Today, Gearbox Software announced Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel; a game set between the events of Borderlands and Borderlands 2. The game will follow Borderlands 2 antagonist Handsome Jack and his four lieutenants: Nisha the Lawbringer, Athena the Gladiator, Wilhelm the Enforcer, and Claptrap the Fragtrap. Randy Pitchford, president of Gearbox, described the story as “Handsome Jack’s rise to power,” so it’s safe to assume we’ll be seeing a lot of the smarmy company man in The Pre-Sequel.
Although Gearbox is certainly involved with The Pre-Sequel, the company is co-developing the game with 2K Australia. “We talked to their designers, their designers talked to our designers, the design team is pretty much one design team,” said Tony Lawrence, Gameplay Manager for 2k Australia. This mindset extends across the disciplines, including visuals and narrative.
One of the new mechanics in The Pre-Sequel is the environment: Pandora’s moon. Since there’s no atmosphere on the moon, players will have to contend with an oxygen meter. Thankfully, oxygen is lootable, and you do get a jetpack in the bargain, but we’ll have to wait for hands-on impressions to see how all that actually works. There’s also a new “Cryo” weapon class, which freezes enemies.
The Pre-Sequel is coming out “late 2014” for PC, PS3, and Xbox 360. Pitchford confirmed there would not be a Xbox One/PS4 version. “The biggest customer for [Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel] is a person who loves Borderlands, and 100% of those customers are on the platform that we’re supporting,” said Pitchford in an interview with Destructoid. “We’re pretty certain of the people that have already gotten the new platforms, almost all of them have the earlier platforms.”
Of course, literally none of this could be true. We’ll have to see.
