Borderlands 3 back in Gearbox's hands

Stg-Flame

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Since this new godawful layout makes it impossible to find old posts or navigate easily, I'll just make a new thread.

Previously, it was announced that Borderlands 3 will be Gearbox's next IP but they didn't reveal when development would start. Then they were a no-show at E3, but at this past PAX East, it was announced that Borderlands 3 is in development. http://www.ign.com/articles/2016/05/24/road-to-e3-2016-borderlands-3

Gearbox is calling this a true open-world Borderlands game (http://www.inquisitr.com/3252656/ge...ands-3-game-expected-to-have-true-open-world/) and are estimating a 2018 release.

Edit: I forgot to mention that previously, Randy Pitchford had only named the PS4 and XOne as the primary platforms for Borderlands 3, but in an interview with IGN, he mentioned that Borderlands 3 will also appear for the PC. Mac and Linux will receive their version later after the full release on the other platforms.
 
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Dannar26

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Does a game like borderlands really need to be a "true open world?" From what I've played, it's fairly open already. Do we need the ability to traverse miles and miles of meaningless space so we can pretend this is Skyrim?
 

ControlD

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This is good news. Borderlands 2 is on my short list of favorite games. Hell, just reading this makes me want to fire it up and play again.
 
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nathanddrews

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I still prefer the characters and some of the weapons from BL1, but BL2 was also pretty great. Being truly open world could be interesting, but I'm sure they'll throw plenty of roadblocks/impassable scripted events to make players follow a linear path. It would also be nice to have optional difficulty instead of different playthroughs.

I want TVH2 mode from the very beginning!
 

Stg-Flame

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Does a game like borderlands really need to be a "true open world?" From what I've played, it's fairly open already. Do we need the ability to traverse miles and miles of meaningless space so we can pretend this is Skyrim?

Skyrim ended up being miles and miles of empty space. Fallout 3 was long stretches between anything interesting. Witcher 3, Fallout 4, and Fallout NV are great examples of games who did open world right and we can only hope that Borderlands 3 will fall into the latter category after release. Both Borderlands 1 and 2 felt open world to me due to the extremely large levels that allowed you to traverse them however you wished (for the most part). A true open-world Borderlands is pretty hard to wrap my head around, but so long as 2K Australia has nothing to do with this installment, I can only expect great things (and hope for a better UI than BL2).
 
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Too bad they wasted time on the Pre-Sequel and just didnt go full bore into BL-3. I was a great fan of BL1 and BL2, played through both with each character, and some with multiple playthroughs. I played through the Pre-sequel once with one character, and that was more than enough.
 

DaveSimmons

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I loved BL2's story and it was a lot of shooty fun, but one thing I didn't like was that in some areas you had to play for a very long stretch before reaching the next checkpoint where you could save your progress. You could play for 15 minutes but if you wanted to quit it meant starting over.

Hopefully "open world" will mean either a true save-anywhere system or at least no huge gaps between checkpoints. Maybe they'll follow the Fallout model and have a semi-persistent world where areas take days to reset instead of resetting in minutes or as soon as you save / reload.
 

zinfamous

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Too bad they wasted time on the Pre-Sequel and just didnt go full bore into BL-3. I was a great fan of BL1 and BL2, played through both with each character, and some with multiple playthroughs. I played through the Pre-sequel once with one character, and that was more than enough.

They didn't waste time on TPS. TPS was from Take2 Australia and none of Gearbox's people were involved. You could say that Gearbox wasted their time on Battleborn, though....which is totally fair. :D
 

zinfamous

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Maybe they'll follow the Fallout model and have a semi-persistent world where areas take days to reset instead of resetting in minutes or as soon as you save / reload.

That would suck for those that like farming in BL games, though. But I would hope that they remove or drastically tweak the difficulty playthrough model so that leveling is far more streamlined--should honestly be able to do it on one playthough. Maybe just have a beginning difficulty that you can adjust throughout (like most games) which also affects quality of loot drops?

