Borderlands 3

Borderlands 3 is a first-person loot shooter. Players, either playing alone or in parties of up to four people, make a character from one of the four classes available, and take on various missions given out by non-playable characters (NPCs) and at bounty boards to gain experience, in-game monetary rewards, and reward items. Players can also gain these items by defeating enemies throughout the game. As the player gains level, they gain skill points to allocate across a skill tree.

The game introduces four new playable characters: Amara, a "Siren" who summons ethereal fists; Moze, a young "Gunner" who rides the mecha Iron Bear; Zane, an "Operative" with a variety of gadgets; and FL4K, a robot "Beastmaster" who summons creatures to aid in fights. Unlike previous Borderlands games, where each character had only one unique skill that operates on a cooldown, each character in the new game can unlock three unique skills, though only one (or in Zane's case, two) can be equipped at a time, greatly expanding the number of potential character builds a player can make.

As part of the Borderlands series, Borderlands 3 is centered on the planet Pandora, which has been long-rumored to contain Vaults holding vast amounts of treasure and technology, left behind by a mysterious alien civilization known as the Eridians. In decades prior, several corporations have laid siege to Pandora to try to find the Vaults, but the constant conflict and bloodshed has left the planet and its population ravaged and crazed. However, there are still those independently searching for the Vaults, known as Vault Hunters (the player characters).

Borderlands 3 takes place seven years after the events of Borderlands 2 and Tales from the Borderlands. In Borderlands 2, it was discovered that numerous other Vaults exist on other planets in the galaxy. In the power vacuum left by the defeat of Handsome Jack, twin siblings Troy and Tyreen Calypso form the Children of the Vault (COV), a violent cult of personality formed from the remnants of the planet's many bandit factions, to gain possession of the other Vaults, specifically one called the "Great Vault". Lilith, a member of a race of women with alien powers called "Sirens" and current leader of the Crimson Raiders, a resistance force created to protect Pandora, recruits new Vault Hunters to help stop the Calypsos.

Borderlands 3 was developed jointly by Gearbox's Texas and Quebec studios. Gearbox had finished Borderlands and its sequel consecutively, leaving the studio somewhat burned out on the franchise. To try to do something different, Gearbox shifted work into Battleborn with the blessing of 2K Games, as a means of refreshing themselves. Battleborn was not a major success, but Gearbox was not disheartened on this. According to art director Scott Kester, while developing Battleborn, they gained several ideas for how to take the next Borderlands game, and many of the team, as soon as Battleborn was complete, started building out these ideas for Borderlands 3.

Gearbox Quebec undertook developing Borderlands 3 as their first assignment, and said that they were doing so without compulsory overtime ("crunch"). The game was announced with a trailer at PAX East on 28 March 2019. The trailer received mixed reviews by video game websites, some of which characterized it as too similar in appearance and content to previous entries in the series such as Borderlands 2.

The PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Windows versions of Borderlands 3 received "generally favorable reviews", while the PlayStation 5 version received “universal acclaim” (albeit with a much smaller number of reviews), according to review aggregator website Metacritic.

GameSpot gave Borderlands 3 a positive review, noting its preservation of the franchise's hallmarks (including weapon variety, a "personable" cast, and "juvenile humor and ludicrous jokes"), refinements to the skill system and player movement, and that its storyline "satisfyingly wraps up the arcs of characters that fans have been following for 10 years". However, it was felt that the flow of Borderlands 3 was still disrupted by the franchise's reliance on boss fights with little strategy and "bullet sponge" enemies. In conclusion, it was argued that "if you've never been a fan of the franchise, it's unlikely Borderlands 3 does enough things differently to change your mind, as the game best excels at continuing what the series has always done: deliver a humorous tall tale of misfits looting and shooting their way to heroism".