PREQUELS, SEQUELS AND PRE-SEQUELS
It’s an uncharacteristically overcast
day in LA, as OXM and seemingly
the rest of the world’s game media,
YouTubers and influencers are herded
into a huge warehouse somewhere
in – we think – West LA. The venue has
been kept top secret, as we’re ferried
to the venue we half expect we’ll be
blindfolded with bags over our heads.
Arriving at the site, the building’s
exterior is festooned with huge murals
of red roses, Borderlands 3’s motif,
somewhat giving it away should
anyone be passing.
Inside, a giant statue of the game’s
villains, the Calypso twins, Troy and
Tyreen, are the centrepiece to a hugeroom bedecked with arty versions of
the game’s main image; the iconic
gas-masked psycho reimagined as
Munch’s The Scream, or Warhol pop art.
A cocktail bar offers unique inventions
of alcoholic mixers themed to Pandora
and its vivid futuristic world, while
banks of screens and Xbox controllers
fill up half the warehouse space.
To use in-game parlance: slag me,
this is quite the event. Gearbox and
publishers 2K know they’ve got
something special with this franchise;
a game that was a huge commercial
success in its first two outings and the
return of which fans have been rabidly
awaiting for years.Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford takes
to the stage alongside creative
director Paul Sage to unveil to the
world a project that at once feels very
personal and, at the same time, big
news on a global scale. Borderlands^
has been one of the game industry’s
most successful franchises, and
finally the threequel that Pitchford
himself claimed would need to be
“massive” to top Borderlands 2 has
come to fruition on Xbox One.
Borderlands, of course, needs no
introduction to the seasoned Xbox
gamer. Released a decade ago on
the Xbox 360, the first Borderlands
shook up the first-person shooter
genre by incorporating RPG elements
into single-player and local and
online co-operative gameplay. Its
distinctive, cel-shaded cartoon art
style and wicked sense of humour
stood out from the more po-faced
shooters of the time, while the game’s
procedurally generated weapons
were fun to mod with crazy elemental
powers as you took on psychos and
raider gangs on the post-apocalyptic
world of Pandora. It’s just been
repackaged for Xbox One, and it
still stands up as a great shooter.BORDERLANDS (2009)
The game that started it
all. With crude humour
and distinctive cel-shaded
cartoon style visuals, the
game stood out from the
po-faced likes of Call Of
Duty thanks to its sharp
sense of style and a great
many other innovations,
including procedurally
generated weapons. For
an FPS, it was more like
an RPG, with class types
and unique abilities,
and loot – an idea
influenced by the likes
of RPG dungeon crawler
Diablo. Gearbox invented
the ‘looter shooter’, and
you can currently revisit
the original remastered
for Xbox One with all its
great DLC attached.BORDERLANDS 2 (2012)
The sequel was a critical
and commercial success
for Gearbox and 2K,
who were onto a winner
with the series’ mix
of lootin’, shootin’
and something else
that should rhyme with
those but is in fact
‘co-operative campaign
gameplay’. The world-
building and lore of
Pandora was more fully
realised than ever and
fans loved the continued
RPG bias, cheeky humour
and great characters.
Completing the main
campaign unlocked harder
game modes, with more
difficult enemies and rare
loot drops, giving a real
incentive to keep playing.BORDERLANDS THE
PRE-SEQUEL (2014)
Set between Borderlands
and Borderlands 2, this
stars 2 ’s antagonist
Handsome Jack, then a
Hyperion employee, while
introducing four new
playable characters. The
same mix of bawdy laughs,
imaginative weapon
combos, RPG levelling
and fine FPS action made
it a worthy addition to
the series. At the time,
Gearbox’s Randy Pitchford
claimed the reason it
wasn’t a sequel as such
was that it would have to
be “massive”. To be fair,
Randy waited until he
could really deliver on
a worthy, massive sequel
with Borderlands 3.TALES FROM THE
BORDERLANDS (2014-2015)
It seemed an odd choice
for a Telltale graphic
adventure series. After
all, Borderlands is
a quite specific FPS
proposition, but the fact
they pulled it off says as
much about the brilliance
of the studio as it
attests to Borderlands’
wonderful characters
and fantastically
realised world. The game
introduces two characters
over five episodes:
Hyperion employee Rhys,
and con artist Fiona.
Series stalwarts Moxxi
and Handsome Jack also
appear, and the voice
acting and script is all
first class.ABOVE The HUD,
health bars
above enemies’
heads and damage
numbers
displayed will
feel familiar
to Borderlands
fans.
048 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE