Borderlands 3

Borderlands 3 is a first-person loot shooter. Players, either playing alone or in parties of up to four people, make a character from one of the four classes available, and take on various missions given out by non-playable characters (NPCs) and at bounty boards to gain experience, in-game monetary rewards, and reward items. Players can also gain these items by defeating enemies throughout the game. As the player gains level, they gain skill points to allocate across a skill tree. The game introduces four new playable characters: Amara, a "Siren" who summons ethereal fists; Moze, a young "Gunner" who rides the mecha Iron Bear; Zane, an "Operative" with a variety of gadgets; and FL4K, a robot "Beastmaster" who summons creatures to aid in fights.[3] Unlike previous Borderlands games where each character had only one unique skill that operates on a cooldown, each character in the new game can unlock three unique skills, though only one (or in Zane's case, two) can be equipped at a time, greatly expanding the number of potential character builds a player can make.

Borderlands 3 shares the same core loop with previous games around taking on missions, defeating enemies, and obtaining loot from fallen foes or special chests, most often in the form of procedurally generated weapons to vary in damage, range, ammo capacity, and other special perks, giving the game "over one billion guns".[4] Perks can include elemental effects, such as damaging the foes with fire, ice, or electricity, or may possess alternative firing behavior, among other visual differences.[5] In Borderlands 2, some weapons had "slag" elemental, which coated the enemy for a short period and made them extremely vulnerable to a subsequent elemental attack from a different element. Slag weapons have been replaced with radiation; the coating and subsequent vulnerability remains the same as slag, but radiation damage will also hurt enemies over time on its own and can potentially spread to other enemies.[6] The in-game manufacture of the guns also plays a larger role in the type of perks a weapon can have. Tediore guns can be thrown when empty and create additional effects, Atlas have tracking bullets to hunt down enemies in cover, and Hyperion can have shields that absorb damage and use that for other purposes such as healing.[5] Other randomly-generated items include class modifiers, grenade modifiers, and shield kits. When playing with others, Borderlands 3's loot can be generated on a per-server basis, meaning that players must split the loot, but new to the series, players can also have loot generated on a per-player basis so that each player gains the same loot, scaled for their character level. This option also exists for the enemies seen in game; by default enemies only scale with the player-character's level that is operating the server, but when enabled, each player sees enemies that match their individual levels.[7]

Besides character skills and weapons, player-characters have new combat maneuvers and abilities, such as crouch-sliding influenced by the mechanic in Titanfall and Apex Legends, and wall-mounting to climb up over short heights.[5][8] Players and their enemies can take cover behind short barriers which can be destroyed after continued weapon onslaught.[5]

While the game starts on the planet Pandora, the player early on gains access to a spacecraft, Sanctuary III, which serves as a central hub between missions, and is used to set destinations for new planets where possible Vaults have been identified. While aboard Sanctuary III, players can manage their inventory, recover guns they had left on the field, purchase new guns and upgrades, and take on optional missions.[5] Borderlands 3 has integration with Twitch streams; viewers can explore the streamer's inventory and skill tree, and special chests in game will offer the opportunity for viewers to receive the same gun/item that the stream finds via way of a Shift Code they can enter into their own game, scaled appropriately for their character's level.[9]

Gearbox creative director Paul Sage estimated that players will spend about 35 hours through the main quest line along with some side missions.[10] True Vault Hunter Mode, a type of New Game Plus, allows players to replay the campaign after finishing it with their leveled-up character, fighting more difficult enemies for a chance of better loot. The Badass Rank system from Borderlands 2 will be replaced with a Guardian Rank system, which, by finishing smaller challenges throughout the game, allows players to gain buffs that persist across all their characters.[11] Borderlands 3 will include new post-game challenges. "Circles of Slaughter" found on various planets have players attempt to fight through difficult waves of enemies for higher quality of loot. While downed players can be revived by teammates, if all player-characters die, the match is over and any potential rewards are lost. "Proving Grounds" are a type of raid that must be first discovered by finding hidden markings across the game's worlds. Once discovered, players attempt to defeat all enemies across three areas within 30 minutes to complete the challenge and earn their rewards.[12] A further "Mayhem Mode" randomizes several of the game's campaign elements to further increase the challenge to the player.[11][13]

Borderlands 3 was developed jointly by Gearbox's Texas and Quebec studios. Gearbox had finished Borderlands and its sequel consecutively, leaving the studio somewhat burned out on the franchise. To try to do something different, Gearbox shifted work into Battleborn with the blessing of 2K Games, as a means of refreshing themselves. Battleborn was not a major success, but Gearbox was not disheartened on this. According to art director Scott Kester, while developing Battleborn, they gained several ideas for how to take the next Borderlands game, and many of the team, as soon as Battleborn was complete, started building out these ideas for Borderlands 3.[16]