Dunno, but the game-reset and playthroughs (next to the broken system in BL1 where you would quickly overlevel yourself) were really tedious, and you had to do it if you wanted to max a character and really play with their builds (Even worse if you just had to max all characters)
 

Stg-Flame

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Fallout 4 and Witcher 3 set the open-world bar pretty goddamned high. It will be interesting to see how Gearbox fares in this aspect. Though, I do hope they take some of the major complaints about BL2 and fix them in BL3. The initial testing wasn't good out of the gates since so many die-hard fans of BL went to the sequel and found it underwhelming to say the least (trash UI, glitches out the ass, removal of revolvers, etc.).
 

zinfamous

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Fallout 4 and Witcher 3 set the open-world bar pretty goddamned high. It will be interesting to see how Gearbox fares in this aspect. Though, I do hope they take some of the major complaints about BL2 and fix them in BL3. The initial testing wasn't good out of the gates since so many die-hard fans of BL went to the sequel and found it underwhelming to say the least (trash UI, glitches out the ass, removal of revolvers, etc.).

Oh man, just bring back the Defiler and I'll excuse everything else. :D
 
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TidusZ

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This is good news. Borderlands 2 is on my short list of favorite games. Hell, just reading this makes me want to fire it up and play again.

Me and a friend got back into it recently, totally worth it. There are two new classes since release too, mechromancer and psycho, as well as a ridiculous amount of DLC which was very cheap during steam sale..

We did burn out on it though just before reaching level 72 while we were just farming exp in torque's bar
 

ControlD

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Apr 25, 2005
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Me and a friend got back into it recently, totally worth it. There are two new classes since release too, mechromancer and psycho, as well as a ridiculous amount of DLC which was very cheap during steam sale..

We did burn out on it though just before reaching level 72 while we were just farming exp in torque's bar

Yeah, I spent a lot of time playing around with mechromancer builds. I never did try the psycho class however. Maybe I should give that a shot. I honestly haven't found anything I feel like playing since finishing TW3, so maybe a new game of BL2 is exactly what I need.
 

zinfamous

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Yeah, I spent a lot of time playing around with mechromancer builds. I never did try the psycho class however. Maybe I should give that a shot. I honestly haven't found anything I feel like playing since finishing TW3, so maybe a new game of BL2 is exactly what I need.

I'm in the same boat--finished 2nd and more complete runthrough of W3, and have quickly lost interest in Alien Isolation, Civ 5, Divinity. Will probably do another playthrough or two of BL2, which I pick up at least once per year. or BL1--which is still my favorite, as I reminded myself last year picking it up again for the first time in 5 years. I only ever maxed and geared-out Maya (got her up to OP 8...well, back when you could bug it and skip directly to the end boss; only could do up to OP 4 legit. :D). Sal still sits somewhere at level 67 (ran out of any use for extra skill points--at some point with that dude, it's all just superfluous), and have slowly worked on Mechromancer and Psycho.
 

nathanddrews

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The DLC of BL2 is all really good but there was just so much of it that I never had time to play it all. It's been almost a year since I have sat down to actually play the game, so I don't even know what the max levels are anymore or what guns are worth farming... I'm not even sure I know what the story is about at this point.

I really want to see a return to the hand-cannon style revolvers of BL1. Most importantly, I want my Chimera back! It didn't always do the most damage, but it was so fun to shoot!

I also really missed the explosive elemental. Adding raw damage and splash damage to every shot made things interesting. Dat Ogre.
 

zinfamous

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The DLC of BL2 is all really good but there was just so much of it that I never had time to play it all. It's been almost a year since I have sat down to actually play the game, so I don't even know what the max levels are anymore or what guns are worth farming... I'm not even sure I know what the story is about at this point.

I really want to see a return to the hand-cannon style revolvers of BL1. Most importantly, I want my Chimera back! It didn't always do the most damage, but it was so fun to shoot!

I also really missed the explosive elemental. Adding raw damage and splash damage to every shot made things interesting. Dat Ogre.

Ah, so you never played the Torgue DLC (probably some of the best running dialogue in all of BL2, imo) and haven't experienced the Unkempt Harold? There are tons of exploding (all Torgue guns have exploding from BL1 through BL TPS) in the game, you just have to find them. Even teh Psycho class has a build dedicated to explosion.

I don't think the function has the same impact as it did with BL1 (fire bullet straight on, things explode), but the element is still really powerful in certain builds. The Gunzerker with UDPH (double penetrating Unkempt variation) is kinda god mode in that game. It's a big wonky learning how to use that gun--weird spread and distance to activation--but pairing that with a Ruby or Grognozzle makes the Gunzerker more or less unkillable in UVHM.
 

