Here's everything we learned from the Borderlands 3 gameplay reveal

Today, I spent two hours watching the Borderlands 3 gameplay reveal and multiple streamers in order to bring you as much information on the game without you having to do the same.

We got more than we bargained for from this event, which was packed to the brim with new features. In no particular order, here’s (almost) everything we learned:

• Echocast system: linking your Twitch account with your SHIFT account will allow you to earn in game loot for watching streamers play the game through events that happen through a Twitch extension.
  • Edit: Turns out the events actually occur when the streamer opens a rare chest, not randomly as we previously stated.
  • The extension also allows you to look at the streamer’s loadout, skill choices, and backpack without them even having to open a single menu.
• No microtransactions. Randy wants you to be very aware of this fact.
  • There will be a season pass, like in previous games, and if the DLC from those are anything to go by it will be more than worth it, but you won’t be expected to pay $3 just for an in-game skin.
• Player characters have far more speaking lines than previous games. You get a real feel for the characters’ personalities from more than just easily missed echo devices.

We saw two of the new player characters, Amara and Zane, in the reveal and the following streams the following is a very brief rundown of their personalities:

• Zane is VERY Irish. The word “shiteheads” was definitely heard.
  • He’s got a clone, a drone, and a shield.
  • He’s like a sweary, Irish Batman who actually kills people
  • (He’s about as confident as Batman too.)
• Amara is fierce, feisty, and here to kick ass.
  • She has a similar personality to every other Siren.
  • She can punch, well, everything at once around her, she can phaselock, and she can project a psy version of herself to do a large amount of damage.

We have yet to see gameplay of either of the other two characters, FL4K and Moze.

However, according to the website, FL4K is a robotic tracker who summons beasts to fight alongside him and Moze’s action skill is to summon a giant mech for you to pilot.

Additionally, all characters can now have multiple action skills.

Speaking of characters, there’s a long list of returning fan favourites (and fan not-so-favourites) so far. All your old pals can revive you! There’s also apparently more to come, but these are the confirmed ones for now:

• Lilith
• Claptrap
• Zero
• Maya
• Ellie
• Tannis
• Moxxi
• Marcus
• Rhys from Tales from the Borderlands, but with a really bad moustache. Apparently it’s a ‘siege moustache’. We just think it’s bad.

But of course, as with all good heroes and sidekicks, there must be a villain or two.

The Calypso Twins are the game’s main bad guys. They’re basically the worst. In short, they stream their religious messages like the worst Twitch streamers you’ve ever seen. Anyone who doesn’t agree gets turned into an eridium husk. Just like real life Twitch!

Gearbox have also added new ways for the player to interact with the environment, a lot of which revolves around how the player moves and influences the flow of combat.

You can now clamber up small walls and over cover, as well as having the capability of sliding under low hanging objects. People have noticed that sliding downhill increases your slide speed which makes sense because, you know, it’s downhill.

Beyond direct movement, players can also melee barrels to knock them towards enemies and use the environment to inflict damage.

You’ll often see water or oil on the ground. In previous games, these variables wouldn’t change anything, but now elemental weapons can interact with these environmental hazards to create even deadlier threats.

For example, shooting an oil spill with a fire weapon will ignite the whole pool, and shooting a shock weapon at a pool of water will electrify a large part of the water, thus damaging anyone that goes into it.

There’s also a new Sanctuary, Sanctuary 3. It’s a spaceship now. We spoke about (read: guessed wildly about) this in our Borderlands poster breakdown.

This also means multiple planets. In the reveal, we were shown Promethea, the homeworld of the Atlas corporation. It’s a huge city spanning the entire planet.

Last, but definitely not least: the weapons! All the weapons are different in some way or another and each type of weapon will greatly influence your play style. You can check out most of the weapons in the gallery above.

• Maliwan rotate between elements. We only saw early tier ones, which had two potential elements. It’s safe to assume later ones will potentially have more to play with.
• Tediore weapons are still thrown away to reload, but they all do kinds of crazy stuff when they’re thrown. We saw walking sentry guns, rubberised explosives, and MIRV explosions. Personally I’d like to see one that acted like a combination of rubberised and sentry. Sort of like a bouncing cloud of bullets and death.
• Vladof weapons are ubiquitous in that they all have an alternate fire that ranges from a double barreled rifle, to a grenade launcher, to a standard minigun spin up style.
• Hyperion weapons are about as boring as ever. They have a personal shield and they shoot bullets. Tada.
• We didn’t see much of Jakobs, but it seems that crit hits with them will ricochet to nearby enemies.
• Dahl weapons seem to retain their completely ‘eh’ status as a gun manufacturer. They’re multipurpose and can switch between fire modes: single fire, burst fire and fully automatic.
• Tourge still EXPLOOOOOODES but can also stick before it EXPLODES for EXPLOSIONS with suspension. DRAMATIC!
• Atlas are back after being absent for the previous two games! Their unique selling point is allowing you to potentially never miss. The alternate fire of bullet based weapons is to fire a tracking dart into an enemy, which then causes all your bullets to home to that target. We also briefly saw an Atlas rocket launcher in the trailer that showed it tracking to your crosshairs. Nice.
• We didn’t see any Children of the Vault weapons, but they supposedly have infinite ammo magazines with a high chance of overheating or malfunctioning.

What are you looking forward to most in Borderlands 3? Let us know in the comments below. Borderlands 3 is set for release on September 13th, in the meantime, check out our Borderlands 3 poster breakdown. It’s worth it. We swear.

Source: Borderlands 3 gameplay reveal.