Gearbox Quebec undertook developing Borderlands 3 as their first assignment, and said that they were doing so without compulsory overtime ("crunch").[17][18] The game was announced with a trailer at PAX East on 28 March 2019.[19] The trailer received mixed reviews by video game websites, some of which characterized it as too similar in appearance and content to previous entries in the series such as Borderlands 2.[20][21]

To help bridge the gap between Borderlands 2 and Tales from the Borderlands to Borderlands 3, Gearbox released new DLC for Borderlands 2, "Commander Lilith & the Fight for Sanctuary", in June 2019, making it free for a limited time to current owners of Borderlands 2.[22]

Several voice actors reprised their roles, including Ashly Burch as Tiny Tina,[23] and Chris Hardwick as Vaughn from Tales from the Borderlands.[24] The recasting of other voice actors caused some controversy. Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford quarreled on Twitter with the voice actors Troy Baker (Rhys) and David Eddings (Claptrap) about the reasons for which both were not retained to voice their former character again.[25] Eddings said that he had been bullied and physically assaulted by his former boss Pitchford.[26] According to Baker, Gearbox had refused to want to deal with members from the voice actor's union, SAG-AFTRA.[27] Baker and Eddings were replaced by Ray Chase as Rhys and Jim Foronda as Claptrap.[28] Ice-T voices a character called Balex, an artificial intelligence trapped in the body of a teddy bear.[29] Penn & Teller provide their likeness for the characters Pain & Terror, with Penn Jillette also providing his voice work for the Pain character. The Heavy recorded an original song for the game titled "Put It On The Line".

In June 2019, Gearbox invited Trevor Eastman, a series fan with terminal cancer, to play a preview build of the game. They let him name a weapon, the "Trevonator", that appears in the game.[30] In August 2019, 2K Games and its parent company Take-Two Interactive sent private investigators to the home of a YouTuber, SupMatto. Take-Two said that he had let users access, for a fee, non-public gameplay videos of Borderlands 3, which he denied. 2K called its actions necessary to protect its trade secrets.[31] In response, calls for a boycott of the game began trending on Twitter.[32]

Powered by Unreal Engine 4,[2] the game was released on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Microsoft Windows on 13 September 2019. While the game did not feature cross-platform play at launch, Gearbox is looking to add this feature in after launch.[33][34] Four different versions of the game were released, with various add-ons, at different price points, including physical bonuses.[35]

The game's release was preceded by a limited-time crossover event in the tenth season of Epic Games' Fortnite Battle Royale and Fortnite Creative. Players can explore a part of the planet Pandora on a small part of the Battle Royale mode's main map, as well as purchase the character Psycho with Claptrap as a backwear.[36]

The Windows release of Borderlands 3 was exclusive to the Epic Games Store for six months, with the Steam release in March 2020.[37][38] Fan dissatisfaction with this exclusivity arrangement led to a review bombing of the Borderlands games on Steam.[39] Valve, the operators of Steam, used their new processes to combat review bombing for the first time to suppress the negative reviews on the Borderlands games as a result.[40]

Gearbox announced plans to bring the game to the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and Series S consoles. The game will have free updates with all DLC already purchased for users on the prior respect console to be available on the launch day for both consoles (12 November 2020 for the PlayStation 5 and 10 November 2020 for the Xbox Series X/S). In addition to updates with these versions, the game will be updated to support two or four-player local split-screen multiplayer, and will add in additional skill trees for the four main characters. There are also plans to add cross-platform play between the different platforms in the future.[41][42]

Borderlands 3 received "generally favorable reviews", according to review aggregator Metacritic.[52][53][54]

GameSpot gave Borderlands 3 a positive review, noting its preservation of the franchise's hallmarks (including weapon variety, a "personable" cast, and "juvenile humor and ludicrous jokes"), refinements to the skill system and player movement, and that its storyline "satisfyingly wraps up the arcs of characters that fans have been following for 10 years". However, it was felt that the flow of Borderlands 3 was still disrupted by the franchise's reliance on boss fights with little strategy and "bullet sponge" enemies. In conclusion, it was argued that "if you've never been a fan of the franchise, it's unlikely Borderlands 3 does enough things differently to change your mind, as the game best excels at continuing what the series has always done: deliver a humorous tall tale of misfits looting and shooting their way to heroism".[57]

PC Gamer felt that Borderlands 3 was "the best and worst of the series all at once", acknowledging refinements to gameplay and its signature visual style, but that enemies were still "too dumb and erratic and spongy to force tactical play", and that while the different planets provided variety over the "muted deserts" of Pandora, they were often "an excuse to roll out an old character only for them to disappear or fade into the background as soon as they say hello, shoot some folks, and crack a few one-liners in sidequests that do little to reveal anything about them or test them in any way." It was also felt that the game's endgame options were "shallow" at-launch, and that its overall writing was not as good as the "pitch perfect" Tales from the Borderlands, and "[read] like teenage lunch table improv circa The Spy Who Shagged Me."[59]

During launch, a number of Windows players experienced technical performance issues with the game, while console players found lower-than-expected frame rates, both of which Gearbox is investigating.[61]

• Official website