Borderlands 3…
Borderlands 3.
6 and a half years of agony, waiting for a sequel to one of my most beloved games ever. I’m sure there are many who feel the same way too. Head over to the Borderlands 3 reddit and you can find plenty of examples.
I’ve played a lot of Borderlands 2. Since its release in 2012, I have played it on my Xbox 360, my Xbox One and my PC. I still can’t get enough. Hours have been swept away murdering psycho bandits. Time lost to spraying hellfire across Pandora, leaving a trail of blood and glorious, oh so glorious loot behind. It’s a game that took RPG, looting and first-person shooting and combined them all in a sweet, sweet brew with an extra bit of creamy foam on top.
Come September 13th of this year, Borderlands 2 finally gets its follow-up, aptly named, Borderlands 3. I’m not usually one to pre-order games, never mind special editions, but I’ve put a £20 deposit down already. That’s how much faith I have in this game.
Aside from the Epic Games Store debacle currently seizing the gaming industry of which Borderlands 3 is unfortunately a part of, I’m hyped beyond hyped. If you’re unfamiliar with the game franchise, here’s why:
Borderlands 2, like I said, combined RPG elements with FPS gameplay and looting mechanics. On top of this, Borderlands is notorious for its insane amount of weaponry, holding first place in the Guinness Book of World Records for the most amount of guns in a video game. It’s impressive of course, especially when you think about the amount of video games that have a vast array of armaments, but the sheer scale of it is even more so.
17.5 million guns.
And that’s just in Borderlands 2. Now, if you take away only small variations of weaponry (they are all procedurally generated), then it leaves you somewhere in the high 200K (from what I saw was worked out on Reddit). This is a considerable drop, however that still means there are nearly 300,000 different weapons you can find and that’s still quite a lot.
Besides the weapons, Borderlands 2 has one of the funniest, and darkest narratives in a game. Humour is widespread, never being held back from the forefront of the action. Sometimes it’s a little cheap, sure. But for the most part, the game offers up a whole barrel of raucous laughter to enjoy with some of the most insane and brilliant characters in a video game. The main villain, Handsome Jack is one of the most captivating bad guys of all time.
When all of this is combined with fun and exciting gameplay, interesting mechanics like the skill points and badass ranks, brilliantly designed missions including a whole lot of side quests, the game adds up to be a peak example of video game entertainment.
Now you may realise why Borderlands 3 has my attention gripped like a vice. So what do we know about Borderlands 3? Let’s run through it.
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Not much information has been released as of yet, but we do know that Borderlands 3 will take place 5 years after the events of Borderlands 2. There are two new bad guys called the Calypso Twins. An evil brother and sister, who are both Sirens?…
Sirens are women with special powers within the Borderlands universe where only 6 can exist at one given time (from what we know). The key point here however is that Sirens are female, but the guy featured in this twin-set appears to show Siren powers. Interesting to say the least.
Locations. Previously in Borderlands, you were situated on only one planet: Pandora. In the first game, that area was limited to a dusty wasteland, however in the second game the artists finally found those green and purple crayons and put them to good use, introducing us to greenery, snowy tundras and volcanic blights. Borderlands 3 turns all of that right up to 11 by letting us go off-world and explore planets other than Pandora. So far we know of two: Eden and Promethea. Whether there are any more we are yet to find out, but it looks to be that Eden will feature vast jungles and forests with a plethora of new creatures, whilst Promethea with be much more Urban, featuring huge cityscapes with robotic (Maliwan ❤) enemies. Of course, Pandora will still be a playable location, but visiting new worlds in search of new vaults? It’s sounding like the 7 year wait will really pay off.
The other big, BIG, thing Borderlands 3 will feature is (apparently) over 1 BILLION guns! That’s an outrageous number and drives over 17.5 million with a Hummer, brakes, reverses back over it, and then continues tearing up the road ahead. 1 billion sounds big, but this is what it looks like:
1,000,000,000.
Here’s 17.5 million:
17,500,000.
Yeah.
Weapons themselves are even getting revamps. Each make will have special features. Take Atlas weapons for example (a make that was usable in Borderlands 1 but removed in Borderlands 2 after they had been wiped off the map): these smart-arse guns use smart-arse tracking devices to smartly follow their (stupid) enemies. Pretty smart, huh? Maliwan guns, known for being only elemental, now allow you to change between two different elements and charge your shots for bigger, more explosive damage. As a side note, these guns look f**king sexy too. If you saw one in a bar, you’d take one look, shake your head and say to yourself, “Not in a million years, buddy”.
I also shouldn’t forget to mention: guns with legs. That also shout vulgarities. Whilst chasing their enemies. And shooting.
So what do I think of all of this? Honestly, I can’t wait. Counting down the days isn’t helping. I know I should stop but the torture is the only thing keeping me sane, or maybe I’ve already gone crazy. It’s hard to tell. Borderlands 3 will hopefully bring back the spark I think has vanished from recent games (not to name names, but we all know which ones I’m talking about). I can’t say if it will be good. I haven’t played it. I can certainly hope for something incredible which I’m sure Gearbox will deliver on, but for now, it’s just a waiting game.
The world premiere gameplay is coming May 1st. Be sure to check it out and of course check back soon for more content, right here.
