Month: May 2019

If you don’t want to know anything going into Episode 4 of Game of Thrones Season 8, turn back now! Be sure to read the latest on Game of Thrones with our Season 8, episode 3 review.

The Night King might be dead, but all eyes are on Cersei Lannister as the final threat for the safety of the Seven Kingdoms (for now). HBO has released the first batch of photos for Season 8, episode 4 (the title still hasn’t been officially revealed), but we do know how long this Game of Thrones episode is: 1 hour and 12 minutes.

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Gearbox Software has shown Borderlands 3’s gameplay for the first time, in a live stream that highlighted a number of new features the studio is introducing in its upcoming loot shooter, which is currently available for preorder and is also set to be shown off at E3.

And if you’re looking for a breakdown of every little bit of info, definitely check out our list of 50 Borderlands 3 details revealed today.

For starters, player movement appears to be much more fluid than in previous games, with Borderlands 3 adding the ability to mantle over cover and other parts of the environment, as well as allowing players to perform running slides to make firefights more dynamic.

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Spoilers for Borderlands 2 follow.

Handsome Jack is one of the most acclaimed and beloved villains around, and his debut in Borderlands 2 cemented his place in fans’ minds even before he came back for Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel.

However, Jack dies in Borderlands 2, and while he is seen in Tales from the Borderlands, it’s in hologram form. Now, Borderlands 3 developer Gearbox says Handsome Jack will return in the upcoming threequel, in some capacity.

“Handsome Jack is dead,” confirmed the studio’s narrative managing producer, Randy Varnell, in an interview with GameSpot. “He’s such a big character in our universe though. There’s always going to be some stuff–there may be a side mission or something and then we mention him a few times. It’s so hard to get away from that impact. But you’re not ever going to see Handsome Jack come back as a character.

“But it was a hard decision. Because he’s such a great villain. But when we were looking at coming up with new villains for Borderlands 3… we’ve got a lot of Jack–if you like Handsome Jack, you’re in luck because there’s a lot of existing content where you can play and enjoy him. He’s too important to the universe to never mention him again. But we wanted to be sure that the Calypso twins, the new villains, can stand on their own.”

The upcoming shooter includes plenty of new characters, so take a look at everything we know about Borderlands 3’s four new vault hunters. The game is coming to PS4, Xbox One, and PC on September 13.

If you’d like to see Borderlands 3 in action, you can watch the gameplay reveal stream here. We’ve also put together a preview on what it’s like to play the game solo (spoilers: it’s surprisingly good.)

It’s been over four years since Gearbox Software last released a Borderlands title and, in that time, the first-person shooter genre has changed in many ways. Similarly, what players expect from a shooter has evolved. For Borderlands 3, Gearbox Software seems to have kept the changing times in mind, as it has showcased a number of gameplay mechanics that draw inspiration from the likes of Titanfall 2 and Apex Legends, among other shooters.

During its gameplay reveal stream, Gearbox revealed that one of the notable gameplay additions made for Borderlands 3 is the ability to slide while sprinting and also climb up ledges so that elevated surfaces become reachable. Numerous games have used similar mechanics, but it’s perhaps most closely linked to Respawn Entertainment’s Titanfall, Titanfall 2, and Apex Legends.

Based on our experiences with Borderlands 3, we noticed that these traversal abilities look and behave a lot like they do in Titanfall 2. However, since you don’t get the little extra jump jet boosts, they are perhaps more comparable to Apex Legends, Respawn’s battle royale title.

The need to make Borderlands 3 feel like a modern shooter was something that Gearbox paid special consideration to, and director Paul Sage cites Titanfall 2 as one of the game’s inspirations.

“We’ve got to hit that mark of making this feel this good, making it feel like a modern shooter,” Sage told GameSpot. And so even though it seems really simple when you’re talking about, ‘Hey, how fast can I move my controller?’ Or, ‘How much … will it actually just kind of slow down when I’m moving across a target?’ All of those things take time to really tune and get right to make it feel like a modern shooter. So there are definitely things that I would say are inspiration from like all shooters.

“One of my favorite games from, what was it three years ago, is Titanfall 2. Dude, I love that game. And I thought the shooting was just fantastic. And so, yeah, I think there’s inspiration we take from all the games we’re fans of, because we’re all gamers and I think that’s true of the entire industry. I hope it is.”

Borderlands 3’s release date has been confirmed as September 13, 2019. It will be available for PS4, Xbox One, and PC. On the PC, it will be distributed through the Epic Games Store and remain exclusive to Epic’s storefront until April 2020. This decision proved to be quite controversial with fans and, in response, many began review bombing previous Borderlands games on Steam.

For more on the game, read our Borderlands 3 hands-on gameplay preview, which explores what the sequel is like to play solo.