Gearbox A number of exciting new features have recently been confirmed for Gearbox’s upcoming Borderlands 3 at a shiny preview event over in Hollywood, with one intriguing new detail perhaps inspired by Respawn’s Apex Legends.
Before you fly to the comments to complain, I’m not talking about a battle royale mode – although frankly I think a Borderlands battle royale would actually be pretty awesome. No, the biggest change to Borderland’s FPS mechanics is actually an Apex-style slide, activated by crouching while sprinting.
Anyone who’s played Apex Legends will attest that being able to slide around in the heat of battle is easily one of the game’s more satisfying mechanics, and I imagine it’ll do wonders for Borderlands – especially since the movement in previous entries in the franchise could occasionally feel a little awkward.
Luckily, now we’ll able to slide between cover before opening fire on whatever big ugly beast is attacking us with all the ease and grace of a figure skater. Assuming figure skaters practice by sliding on their back legs through gunfire. I don’t know much about figure skating.
Borderlands 3 will also have an improved mantling system which will allow players to jump up, and then press jump again in mid-air to scramble up and onto nearby ledges. Again, this will make movement in the heat of battle a hell of a lot smoother and more satisfying, but it should also make exploring and basic traversal feel a lot more satisfying.
Finally, the upcoming loot shooter will be introducing destructible cover – a long held staple of the FPS genre. While this doesn’t mean Borderlands 3 is suddenly going to turn into a cover-based shooter like Gears of War, it’ll add a fresh new dimension and a layer of strategy to firefights that wasn’t there before.
GearboxIn other Borderlands news, Gearbox recently confirmed that the new game’s campaign clocks in at at least 30 hours, but the sheer amount of side content to play and weapons to find will push that number up significantly higher.
It was also confirmed that while the game will have microstransactions for the odd cosmetic item, there won’t be any loot boxes of premium currency of any kind. We also found out that some story DLC is already planned for the game after launch.
Producer Chris Brock told Games Industry:
When we say ‘no microtransactions,’ what we’re really trying to say is that we’re not trying to nickel and dime people. We’ll probably make content after launch that we will sell, but we also don’t intend to take what Borderlands was and then chop it up into chunks and sell it.
GearboxBorderlands 3 is coming to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC on September 13. It’ll be releasing on PC as an epic store exclusive too, which hasn’t gone down too well with the fans.
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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.