It takes a full 13 minutes for players to go from the start menu to actual shooting in Borderlands 3.
We know because someone actually timed themselves. From clicking “New Game,” it takes 13 minutes to go through the various intro cinematics, to having Claptrap provide you with a slow, laborious tutorial that most people probably don’t even need, to finally, blessedly being able to pop a cap in someone.
We have Redditor TheRealBoz to thank for taking the time (pun intended) to literally hold a stopwatch while going through the new character process. We also share their pain.
"Can we PLEASE have a skip option or button somewhere?” TheRealBoz wrote in obvious despair. “This is agonizing. A supposedly fast-paced looter-shooter should NOT take this long to get to the first gunfire exchange!"
It’s also highly unusual for a Borderlands game to take this long to actually get to the shooting bit. In Borderlands 1, you got to shooting right away. Claptrap shows up, hands you your ECHO device, and then immediately gets attacked by psychos. You’re already armed with a starter weapon depending on your character class, so you can learn the intricacies of Borderlands as your shooting folks.
Not that Borderlands has ever been a particularly intricate series. The franchise has basically become known for taking everything that makes looter/shooters great and distilling them down to their core essence before loading them up with pop culture references and cel-shaded graphics.
Borderlands 2 took a bit longer to get to shooting baddies--about 5-6 minutes. You had to get introduced to Claptrap yet again, wait for his eye to get yanked out, and then find a pistol in a cabinet to actually start killing Bullymongs in the wastes. And in Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, vault hunters return to breakneck-paced murder sprees with enemies attacking you basically right after the introductory cutscene.
Borderlands 3? Thirteen agonizing minutes. Worse, there’s no way to skip cutscenes at the moment, so you have to sit through each one again and again. Hopefully, Gearbox adds a skip button in future updates, but until then, be sure to have a bag of chips or something.
(Source: Reddit)