Borderlands 3 gameplay reveals biggest instalment of franchise yet

Fans wont have to wait much longer for Borderlands 3 with producers releasing the biggest instalment of the iconic franchise yet.

Borderlands 3 gameplay reveals biggest instalment of the game yet.

Judging from the amount of hardware available in Borderlands 3, developers Gearbox Software have clearly been listening to what the series’ fans want.

The game, being released for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on September 13 by publisher 2K, is the newest instalment in the popular loot-shooter franchise which was officially unveiled at a global hands-on event in Los Angeles on Wednesday.

From what I played at the event, all the iconic Borderlands elements were there — the cel shaded-inspired art style, the offbeat humour, Claptrap the beatboxing robot, and a truly mind-boggling quantity of firearms.

The series casts you as one of a team of Vault Hunters, looking for ancient alien artefacts believed to be located on the Mad Max-esque planet of Pandora, home to many dangerous creatures, unpleasant raider gangs, and quirky characters.

The newest instalment in the popular loot-shooter franchise was unveiled at a global hands-on event in Los Angeles on Wednesday.

One of the big changes in Borderlands 3 is the action finally shifts off Pandora as your crew acquire a space ship and begin looking for vaults elsewhere in the universe too.

There are four new vault hunters in the game — Moze the Gunner, Amara the Siren, FL4K as the Beast master and Zane the Operative. During the LA hands-on, I was able to try playing as Zane the Operative and Amara the Siren in a mission on the planet Promethea, where we were fighting against operatives of the Maliwan Corporation for some reason that will likely make more sense when the full version of the game is released.

Both characters offered different playstyles and skills; I found Zane’s skillset with its focus on gadget and stealth to be a lot of fun but I didn’t particularly like the character’s voice. Amara’s almost magical skills made her versatile in a range of scenarios and a lot of fun to play as well, so I’m very much looking forward to trying out the other two vault hunters in due course.

Gameplay wise it’s classic Borderlands — first person, shoot everything that moves, make everything that doesn’t move explode, pick up some sweet guns and loot, have a jolly good time doing it.

Speaking of guns, there are a lot of them in the game and many feature a secondary fire mode, resulting in things like a Gatling-assault rifle with a grenade launcher attached, or a sub-machine gun that turns into an automated turret, or a handgun that all shoots rockets.

The marketing says there are “bazilions” of guns in the game and lead 3D weapon artist Jimmy Barnett said the focus this time around was on the different fictional manufacturers rather than mixing and matching parts from random makers, as was the case in Borderlands 2.

“Each gun is made up of just, Dahl parts, just Hyperion parts, Just Maliwan parts; and what happened with that is we ended up making far more parts in the system than was in Borderlands 2,” he said.

“And then, because of that, when you start factoring in that there’s all these parts, there’s all these different skins, there’s all these different behaviours and you end up getting a pretty huge variety of weapons.”

The guns are generated from a manufacturer’s parts pool.

Real-world firearms enthusiasts may notice some real-life inspiration in the game’s fictional guns, such as Kalashnikov magazines in one company’s assault rifles, a rifle which loads with the same charger clip as the M1 Garand, or handgun that looks like a Glock 17 with lots of salvaged parts attached to it.

Each manufacturer’s guns have a distinctive style — Vladof guns draw heavily from Soviet firearms, for example — and Mr Barnett said he and the team drew on their real-life knowledge and experience of firearms to blend the mechanism of a semi-or full auto rifle into something new.

“It was helpful having that knowledge of like, ‘Okay, this is how it really works and I can make this believable enough, and kind of recognisable’,” he said.

“The reason there’s AK (inspired-designs) in it is there’s Vladof, it’s kind of our Russian thing. But you build on top of that so I’m like, ‘Okay, not only does the gun look like an AK but there’s a stability thing here …’

“One of the fire modes is instead of a grenade launcher flipping over, you kind of push this handle out and these old Russian rocket kind of looking jets come out; I tried to make all the (Vladof) scopes look like cast metal and kind of get that heavy, Russian feel.”

The guns are all randomly generated from a manufacturer’s parts pool, taking into account different rarities and levels, and lead weapons concept artist Kevin Duc said the result was even the dev team had no idea what they’d find when they opened a loot crate.

“We don’t know what’s going to be in there, yeah. You just give it the content, you give it a set of rules and then you kind of let it … do its thing,” he said.

Fans have been waiting for Borderlands 3 for five years.

Fans have been waiting for Borderlands 3 for quite some time and senior producer Anthony Nicholson said the game had been in development for about five years.

He said while trying to highlight a specific part of the game he was particularly impressed with would be like trying to pick a favourite child, he was really impressed with the variety the development team had brought to the game

“We have the vault hunters, but we also have the skill tree,” Nicholson said.

Now we have three skills. We have guns, now there are many, many, many more guns. We have environments — it’s not just Pandora anymore; there are many more environments, and different types of loot.

“It’s really just taking the Borderlands DNA that we know and that fans have come to love and expanding on that and kind of multiplying all the awesome things that we already know is there,” Nicholson said.

From my time with the hands-on the classic Borderlands experience was definitely there and I enjoyed shooting and blasting my way through many hapless enemies — including while behind the wheel of some futuristic vehicles — as well as enjoying the beautiful graphics and odd sense of humour.

The game is set for a September 13 release and will feature both solo and co-op play, so this is definitely one to watch, even if you’re a newcomer to the franchise.

Royce Wilson attended the preview event as a guest of 2K

Are you looking forward to Borderlands 3? Continue the conversation on Twitter @RoyceWilsonAU

Originally published as Borderlands 3 gameplay reveals biggest instalment of franchise yet