Seven Surprising Things We Learned From Playing ‘Borderlands 3’
In the world of self-serious AAA franchises, Borderlands has always been a breath of fresh air – as long as you’re prepared to count air that smells ever so slightly of viscera and human grey matter as ‘fresh’, that is.
From day one, the series has mastered the art of giving players exactly what they want. Everything tiresome about first-person shooters – fall damage; bland, overpowered weapons; repetitive narrative arcs that fetishize some loose idea of the ‘real’ – has been stripped out and replaced with sheer excess. It’s Looney Tunes meets Mad Max, unburdened by the need to choose any option but the zaniest one.
Borderlands 3 is no exception. Rather than twist the latest instalment into the recognizable shape late-franchise games are meant to take, Gearbox has packed the thing with more excess, lunacy, and head splatters than ever before.
At a hands-on event in Los Angeles, we got to play about 90 minutes of the game, and watched an hour of in-game footage.
Here are seven things we learned.
Prepare To Leave Pandora
For the first time in the franchise’s history, a Borderlands game is leaving Pandora behind. Although the establishing act of Borderlands 3 takes place on the planet, the discovery of an intergalactic vault map sends the player off into the stars, skipping from alien locales with the help of fast travel. Not that you’ll have to leave all the comforts of home behind: Sanctuary will still serve as your in-game hub, but this time it’s a spaceship, not a city, and will float out deep in the darkness of space.
Developers at the L.A. event promised a range of wildly different new worlds to travel between. We got to play on one – Promethea, a modernized, sky-scraper studded planet torn apart by a civil war between two hostile weapons manufacturers. From everything we saw, the wider scope has given developers more of an opportunity than ever to hone the distinct brand of Borderlands lunacy. Shit’s bonkers, basically – but this time in space.
The Game’s Villains Are Literally Annoying Livestreamers
In terms of the game’s plot, much of what we learned at the event centred around the antagonists of Borderlands 3, the Calypso Twins. A pair of grinning, chiselled influencers, the twins lead a murderous, loot-obsessed cult named the Children of The Vault. Like Handsome Jack before them, the pair spend much of the game taunting the player, appearing in hologram form and on your heads up display to boast about their powers – Tyreen, the sister, can leech the life force out of any entity she encounters – and generally to make trouble.
Oh, and they’re literally livestreamers. At one point in the game, Tyreen thanks her ‘followers’ (geddit?), and generally talks in the affected, faux voice common to wannabe YouTube stars. Think the Paul Brothers crossed with Charles Manson, and you’re on the right track.
Co-Op Mode Has Been Given A Totally New Look
Love playing co-op but sick of having your friend nick all of the good loot when you’re not looking? Then meet loot instancing, a new mode that stops human players from squabbling over the same items. If you turn the mode on – and note that you don’t have to; it’s totally optional – then each crate you come across will hold guns and shields specific to you and your in-game level. You and your co-op buddy aren’t going after the same loot either; each crate holds the same number guns for each player. As a result, there’ll be no more having to take damage from the enemies you’re ignoring so you can run around and snap up all the good guns before your mate does. Thank God.
Get Ready For Lots Of Boss Battles
Bosses have always been integral to the Borderlands experience, an opportunity for the developers to show off their particularly off the wall character designs. Well, expect to see a lot more beefed-up baddies in Borderlands 3; developers promised that the newest instalment will step up both their frequency and intensity.
In the footage we were screened we saw two big bads: Shiv, a lopsided mutant with a massive, brawny machete-wielding arm and an atrophied little one, and Mouthpiece, one of the Calypso Twins’ key propagandists. Both big bads had unique attacks and expansive lairs that were a joy to navigate, not to mention exactly the kind of lunatic flair that you’d expect from a Borderlands game.
But the villain we got to tackle in the level given for us to play was in another league entirely – a literal brain in a jar named Gigamind, he controlled an army of enemies as though they were puppets, and spent the entire boss fight running around screaming in an agonized, high pitched screech.
Alt Fire Will Change The Way You Play Borderlands
Borderlands wouldn’t be Borderlands without some batshit guns, and the third instalment boasts everything from guns with tiny legs, to guns that bounce before exploding, to guns that shoot radiation, a brand new elemental. But of particular note is the al -fire mode that now comes with many of the guns in the game – with a push of a button, your rifle will go from shooting fire bullets to explosives, or electricity bullets to grenades. It’s just one more means by which Borderlands developers have ensured that Borderlands devotees are empowered to play any which way they want.
Skill Trees Have Been Given A Major Makeover
At the L.A. event, we got to play with two of the four available heroes, Amara the siren warrior and Zane the operative. As it goes with Borderlands, both hero characters have a range of unique skill trees that players can navigate their way through over the course of the game – but this time, there are three unique action skills to choose from, enhancing player choice.
The action skill that particularly caught our eye was Zane’s digiclone ability; at the flick of the controller, Zane can switch places with his digiclone, a static, holographic version of himself that distracts his foes. When it was skillfully showed off to us during the gameplay footage, it looked like a real status quo shifter, a way of changing the entire function of the map in a fun, easy to master way.
A Lot Has Been Added – But Nothing Has Been Taken Away
In the rush to change up the gameplay, developers can sometimes make the fatal error of limiting player choice, and inadvertently trimming down exactly what makes their franchise special. The devs behind Borderlands 3 have done no such thing. So although there are new vehicles (chiefly a terrifyingly fast spinning disc known as the Cyclone), new elementals, new gun functions, a cast of new heroes, and some fresh faces for antagonists, this is still a Borderlands game. The very opening of the game features the dulcet tones of Claptrap, because how could it not, and everyone from Ellie to Sir Hammerlock make their long-awaited returns.
Basically, it’s everything you’d want from a Borderlands game, plus a whole bunch of shit you didn’t even know you needed. Prepare yourself for it.
Junkee travelled to Los-Angeles as a guest of 2K.