quickly endear you to life on Pandora,
a cel-shaded style - cartoonish
and hard-edged - that could be
dismissed as gimmicky, but I found
that even though I was grinding
through monotonous side-quests,
the ambience and world building was
strong enough to keep me hooked.
Firefights could be frenetic and
engaging, but the between-fight lulls
were unexpectedly relaxing as I went
about my chores. A dazzling colour
palette pops during the brighter
moments of Borderlands’ day-night
cycle, and dramatic sunsets highlight
orbiting moons and belts of space
debris left behind by ecologically
corrupt corporations long departed
from the world.
The game’s individual areas are
vast, and although they’re mostly
empty, loading times are especially
speedy when playing on an Xbox One
through backwards compatibility.
It all adds to the fantasy of the
weapons, too, a far cry from the gritty,
ultra-realism of your Call Of Duty or
Battlefield games, something which
makes me a little more comfortable in
overriding my opening anti-arms salvo
in defence of a game’s crazily eclectic
assortment of killing machines.
Random loot
Borderlands’ structure fits the ongoing
scourge of ‘service’ games perfectly,
as you grind through less-than-
inspired side-missions to level up
your stats to make the gripping main
story arc even more palatable, yet
TOP Borderlands’
online features
allow you to
play through
missions
co-operatively
with up to three
other players.
ABOVE The game’s
Claptrap robots
have become
something of a
series mascot.
They’re still
annoying, thoughnone of the first three games include
a strong online component. At the
time of writing, Borderlands 3 has just
been announced, and with the gaming
landscape having changed as it has,
one must assume the Gearbox crew
will at least be considering the jump to
online play (though thankfully you can
definitely play split-screen local).
It makes sense – a game of this ilk
was once mooted in 2015, a PC game
exclusive to China called Borderlands
Online, although it was cancelled
when 2K closed its Chinese arm. “Wedetermined that the additional time
required to finish current projects at
the studio, particularly Borderlands
Online, would not yield a favourable
return on investment,” a spokesperson
told GamesIndustry.biz at the time,
suggesting such an undertaking was
surprisingly financially unviable.
Four years is a pretty long time in
the world of videogames, so the failed
dalliance with online in 2015 is unlikely
to put the idea to rest for good, but
how would the series’ procedurally
generated content fit into that
mould? The developers are no doubt
wanting to avoid yet another loot box
controversy, but when they already
cause such fuss among gamers
when they offer random items from
a limited pool of loot that everybody
has access to, what happens when
the contents of a random box get
randomised themselves?
Then again, how would you go about
charging for a high-powered piece of
kit, when statistically you’re as likely
to get something similar from regular
gameplay within the first few hours? It
would be a delicate balancing act, and
even thinking about all that has given
us a headache.
Or, as we hope, the developers
could always keep it simple. After all,
the series’ previous games essentially
invented the looter-shooter template
while avoiding the shared world
grind loop entirely. Fingers crossed
then that Borderlands 3 will do the
same and keep things (at least
mostly) single-player. QMore Xbox news at gamesradar.com/oxm THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE 105