Fans will be thrilled (although perhaps not entirely surprised) to learn that when Borderlands 3 releases next month, it won’t mark the end of Gearbox’s popular loot-shooter franchise.
Borderlands 3 will feature a bevy of familiar faces from the earlier games, and tie up some loose plot threads that have been left dangling since Borderlands 2 released in 2012, but there’s still plenty more life left in the old dog. That’s according to the new game’s lead writers, Danny Homan and Sam Winkler.
In a new interview with DualShockers, Homan and Winkler discussed how Borderlands 3 will tie in to the first two games, as well as the Pre-Sequel and Tales From The Borderlands, while also addressing whether or not the new entry serves as a final chapter of sorts.
Winkler said that Borderlands 3 is “definitely a successor to all the games”, and will “tie off some threads.” With that said, the game will also introduce new threads over the course of its 30 hour or so campaign to be picked up later down the line, which of course means that it “definitely isn’t the end of Borderlands in any way.”
Homan added that there’s “always room for more story in Borderlands“, and teased that the the new game is leaving more than enough wiggle room for any future entries to pick up where it leaves off – wherever that might be.
Fans “will see it as a saga together and whatever stories are beyond that, they’ll be connected”, Winker explained. Touching on the ending without giving too much away, he also added that he’s “really happy with the way that Borderlands 3 ends.”
It’s likely that some of the new threads mentioned by Homan and Winkler will be picked up in the Borderlands 3 story DLC, which was confirmed by Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford back in May.
Speaking about post-launch content at the reveal event, the CEO said:
We’re gonna do some kickass campaign DLC. And I’m sure we’re going to do all kinds of fun customizations like heads and skins, but we’re not doing any of that free-to-play junk. There’s not going to be any microtransactions, there’s not going to be any of that nonsense.
Pitchford’s comments about no microtransactions were later clarified by the game’s producer in a way that, if anything, made the whole situation slightly more confusing. What is clear is that Borderlands 3 will have story DLC, and that future entries in the series are pretty much a certainty.
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Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.