As per previously announced, Gearbox Software has revealed first-ever gameplay footage for the highly anticipated Borderlands 3 via their livestream. Aside from a few minutes of embarrassing ‘Anthem E3 2017-like‘ co-op showcase, the reveal went pretty well and showered a ton of new information on the viewers.
According to Gearbox founder Randy Pitchford, Borderlands 3 will be fresh experience yet will still remain familiar to the previous games and will continue series hallmarks like the unique ink-painted art style, witty humor and of course, a bazillion guns and everyone’s favorite…Claptrap.
We have linked the entire demo footage across the article in four parts. Thanks go to Gamespot for the videos.
Old dog, new tricks
From the gameplay demo, it’s also clear that Borderlands 3 will bring several modern first-person shooter mechanics with it including crouch sliding, grabbing on to ledges, destructible cover, alternating fire modes for weapons (mini-missiles, tracking darts) and more. It is said that later on in the game, players will even be able to switch between various elements such as ice and fire.
In Borderlands 3 players will be able to revive NPCs and vice versa. Finally, we can say goodbye to some of those annoying ‘Fight For Your Life’ moments where enemies just run away from your line of sight. Another new feature in Borderlands 3 is that once you unlock the Action Skill, you don’t just have one skill available to you, but you have all three readily available.
Watch the first part of the demo footage below:
The trailer also introduced the new elemental effect of the game, radiation. When an irradiated enemy dies, they pass on the damage to nearby enemies. Players will also be able to pick up the weapons a particular boss has been carrying and using against them in the fight, a long-requested feature in the series.
Some of the quality of life changes coming to Borderlands 3 will be the ability to instantly buy ammo for weapons just by the press of a button outside vending machines, the ability to access loot that is otherwise lost (like falling into inaccessible areas) in the hub. There won’t be any in-game F2P-like microtransactions, online-only restriction or anything of the sort.
Then theres the echo-cast Twitch integration where viewers will be able to tune into the Borderlands 3 stream of their favorite streamer and inspect their character, their gear, slotted skills and judge the living crap out of them. It’s also a good way for viewers to earn extra loot just by watching and interacting with the stream.
Balance, balance everywhere
A new optional feature is loot instancing, which means that you can enable individual loot for each player in a lobby. Finally, no more loot ninjas. There’s also scaling which affects everything from player damage to the enemy level to loot which is a much-needed balance improvement to the series. This way, none of the party members will feel left out. For people who just want to play the oldschool way, they can just enable classic mode which will disable the aforementioned features.
Watch some Borderlands 3 co-op gameplay below:
Catch-A-Ride!!!
For the first time ever, Borderlands will let players travel to planets other planets than Pandora in a *ba-dum-tss* spaceship called Sanctuary III. The spaceship will serve as the hub and will let players recuperate after their fights, trade items, interact with other NPCs, unexpectedly witness Claptrap building a girlfriend, and store gear in their stash and bank. Think all the different hubs in previous games mixed into one for player convenience. A better example would be SS Normandy if it was inside Citadel in Mass Effect 3.
Witness Sanctuary III in all her glory below:
Watch the gameplay footage set in Promethea, one of the several explorable planets in Borderlands 3
Borderlands 3 will be released on 13 September 2019 for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.