Borderlands 3: New characters and worlds add clever variety to a solid formula (Pic: Gearbox)
Most of the impressions of Borderlands so far have told me that its “more of the same” – in a good way! They say if it aint broke dont fix it, and I still have deeply fond memories of Borderlands 2 – one of the most engaging co-op experiences on the market that still successfully holds up.
The first thing I was introduced to was the premise – something I really enjoyed. The antagonists, the Children of the Vault are basically a massive tongue-in-cheek joke about streamer/influencer culture.
Borderlands writing is often criticised for leaning too hard into memes and internet culture, but it did have some nuances across the first two games. Whilst the entire premise of this game appears to be one massive joke, itll be nice to see a range of emotions rather than the stock expectation.
In the first part of my demo the game was introduced by a narrative producer at Gearbox who talked me through the social features in the game.
For example, theres a sort of shared-world vending machine where players who have trash weapons can stick them in a machine on the hub ship for other players to purchase. In a similar vein, there was an in-game email system on show – you can mail guns to your mates!
There also appears to be a dynamic mission system available on sanctuary which can be accepted across a party to go hunt down a certain enemy – we saw a mission where players banded together to take down The Unstoppable a big Juggernaut-looking foe who rushes at you.
The game has some brilliant customisation systems too – and the good thing is none of them are bound to microtransactions – its all unlocked via gameplay.
Whereas in Borderlands 2 you could customize your head and skin, here you can change hair styles and colourise any skin that you own to make your character your own.
This is reflective of the action skill system where you can have multiple augmented skills as part of one character build. Extra depth here is what will keep players around when the campaign wraps up.
Outside of the above we were shown a new planet in Eden-6, a swamp jungle full of nasty dinosaurs and other indigenous creatures – it was nice to see the compendium of animals available on different systems (Pandora, with its limited biomes was no doubt starting to get boring).
By opening up the game to multiple planets were receiving new environments that look and feel very different to each other.
Theres also Moze, the gunner character and her mech, Iron Bear that she can summon.
She has three different skill trees which afford her with different turrets on the mech, some help with close-quarters combat, others focus on helping you with ammo.
Again, the variety is much appreciated. I still think the as-of-yet unreleased character FLAK would be more my scene, but Moze certainly will provide a niche of players with a character theyre going to love.
My favourite part of Mozes design is the cool Mech U.I when you activate her skill, which transforms the game into a different genre quickly.
When I started playing, I immediately noticed the QOL benefits of mantling and sliding. Platforming and moving around in Borderlands 2 always felt like a significant compromise – unintuitive in a sense.
3 totally strips away the system and rebuilds it so you feel super cool as youre dashing and hopping around aRead More – Source
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