Midweek Music Box: Borderlands Intro "(No Rest for the Wicked)

Through the exhaustion and the exertion, between longing for games and pulling long hours--one game and one song kept coming to mind for this week's Midweek Music Box: "Ain't No Rest for the Wicked" from the intro of Borderlands:

Gad! The hard smack of that critter as the music comes full volume and the game cuts to the assortment of rogues and mercenaries riding for treasure and loot just grabs you, don't it?  What's Pandora about anyway?  Are we going to see more carnage? Was it okay for that weird beast to die?According to the opening song, the likelihood of what is to unfold being anything other than a romp with some rogues is small.  But as you play the game more and more, it's hard not to forever associate Cage the Elephant's song with the world of Pandora.

Like I said in my review for the music intro of Borderlands 2; generally, I prefer it when a game has an original score composed with care and finessed into something that makes every inch of the game memorable. However, if a game company picks a song, and gets licensing for said song because they think it fits the tone of the game and the world within--then I say go for it.  

Not all games need you to play as a pure hero or dastardly villain; sometimes it's nice just to play as a mercenary who's willing to play fast and loose with conventional rules and accepted behaviors of decent society.  Sometimes you want to play a game where you aren't a vile gangster blithely engaging in killing sprees, and sometimes you just aren't in the mood to save Hyrule or the Mushroom Kingdom. Sometimes you need to go somewhere where you don't try to tirelessly save the princess, but rather tirelessly try for treasure and self gain and self preservation while helping people if it helps you.  

"Ain't No Rest for the Wicked" captures the tone of Pandora and it's collection of ner-do-wells so well because the song talks about people who do nasty things, but do them because they either like to indulge in their darker side, or just feel like they have to get a little dirty in order to get what they want from life.

Characters in search of coin and carnage just happens in games and sometimes life. In the world of Borderlands, it's just a fact of life encapsulated well in a popular tune.