Three is the magic number
What does the new game bring to the table
that will get old and new players hooked?
This is the game we’ve all been wanting to make
for a long time. We wanted to give people more
Borderlands, but better. So all the systems that
players are familiar with, we wanted to make them
better, more accessible and more awesome.
We’ve been working on it for a long time so it’s
awesome to be able to show it off finally.The action has moved off Pandora and there
are now loads of different planets to explore.
We really wanted it to not just be on Pandora this
go around, there’s a lot more variety as far as
environments are concerned, more enemy types,
stuff like that, so I think the big take away is that
we can introduce players to so many more worlds
and environments now so they won’t get tired of
just being on Pandora.What do you think long-time fans of the
series will enjoy the most in Borderlands 3?
The customisation options, and the variety in the
guns. We’ve definitely delivered on that, with so
much variety in the weapon parts and being able
to create all these crazy guns, then after that it’s
just the fan service of bringing in characters from
the previous titles. You can see how they’ve got
on in their lives in the past couple of years.The discrete loot streams are a great idea,
but you can also play it ‘first to the loot’ like
in previous games.
I think it’s awesome to give the player that option
instead of telling them this is the way you have to
play, and we want to stay current with other titles,
so it’s just something cool that had to happen.So the boast this time is that there are over
a billion guns – are there really that many?
They weren’t playing around when they said over
a billion, there’s a lot of parts that have gone into
the gun system and we have an entire gun team
that’s been working on that from day one. I think
there was around 300 or so parts in 2 and we have
over 1,000 in this one, so if you can imagine all the
permutations of what can be generated from that,
it’s a lot of guns! There are so many we haven’t
seen yet because of the way the system works.
There’s just a lot of parts, you can get Unicorn
parts that can give you the most awesome gun,
but it’s going to be very rare for somebody to find
the exact same gun that you find.It’s great that you can still play couch co-op,
it’s much rarer in games these days.
We always say that it’s better with friends. We
have defined it where you can play it solo but
couch co-op was something we definitely wanted
to ship with this game, because not a lot of other
people do it, but it’s also something that’s iconic
to Borderlands now, we always want people to
play with their friends.GEARBOX SYSTEMS DESIGNER
KEVIN POWELL ON WHAT MAKES
THIS THREEQUEL SPECIAL
“It’s a game that’s packed
with things to do, including
an awful lot of shooting”
skills and your guns make for some
fun and frantic skirmishes. You can
melee as well; Amara’s palm is a
powerful weapon of its own, while
another playable character, Zane, has
Wolverine-like energy claws.Lotsa loot
Everywhere you go, of course,
there are lootable crates
containing ammo, grenades,
meds and gun parts. Ammo
feels scarce, particularly
for guns with a rapid
rate of fire. At this point
our back-up weapon is a pulse-rifle
type, that you need to power up and
then let rip with an effective blast.
For the first time in our playthrough,
overwhelming odds here get the
better of us and Amara dies... or,
nearly. Get knocked down and you
have a choice: give up and die, or fight
for your life. If you manage to get a
kill in the next few seconds you get
a ‘second wind’ and stay alive, if not
you die and are put back together
at the last checkpoint courtesy of
Hyperion corporation’s Personal
Reconstruction System – for a few
dollars, of course.
Eventually we reach Atlas’
Watershed Base from where we
can contact Rhys via a holographic
communication, but not before
we’ve had to deal with some heavily
armoured Pyrotech Heavies. These
big bastards require us to keep our
distance from their fire attacks.
Already we’ve seen a broad variety
of enemy types, with AI challenging
enough to cause us problems, but not
too smart to have these psychos rush
you suicidally from time to time. Rhys
tells us to go make contact with one
of his agents, and Lorelei gifts us a
Cyclone for transport. The Cyclone is asmart, bike-type vehicle, and is much
easier to control than the Outrunner,
and we soon reach the agent, who
turns out to be the ninja-like Zer0 from
Borderlands 2, in a neat bit of fan-
service to what’s gone before.
For the next playthrough, we’re
back to the outskirts of Meridian but
this time as Zane. Zane’s ‘class’ is that
of Operative, and his skills are more
tech-based, including the ability to
send an automated SNTNL, a flying
machine-gun drone that’s helpful
in combat; Barrier, which throws up
a shield through which he can still
shoot; and a Digi Clone, which projects
a digital Zane to draw enemy fire, and
whose position you can teleport to, to
doubly confuse the enemy.
This time we’re a lot more patient,
and spend time honing in on Zane’s
build, strategically equipping useful
passives, which include Cold Bore, for
increased weapon-swap speed plus
bonus cryo damage; Violent Speed,052 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE