Borderlands 3 might be finally announced!

Gearbox continue to tease a potential Borderlands announcement soon, now the company twitter page is teasing something more specific. As someone who loved Borderlands 2 and Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel I'm excited to see what they have to show. I remember Gearbox doing an Unreal Engine 4 demo a while back and the teaser image seems to follow that visually. If it is Borderlands 3, I really hope they don't go down the more modern approach to loot shooters and monetise aspects of the game. Always thought Borderlands 2 found a strong balance.

What would you like to see in a potential Borderlands 3?

Hope its Borderlands 3 but what are the chances its a re-master?

Hopefully something that isn't similar to the formula that Destiny/The Division/Anthem etc follow. Also, I hope they were paying attention to Tales from the Borderlands, where humor/writing in general is concerned.

It's going to be a mobile battle royale game.

If not a full armor system at least a way to customize what your character looks like. A character creator in that art style would be pretty rad.

@superslidetail: HIGHLY doubt it. To wait all this time, working on other projects with no news from the Borderlands team, and with this generation(supposedly)coming to a close in the next year or two. To put out a remaster of Borderlands 1 would NOT go over well.

@relkin: For better or worse, I can 100% seem them following a SIMILAR formula. That said, I can see the reason for them waiting so long being to see how all of these other loot shooters panned out and learn from them in order to do it right.

It's going to be set at a Medieval Times in Boston

Honestly - Give me Borderlands 2 with a new world, updated graphics, a new story that's good and updated loot systems.

I don't need anything totally new, Borderlands 2 was fantastic for me. Its been long enough that I'm good with more that in and updated setting.

@maxszy: +1 1000%. Even after all this time, in my opinion they don't need to mess with the formula. Though I think they absolutely will.

@mike: It's a 4 day out of season April fools joke.

A couple years ago I would've said I want it to be more like Destiny, but now I actually think it might be better for them to not change the formula too much. Whatever the structure of the game ends up being, I'll probably be fine with it.

It needs to have much better shooting and I would like them to overhaul the way character progression worked (maybe get rid of the 4 characters thing altogether) but that's not a deal breaker for me.

The tone and writing could be a problem. Honestly, I really hope they make it more like Borderlands 1 in that regard. I liked how jokey Borderlands 2 was when it came out, but I got sick of that shtick (in pretty much all games) pretty quickly. I really didn't like the Pre-Sequel at all, partly for that reason.

Whatever it is I'll probably play it and reasonably enjoy it.

@bizmarkiefader: That's totally on my wishlist too, a proper character customization system, not just a few heads and a bunch of palette swaps.

Besides that, I hope they go in a new direction with the writing and humor, it got reeeal grating in BL2 and the Pre-squel after so many hours.

Please don't let the writing suck. Please don't let the writing suck. Please don't let the writing suck. Please don't let the writing suck. Please don't let the writing suck.

I loved Borderlands 1, but I actively despise 2. I found it to be so incredibly unfunny that it just became abrasive. Handsome Jack just might be the worst video game character ever.

I guess I'm interested in seeing what they plan on doing to Borderlands in a world where plenty of other games have already done Borderlands' shtick better.

I didn't mind the writing in 2 that much when it released, but I think having smilar writing for Borderlands 3 in 2019 or whenever this game releases will make it feel dated.

I really hope they hire a "Magician" to "show" us Borderlands 3.

But will it have a Battle Royale mode.....?

@hummusexpert: Agreed. I think they will have the same issue Rockstar will whenever GTA 6 rolls around in that the real world is so dumb and rediculous that anything they write will seem dated or contrived.

If they manage to follow the writing from Tales from the Borderlands I'd be down. Telltale managed to make me actually care about the Borderlands world. I doubt they'll reach the same highs as the Skeeter send-off or the finger-gun fight, but I can hope they'll at least look at those moments and go "Yeah this was much better than anything we did."

Oh god, I never considered how batshit insane a post-2016 GTA will have to be. They might have to go full Saints Row.

Handsome Collection now with Borderlands 1 included.

The existence of Tales From the Borderlands makes me incapable of giving a shit about another shlooter from Gearbox. It'll be a miracle if they can even match the level of world building and character development that Telltale did with their game.

We can only hope for a 10 second teaser, with Claptrap making some out of date references and a title drop. Or Battleborn 2.

I don't know, I had some fun playing BL2 in co-op, but the humour and writing really didn't do much for me. Maybe if it'd be on the level of Tales, then my interest would be higher. But I guess we'll see what happens.

...

I now desperately want it to be Borderlands 3: Battleborn 2 and for Gearbox to fully embrace what a failure Battleborn was and work it into the plot.

Maybe nu-Jack or whatever (never finished Tales) used Battleborn as a scam to find the offworld vaults and this is the second attempt. And The Vault Hunters are contestants on that show who are going to occasionally engage in really obnoxious quests that are supposed to represent the contractually mandated matches.

But I suspect that may be a bit too "smart" for modern Gearbox. Are there any public stats on just how much churn there has been since Borderlands 2? Fairly certain Burch left so it is most likely just going to be obnoxious memes rather than obnoxious memes with a heart of gold.

As someone who went through and got every achievement in BL2 for some reason: If they're still doing the whole "say the word badass over and over again" thing, I'm fully out.

I also spent like half my time in those games messing around with savefile modding, but then they patched it to delete impossible weapons in singleplayer... I'll probably sit this one out, really.

So it's sounding like the PC version will be exclusive to the Epic Store. I'm hoping Randy is just messing around though.

https://www.gamerevolution.com/news/509477-borderlands-3-epic-games-store-exclusivity-gearbox-ceo

I'm really curious to see what this game even looks like. Borderlands 2 came out 7 years ago.

Not a joke apparently. Guess that means I will wait till their 1-2 year contract ends so I can avoid the toxic, anti-consumer Epic Store which let me remind all:

-It has terrible security. People get hacked all the time.

-Awful customer service.

-Games are more expensive due to Epics regional pricing.

-Epic makes you pay a transaction fee before purchasing a game.

-You cant play games offline.

-No social features like chat.

-No controller support.

-There is no achievements.

-No cloud saves

-No game forums

-They pay for exclusive rights to force you to use their store which isnt good for consumers.

-They refuse refunds even if you meet criteria.

-No user reviews

-No linux support.

-They are partially owned by Tencent (a company that sells user data to the Chinese government)

Oh also Epic's TOS gives them the right to monetize or use any piece of media involving any game on the Epic store. Meaning they can steal monetization of any let's play, download your clips/screenshots and use them for advertising, or decide to start selling the mods you made for any game on their store, without even having to credit you.

If they're going through Epic, I wonder how they'll be implementing matchmake/multiplayer systems, given that (iirc) BL2 relied entirely on Steamworks networking stuff. Are they going to be using Epic networking stuff? Does Epic's networking stuff support everything that Steamworks did? (e.g. LAN support)

I am expecting the most money grubbing Microtransaction laced, season pass, P2P netcode, bad writing piece of garbage just so I don't feel disappointed cause its Gearbox and Epic together

Tales from the Borderlands is the only Borderlands game I’ve really liked.

I'm in a weird spot with Borderlands right now. Loved Borderlands 1, thought 2 was good but didnt hook me as much, and the pre-sequel was incredibly forgetful for me.

The decline I've felt with every release combined with seeing all of these attempts at creating shooters with loot that live for years as a service because you play it online with friends like an mmo makes me feel like the time that I would have enjoyed 3 has long passed. If it's just another Destiny/Division/Anthem then it's going to be a big sigh for me unless they do something significant to make it more interesting to me. I do have an attachment to the series because of 1 and 2, so I'll probably give it a try either way. If they can nail the loot, gameplay, and the core loop of how I get that loot in the endgame then that'll go a long way to getting me on board. So many of these kinds of games have been failing at the basics, so if 3 can get past that hurdle it could be great.

I think Borderlands (or preferably something from a better studio) has the potential to "fix" the shlooter genre. The biggest issue games like Destiny have, at least for me, is that the loot model is fundamentally bad

And why is that? Because you need to balance for PvP. Pretty much anything you find before endgame is going to be neutered to all hell. And endgame content needs to be heavily restricted so that people can be funneled into the right activities and you don't have the problem of RNGesus blessing one player and making them dominant in PvP (without forcing them to grind the dungeon of the week). That is why Destiny shifted to the quest based exotics and a focus more on light levels than gear stats.

Contrast that with Borderlands or even the greater Action RPG genre (Diablo, Grim Dawn, Path of Exile) where you just have procedurally generated loot of varying colors and levels. Nioh is one of my favorite loot games because I might get a katana that I can keep using for 20 levels because the bonuses are so good. And I might throw a rare into the grinder (or use it to improve the level of my level 10 weapon) because its perks are bad

And as Diablo showed us: Folk will GLADLY keep playing to just get an even better roll. Add gem sockets (and obligatory loot boxes to buy gems if you don't want to grind for them) and you now have a way to get a guaranteed progression in addition to RNG farming. Then just increase the "level cap" over the months/years and you have a never ending treadmill of skinner boxes and RMT loot boxes (they are totally different...) and loot pinatas and lots of youtube bait for "Look at my cool gun"

If Borderlands 3 doesn't suck AND focuses on PvE content, I think it could fix the genre by reminding us why we loot.