Stg-Flame

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Since Randy has stated that he's unsure which NPCs and characters are going in the game, but said he wants to see Scooter's son in-game, I can only assume this installment will take place some years after BL2 which means we might have a playable Tiny Tina. Pure speculation, but I think the fans have waited long enough to play as Tina. Her special could even be to jump on Brick's shoulders and throw bombs around.
 

zinfamous

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I really don't like Tina as an NPC, but I can see how a playable version could be tons of fun. Lots of explosions.

Better have another Siren, though. Would love to see Lilith as playable again.

If it follows with how BL2 ended, I think the Open World idea is more of a "gigantic world": larger maps, probably with gates between each map (think GW2 model), but a much greater universe: multiple planets with vaults on each, and "all your vault hunters needed" or whatever it was that creepy alien said in TPS. Those endings sent people into speculating about a BL MMO...I can see the good and the very bad about that type of game. I hope it wouldn't be an MMO, but I do like the idea of many worlds and many more classes (possibly all previous characters and some new ones?

I dunno...to make it open world and huge, they need to get rid of the multiple playthrough model, lest it get way too tedious--players generally want to build multiple classes in these games.
 

bguile

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They'll mess it up. I'm sure of it.

I'm guessing it'll be an MMO type game, and they will jam every single character from BL1 and BL2 into it, and it will be a mess. But because it's borderlands it will still probably sell well.

I'd much prefer a return to BL1, especially with the guns. I really hated the manufacturer specific gun after awhile, and despised having to farm the legendary's (which were the only really good weapons in the game). Actually I wish they would release a re-mastered edition of BL1.
 

nathanddrews

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I don't think the function has the same impact as it did with BL1 (fire bullet straight on, things explode), but the element is still really powerful in certain builds. The Gunzerker with UDPH (double penetrating Unkempt variation) is kinda god mode in that game. It's a big wonky learning how to use that gun--weird spread and distance to activation--but pairing that with a Ruby or Grognozzle makes the Gunzerker more or less unkillable in UVHM.
Games that stray from original mechanics drive me crazy. I think I picked up a couple explosive weapons in BL2 and was so frustrated by their operation that I gave up too soon.

Better have another Siren, though. Would love to see Lilith as playable again... I dunno...to make it open world and huge, they need to get rid of the multiple playthrough model, lest it get way too tedious--players generally want to build multiple classes in these games.
The biggest let down for me of BL2 was the removal of BL1's playable characters. There was talk early on of importing your BL1 gamesave, but that never made it to the game. I have to respect them for trying to craft a real story using those characters, but ultimately it feels like we just got the same characters anyway, with tweaked powers and skins.

I'm guessing it'll be an MMO type game, and they will jam every single character from BL1 and BL2 into it, and it will be a mess. But because it's borderlands it will still probably sell well.

If it is an MMO, it would basically guarantee custom builds and skill trees. Gunzerker/Siren hybrid could be interesting. But they could also do that without going the MMO route.
 

KeithP

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Jun 15, 2000
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No Borderlands 3 at E3. I am guessing that means we are looking at the later half of 2019 or maybe 2020 before it is released. Bummer.

-KeithP
 

zinfamous

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Jul 12, 2006
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No Borderlands 3 at E3. I am guessing that means we are looking at the later half of 2019 or maybe 2020 before it is released. Bummer.

-KeithP

As long as it is still happening and if they need more time to make as good as it should be, then I can wait. If Cyberpunk comes out shortly before that, then I won't be having any time for BL3 anyway.
 
Aug 11, 2008
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As long as it is still happening and if they need more time to make as good as it should be, then I can wait. If Cyberpunk comes out shortly before that, then I won't be having any time for BL3 anyway.

The two games that I am really interested in are BL 3 and a new Elder Scrolls single player game. Looks like we will get ES 6 before BL3. I am beginning to wonder if we will ever see BL3, actually; its been almost six years since BL2.
 

bguile

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The two games that I am really interested in are BL 3 and a new Elder Scrolls single player game. Looks like we will get ES 6 before BL3. I am beginning to wonder if we will ever see BL3, actually; its been almost six years since BL2.

I am surprised that BL3 wasn't even mentioned during this years E3, but I would expect we will see it next year or 2020. I don't think we will see ES 6 until after 2020 at the earliest. From what I understand Starfield comes before ES 6, and there is like no information on Starfield at the moment.