So Gearbox had an event where they showed off the opening section of Borderlands 3, playing as Amara, the Siren class character:

There were lots of new gameplay elements revealed, including sliding, mantling, alt-fire modes, hot-swapping action skills, visiting planetoids, a loot mailbox and the fact it can all be played completely offline.

My first impression is that the gameplay itself looks fun with some tweaks to the formula rather than anything ground breaking. But holy hell that has to be the most boring and annoying opening to a game ever. The smattering of embarrassed chuckles from the audience at all the lines from claptrap was so awkward.

Looks very much like more Borderlands with some modern quality of life improvements - which is exactly what some were looking for and a turn off for others.

I am totally okay with more Borderlands. Creators don't have to creatively bankrupt them self's just to make the next Anthem... never change a winning team.

The game looks about as safe as it could get, which is understandable after what happened to Battleborn. Personally I would've liked it if they went a bit more experimental. The thing that really irks me is that they still stay true to the horribly outdated 0/5 "get +5% damage" skill tree. Things like different mission structure and crazier weapons would've been a plus, but the skill design has been a weakness of the series since day one and should've been improved by now.

I dunno, something about these trailers still isn't clicking with me. They seem super slow and lack punch, like half the shots of an ability or a shootout was the character standing still and waiting for the projectiles to hit. Didn't help that their "new" movement abilities of sliding and mantling didn't really seem to effect combat/traversal that much.

I want to have a good time with this, but I think modern FPS games have spoiled me for mobility/gunplay. That and, most of these schlooters have figured out how to integrate the story in a way that doesn't make replaying the campaign a total slog (harsh to judge it on what was obviously a tutorial section, so I'll hold out hope the rest of the mission design is snappier).

Ah fuck, I completely missed this and it might be the thing that unsells me. I can't play through another one of these if it's going to be a 30 hour grind before I even notice a change in the way my character plays again...

It could be because i've just played through Far Cry: New Dawn but between this and Rage 2 I struggle to be excited for either one. Which is a shame because I used to love post apocalyptic games. Metro Exodus was alright but even that felt very cliche at times and Fallout 76 was just depressing.

(Mutant Year Zero was surprisingly good though, not the same type of game obviously but still)

This looks incredibly dated.

If someone said this was borderlands 2 I would have believed them.

@teddie: They've added a new system were you get a few augments that modifies your action skill to pick between (basically giving you two more "signature skills" in each tree) , but ye there's still plenty of super basic filler skills.

Enemy behaviour seems kinda... flat? But tbh I'm just really in the mood for a new Borderlands game, and what they've shown off so far looks like another one of those with some nice additions, so whatever, I'm in. Fighting the urge to reinstall Borderlands 2 until this hits Steam.

Loved everything I saw. The game looks like it plays much smoother, snappier, and overall quicker. Shooting looks really satisfying. And they finally have good gun sounds. Like that they finally added in customizable vehicles, which is something that was supposed to be in the first game originally. The fact that each class has multiple abilities was probably at the top of my list for things they needed to do, and to see they did that too makes me super happy.

The game looks gorgeous, too. Lots of detail, but more importantly, smoother animations all around.

I am looking forward to this and I will put up with Claptrap if I have to. I hope there's another class with a turret/shield thing like the soldier had in 2, though. Dug that thing. It set off a nuke when you put it down!

I just want to see numbers go up. And I'm with @rorie on the soldier. I'm a basic, boring man that likes to shoot things and hide behind a turret that sustains me long enough to shoot more things.

@shindig: @rorie: Seems like this time around it's gonna be a deployable drone.

I played a combined 150+ hours of Borderlands 1 and 2 (and a bit of Pre-Sequel) but this video does not ignite my excitement or confidence. That snarky Internet one-liner garbage was barely tolerable a decade ago let alone now.

@shindig: Meanwhile all I want are 200% anarchy stacks back.

Watching bullets somehow shoot out of the gun sideways the penalty is so high.

Random thoughts in no particular order:

The real-time level scaling seems kind of crazy, so much so that I don't really trust it works the way they say it does.

A mailbox for lost items is great modern quality of life feature.

Three action skills to choose from is a neat idea.

Having a ship as a base is cool.

The different effects on Tediore guns is a nice addition. The gun-with-legs is dumb and amusing in a very Borderlands way.

Unless I'm missing something there are several MMOs and aRPGs that has done the same thing. It's not really that complicated when you think about it. Each client is operating separately, showing different numbers and levels etc, and to communicate with each other instead of sending flat values everything gets calculated into percentages. So I can do 5k damage to an enemy with 200k HP and my friend can do 10 damage to an enemy with 200 HP, but all that really matters is that I did 2,5% and he did 5%.

How do I buy Borderlands 3 without accidentally giving Randy Pitchford more Medieval Times money?

@ares42: Yeah, you're right. I wasn't thinking of this in that way. I guess I was confused because in other games (to use Guild Wars 2 as an example), your character is leveled down when you go back to early areas. So you're still max level with max level gear, and you're definitely hitting these level 10 enemies harder than a level 10 player with level 10 gear, but your HP and damage numbers ARE lower than they would be elsewhere in the game.

The way you put it makes perfect sense to me. I'm not a programmer, but I have no trouble believing that the tech is there for that. Thanks!

The game looks great to me. Tons of smart QOL improvements and 4 interesting new characters to play. For Rorie: The soldier character in this one will have a Mech and a teammate can jump in and man a turret in said Mech. The spy/tech character looks very cool w/a ton of new ideas and skills at his disposal. The Siren looks to be the room clearing elemental melee character...and not too sure about the huge robot character yet. Level scaling for co-op is a very welcome addition...bet it'll work similarly to how it does in Division 2.

The art looks like more of the same but I get that, it's their signature look for the series, and at least will run 4K/60 on PS4 and X1X, and uncapped on pc I think.

Very much excited and looking forward to playing BL3, but the only concern for me is the bugs and problems the streamers/influencers had playing the game at the show. Hopefully it was an early build and the game gets cleaned up and polished before release. It better. This game's reception and popularity may be the key to Gearbox's survival.

i'm super excited for this but i hate how on every gameplay demo the devs always walk slowly let's be honest when was the last time on any game where you moved from point a to point b without letting go of the sprint button?