite of the oppressive presence of Handsome Jack. Opportunity and Lynchwood’s proximity to one another in the game’s sequence of events is not a coincidence, as both areas deliberately contrast one another, each representing a bulwark and a bastion to Handsome Jack’s own fathomless ego. Concurrently with this, the player is also prodded to visit the city of Lynchwood.
The last step of this is completed in Opportunity, the Hyperion Corporation’s city on Pandora. Before the Vault Hunters are able to infiltrate Control Core Angel in “Where Angels Fear To Tread,” they must first assemble a sort of “disguise” to trick the Core’s security system that they are Handsome Jack.