Before Anthem, before Destiny, if you wanted a looter shooter your go to games was the Borderlands series. Gearbox’s irreverent, cell shaded FPS was where you went to shoot things until they exploded into colorful guns for you to take. But Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel was released all the way back in 2014, meaning it’s been nearly 5 years since a proper Borderlands game has come out.
Not counting Tales From The Borderlands of course (although you should totally play that).
Now there’s some hope that news about the long awaited third entry is about to come out. According to the PAX East website, Gearbox is scheduled to host a panel on March 28th. Most notable about this listing is that the developer has promised “never-before-seen reveals, exclusives, and surprises.” This has instantly started up the rumor mill that one of these surprises could be the announcement of Borderlands 3.
Gearbox had announced that they were hiring new staff members to assist on the development of a Borderlands game back in early 2015. So in theory, the third installment could have been worked on now for nearly 4 years. If this is the case, that does seem like the right amount of time for the game to be near completion and PAX East isn’t a bad place to make the formal announcement.
There’s also a chance that the news will involve information on the re-release of Borderlands: Game Of The Year Edition which was listed on both the Taiwan and Korea ratings board for PS4 and Xbox One. This hasn’t been confirmed by Gearbox, but it would make sense to remaster the first game and put it out on modern consoles. Plus if Borderlands 3 still needs more time, releasing the first game could be a good stop gap to hold fans over.
The panel should be interesting, especially if Randy Pitchford is present. Pitchford, the CEO of Gearbox, was at the forefront of a huge scandal last month involving corporate embezzlement, and an USB drive that was allegedly left behind at a Medieval Times restaurant in Dallas. The drive was said to have contained important corporate documents, and potentially illegal, illicit pornography. How he’s remained CEO and why someone would put both of those things on one thumb drive are questions that he potentially may have to answer if he does indeed show up.
But the main question is exactly what would Borderlands 3 be in today’s gaming landscape? Will Gearbox continue making a similar style of game, or will they attempt to create a game closer to Destiny? Destiny takes a lot of cues from Borderlands, so it wouldn’t be shocking to see Borderlands 3 become a live service game as well. Furthermore, will the game maintain the same zany, crude charm of its earlier entries? And will it pick up any of the plot threads left over from Tales From The Borderlands now that Telltale is long gone?
For now there’s nothing but rumors and theories going around when it comes to Borderlands 3. When PAX East rolls around, hopefully we’ll hear more about the game and find out when we can all expect to start shooting people in the face on Pandora all over again.