system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[Borderlands] What was life like on Pandora before it went to hell?

The planet reads like an apocalypse world.  Scattered infrastructure indicates the world was on some level successfully colonized.  If you weren't a prisoner, how bad off were you living there in the short time it didn't completely suck?
gpt
The dahl corporation colonized it originally. They built old haven and sanctuary as the main settlements around their mining operations. Eventually the mining became less profitable and the planet was abandoned. Several companies would attempt to settle various regions for mining or exploitation with various degrees of success. The planet steadily decayed as stranded colonists and escaped prisoners built small communities and violent gangs with new influxes of technology being rare. It wasn't until later that the first vault was discovered and a new gold rush was aimed at the heart of pandora and elpis. 

During this time elpis Pandora's moon was colonized by Dahl and a renewed interest at reclaiming their former colony was launched. This pretty rapidly broke down as the atlas corporation came in with a hostile takeover. They devastated most of Pandora's struggling settlements and as Dahl pulled out again even more colonists were abandoned. Atlas brought no new technology or settlements but built a handful of fortresses to search for the vault from. Leading into the events of the first game.

So during it's height and Dahls first operations Pandora was a wild wilderness with a handful of small towns and a few cities built near mining sites and laboratories. There was little attempts to protect the ecosystem so the seas were nearly drained around the coastal regions seen in Knox's armory and garbage was left everywhere creating the trash coast and mountains of refuse as Dahl imported garbage from other colonies. It was always a blue collar settlement filled with salt of the earth types and a penal colony but never was it close to civilization like promethea.