GamesAction RpgBorderlandsAfter 15 years, it’s easy to forget how Borderlands changed the industryWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
GamesAction RpgBorderlandsAfter 15 years, it’s easy to forget how Borderlands changed the industryWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
(Image credit: Gearbox Software)
Today, you may think of Borderlands as a tired franchise. The recent movie adaptationlost over $100 million at the box officeand scored poorly with critics, including our own two-starBorderlands review.Borderlands 2, despite launching over a decade ago, remains the highest-rated game in the series' history. New games in the series please fans but change little to win over detractors. While that may be how the series looks today, it was a different story whenGearboxlaunched the original Borderlands 15 years ago.
Learning from masters
(Image credit: Gearbox Software)
The latest serving(Image credit: Gearbox)Borderlands 3 review: “A fan-servicing treat of a Borderlands game”
The latest serving
(Image credit: Gearbox)Borderlands 3 review: “A fan-servicing treat of a Borderlands game”
(Image credit: Gearbox)
Borderlands 3 review: “A fan-servicing treat of a Borderlands game”
Considering its founders' previous companies' focus on shooters and RPGs, it’s perhaps unsurprising that Gearbox Software would make its name with a game that fused the two genres. But that’s to look back with the benefit of hindsight. When the studio began work on Borderlands, it was under the shadow of a similar game’s disappointing launch.
In 2007, Flagship Studios, a team of ex-Blizzard staff who had worked on Diablo, launched Hellgate: London. While not exclusively a first-person shooter, as it could also be played in third-person, and many of Hellgate’s character classes made extensive use of melee weapons, it was the first action RPG that could be played in first-person, making it technically the first of the looter shooters. Despite that honor, the game is now but a footnote in history. The experiment in genre-mashing crashed a year later when Flagship Studios closed its doors after launching to mixed reviews and attracting only a small player base.
When Borderlands launched seven months later, it was entering a world that had proved unkind to its fledgling genre.
Choosing between masters
(Image credit: Gearbox Software)
Borderlands' original pitch in 2005 was “Halo meets Diablo”, where gear would be front and center. Or, ascreative director Mikey Neumann put it at GDC in 2010, “a game that had loot coming out of every orifice”.
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But even then, the team had to choose which of the two games would be its leading light – the shooter or the RPG. Based on Gearbox’s extensive experience working with Valve on Half-Life and Counter-Strike, porting Halo forBungie, and fresh off the back of its first original series, the WW2 shooter Brothers in Arms, the studio understandably chose to focus on making a shooter with RPG elements.
So, while Borderlands has multiple classes, and you level up your character with XP gained from killing enemies and equip various bits of gear and loot drops, that is the extent of its RPG influences. Your actions in the world don’t have the sorts of branching narrative consequences you would see in first-person RPGs like Deus Ex or Cyberpunk.
(Image credit: Gearbox Software)
Looking for more?(Image credit: Bungie)Check out thesegames like Borderlandsto quench all your looter shooter needs
Looking for more?
(Image credit: Bungie)Check out thesegames like Borderlandsto quench all your looter shooter needs
(Image credit: Bungie)
Check out thesegames like Borderlandsto quench all your looter shooter needs
Reviewers also found that the constant unlocking of new gear and level gains made them want to keep playing. Gearbox hadn’t just made a gripping shooter; it had found a way to fill it with considerably more content than other developers and systems, which could draw players back hour after hour. This potent blend of systems would become Borderlands' lasting impact on the game industry.
After Borderlands came a slew of other first- and third-person shooters that learned from Gearbox’s integration of loot and leveling systems. Yet while Gearbox’s game had a hard end, with its campaign completing after players defeated the final mission, the developers that followed built those same systems into the first live service games.WarframeandThe Divisionfollowed in 2013 and 2016, respectively, but in a neat looping of history, Bungie – who Gearbox had learned so much from when porting the original Halo to PC – released its own looter shooter, Destiny, in 2014.
Borderlands' influence extends beyond just looter shooters, though. Gearbox developed clean ways to integrate class systems and skill trees into a first-person shooter. While other developers were experimenting with this at the time in other genres, such as Bethesda with Fallout 3, Gearbox was very much on the RPG side of the equation. Borderlands was one of the games that pushed RPG elements into more action-fuelled genres, a torch thatUbisoftpicked up in Far Cry 3.
To look at it today, it’s easy to miss how innovative Borderlands was back in 2009. But that’s only because its influence is so widespread.
After 9 months and over 800 hours of attempts, Borderlands 2 player manages to complete the entire game without getting hit once
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More about borderlandsGearbox lead wants Borderlands 4 to have less “toilet humor,” says the thought of “skibidi toilet” and a gun called “Hawk 2A” in the game makes him want to “cry real tears"The new Borderlands 4 trailer’s hidden messages have already been decoded, leaving the community with yet another riddleLatestThis nifty gadget turns any M.2 SSD into a portable drive, but it’s great for when you’re upgrading your PC tooSee more latest►
More about borderlandsGearbox lead wants Borderlands 4 to have less “toilet humor,” says the thought of “skibidi toilet” and a gun called “Hawk 2A” in the game makes him want to “cry real tears"The new Borderlands 4 trailer’s hidden messages have already been decoded, leaving the community with yet another riddleLatestThis nifty gadget turns any M.2 SSD into a portable drive, but it’s great for when you’re upgrading your PC tooSee more latest►
More about borderlandsGearbox lead wants Borderlands 4 to have less “toilet humor,” says the thought of “skibidi toilet” and a gun called “Hawk 2A” in the game makes him want to “cry real tears"The new Borderlands 4 trailer’s hidden messages have already been decoded, leaving the community with yet another riddle
More about borderlands
Gearbox lead wants Borderlands 4 to have less “toilet humor,” says the thought of “skibidi toilet” and a gun called “Hawk 2A” in the game makes him want to “cry real tears"The new Borderlands 4 trailer’s hidden messages have already been decoded, leaving the community with yet another riddle
Gearbox lead wants Borderlands 4 to have less “toilet humor,” says the thought of “skibidi toilet” and a gun called “Hawk 2A” in the game makes him want to “cry real tears”
Gearbox lead wants Borderlands 4 to have less “toilet humor,” says the thought of “skibidi toilet” and a gun called “Hawk 2A” in the game makes him want to “cry real tears”
The new Borderlands 4 trailer’s hidden messages have already been decoded, leaving the community with yet another riddle
The new Borderlands 4 trailer’s hidden messages have already been decoded, leaving the community with yet another riddle
LatestThis nifty gadget turns any M.2 SSD into a portable drive, but it’s great for when you’re upgrading your PC tooSee more latest►
Latest
This nifty gadget turns any M.2 SSD into a portable drive, but it’s great for when you’re upgrading your PC too
This nifty gadget turns any M.2 SSD into a portable drive, but it’s great for when you’re upgrading your PC too
This nifty gadget turns any M.2 SSD into a portable drive, but it’s great for when you’re upgrading your PC too
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