Borderlands 3 Hands On Preview - E3 2019
(From Left to Right) Amara, FL4K, Moze, and Zane are the Vault Hunters playable in Borderlands 3
So here I am, making friends with whatever supermodel 2K hired to keep the line tamed as we sweaty nerds waited to play Borderlands 3 at E3 2019. I was about to be the 5th ever public group to have my grubby little hands on this game (my hands are normal sized). When the guy tells me, “Oh yeah, you are for sure in the next group to make it in there.” I about instantly melted, because those words were the most beautiful string of letters that anyone has ever had the pleasure of placing directly in my eardrum.
We are escorted into a dark room with one giant screen, when a senior producer on the game introduces himself. I don’t write down the name, because at JackScholtz.com (#WhatsUpStreamys) we are learning day by day how to be professional. He proceeds to take us through a short presentation introducing us to the world of Borderlands 3 a little more than we already saw at the gameplay reveal last month.
We begin the presentation with a plethora of new social features. What Gearbox has incorporated into the third installment of the greatest franchise of all time, are little social features for players who want to avoid actual contact with other humans (including engaging through simple voice chat). The first is a system that takes guns that your friends have sold in their game and puts them up for you to buy, someone’s junk is another’s treasure! We glanced over the “bounty” system really quickly and I was a bit confused by it all, but I will explain my understanding of it. Sometimes a rare enemy, think like a mini-boss, will spawn in a game and a friend will then have a bounty put out to send for help from their friends to help them kill this enemy. Sounds like I can just bop in there help get the kill, snag some loot, and bounce. This led to a third mechanic, a mailbox system. If I am my typical loot goblin self, stealing all the good loot for at least a 20 foot radius, then I can leave the game and just mail out loot to friends that they will inevitably be mad that I stole. All three of these social features aren’t anything that was really needed but they seem nice and great way to encourage interaction between players.
I believe this is the Tyrant variant here.
Next we got a look at a brand new planet in Borderlands, because now you can go to new planets on a fancy new hub world, Sanctuary III. This new planet, Eden 6, is the one seen in the trailer with the big ole T-rex looking guy. It is the home of the Jakob’s family, including an estate that players can actually venture through (it is not clear if this is a hub area or an actual gun gun shoot shoot area). New species come with a new planet and we got a nice look at a few creatures like the aforementioned dinosaurs which I couldn’t catch the name of, and these money looking fellers that I believe were named Jabbers. We saw variations of each of these including a Badass Shock Jabber and a big dinosaur named “Tyrant.”
We were then introduced to the Gunner class Moze. She is a sweet girl with a giant mech as her ability and she has named it Iron Bear. We did not get a very extensive look at her skill tree just a simple glance over all the little modifiers that can be applied to the Iron Bear’s weapons system. This includes a rail gun, a minigun, a claw melee weapon, grenade launcher, and flamethrower, and one more that I missed in my notes. People familiar with Borderlands know that there are generally three skill trees, and each of these skill trees have two of these modifiers within them. The cool part is that you can combine any of the two to really tailor your Moze to how you want to play.
Now came the moment I’ve all been waiting for. The moment I gave my 10 fingers what they have been preparing for since September 8th, 2012. The moment my eyes and ears have been training on a strict regiment for the last 3 months just to be fully prepared for. I actually played Borderlands 3. I would have loved to try out the Beastmaster, FL4K, but he is the one character unplayable right now. I heard the Operative, Zane, was a bit like Zer0 in the second game, so that was an immediate pass for me. I really like melee and such, but Amara using a melee ability just seems like a waste to me even with the modifiers. So here I was, loading in with Moze and my new best friend Iron Bear. This being my first ever E3 hands on experience with a game, I was petrified with not actually finishing the demo that I ended up blazing through it faster than most of the 100 people I was playing with and didn’t really take in a lot of the details like all the possible skills I could have gone for. I went with the rail gun and the minigun on my Iron Bear, and really focused in on a skill that made a certain percentage of my bullets turn into “fire bullets” and they would not use ammo. I really liked this skill paired with my assault rifle, but I had a two-shot shotgun (that was probably Jakob’s I was too hurried to check!) that fired whenever I pulled the trigger. When paired with this particular skill though, I would fire and then it would take a second until I could pull the trigger to fire again. Or I would fire one normal shot and then a fire shot, and go to reload and it wouldn’t reload for a second. This could again be something I missed while rushing through to pick a skill, but it felt weird that it seemed to work different on the AR and Shotty Bugatti.
The demo itself took place in the same area that was shown in last month’s gameplay reveal. We were playing single-player so no idea how all the new co-op features work. I was basically infiltrating a Children of the Vault hideout area and killing a mini-boss, Mouthpiece. When loaded into the game the first thing I had to do was adjust the sensitivity. I was too scared to mess with much more than that because I figured that I wasn’t allowed to do much customization so I was messing up my melee and crouches left and right. I then noticed how terrible the audio was in the game, because enemies were rarely where they sounded like they were at. Then I paused and flipped the headphones around. What idiot doesn’t put headphones on the right way? This idiot, and it was a game changer. From that moment I was out there shooting. I was out there looting. And most importantly I was having the time of my life. The game looks miles better than previous games, which generally means it is sharper and more detailed because the art style itself hasn’t changed much that I could tell. The biggest change I noticed was in the animations. Every one was so fluid and reactionary that it was really satisfying to shoot a dude in the leg and see him stumble differently than a guy I shoot in the chest. It reminded me a lot of when iD was showcasing their engine for Rage 1 back in the day, but even more refined and natural than back then.
The gameplay loop just feels faster this time around as well, with new movement abilities like sliding and better environmental hazards like improved elemental barrels just adding to the ways to get up in the bad guys faces and kill them. I unfortunately was booted off the demo before I was even able to inspect my loot from the boss, so I have no legendary or unique red text weapons to report about which bums me greatly, but it at least saves the surprise for later this year on September 13, 2019 when Borderlands 3 is released on Xbox One, PS4, and the Epic Games Store. I know I will be looting the universe, and I hope to see you all there.