Gearbox Art Director Says Borderlands 3 "Wouldn’t Be as Good as It Is Now" Without Battleborn

A positive reception for Borderlands 3 when it releases, should that be how the players feel about it, could logically be attributed to lessons learned from Borderlands, Borderlands 2, and the rest of the series. Another game that players might not expect to receive credit though is Battleborn, a game which played a part in how Borderlands 3 is shaping up, according to Gearbox art director Scott Kester.

The art director spoke to Metro GameCentral about Borderlands 3 and the stages of the game's development. One of the questions that came up was one that players themselves had probably wondered once or twice: Why did it take so long for Borderlands 3 to be announced and eventually released? Borderlands 2 came out in 2012, but Kester said the team wasn't ready to create a third Borderlands game right after making the first two.

"Okay, so we made 1 and we made 2 pretty back-to-back," Kester told Metro GameCentral. "I was on both of those games and we were tired. And we were like, 'Should we make another one?' And we didn't want to, we needed a break. Because if we didn't have a break I think we wouldn't have made something as good."

Kester continued to say that break came in the form of Battleborn, a game which 2K allowed them to create and one which was apparently instrumental to making Borderlands 3 "as good as it is now."

"By the grace of the beautiful 2K, they allowed us to say, 'Hey, we want to try this Battleborn thing, we just want to kind of reset our palette, we're gonna try this thing,' Kester said. "And we did it and… you know, if we didn't make that game Borderlands 3 wouldn't be as good as it is now. It made us think about things a little different."

Battleborn didn't exactly play out perhaps as well as Gearbox would've hoped when the developer entered the hero-shooter genre in 2016. The game came out in the same month that Overwatch did which cut into the interest for Gearbox's game, though it still had a roster full of interesting characters and the unique art style and humor that Gearbox is known for.

Borderlands 3 is scheduled to release for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC platforms on September 13th, so perhaps we'll find some Battleborn influences in there when everyone gets their hands on it.