Last week, 2K Games and Gearbox rolled out a preview of their next gen MOBA/FPS game called Battleborn. The game will be available on PS4, Xbox One and PC platforms. At first glance, you would probably make the same mistake I made, which was to assume that Battleborn is just another entry into an arena with all the other MOBA games which have spawned in the wake of the success of League of Legends and DOTA. Everyone seems to want to capture a piece of that success. Even Blizzard (http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/) is coming out with Heroes of the Storm which, to me, is ironic given it was a Warcraft mod that was the foundation which League of Legends and DotA built upon. No, Battleborn has the potential to be different and could be another huge success for the development team behind Borderlands 2’s success.
In Battleborn, the biggest difference will be that this is actually a blend of both first-person shooter and multiplayer online battle arena. You will have minions and unique characters of course, but it will be from the first-person perspective instead of the traditional third-person overview that most MOBA games incorporate. This gives MOBA and FPS lovers a game they can mutually enjoy. The strategy and challenge of MOBA will remain, but you get a first person view of the melee’.
Battleborn will be set in a universe on the brink of total extinction. All the various races of the universe have descended onto the surface of a single planet. As you can expect when something like that happens, it’s a conflict for territory. There will be a large variety of characters to choose from, and the story lends itself to future creativity with the potential for tons of races and robots and various generals running from cataclysm around the universe. The real payoff is that you can combine various fan-favorite genres. For instance, Thorn is an elf-looking archer, while Montana is a gun-wielding giant humanoid. The preview video for the game shows off a Steampunk robot, a dress-wearing, sword-swinging, samurai girl in a Victorian dress. Another character resembles a “Mad Max” post-apocalyptic warrior look. The combinations and genres are endless. It’s safe to say you will be able to find a character hero that appeals to you in the end.
“If Borderlands 2 is a shooter-looter, Battleborn is a hero-shooter,” said Randy Pitchford, president of Gearbox Software. “As a genre-fused, hobby-grade, co-operative and competitive FPS exploding with eye-popping style and an imaginative universe, Battleborn is the most ambitious video game that Gearbox has ever created.” – excerpt from Take 2 Interactive
Now the bad news is, you’re going to have a very long wait ahead of you for this game. It appears it will be releasing sometime in late 2015 to late winter 2016. You can get an in-depth read into the game via the August issue of Game Informer, which is also available online at gameinformer.com
Check out the preview here:
My take away:
I wasn’t really excited for yet another MOBA entry. My best analogy is that MOBA is kind of like Chess. The board is pretty much the same every time. There are tons of pawns to control to achieve an end etc, etc. So, at first, I imagined that Battleborn is MOBA with new chess pieces and didn’t realize until reading a little into it that this is basically like Harry Potter playing Wizard Chess AS the pieces. The preview video is gorgeous, shows a variety of characters and has a great M83 song attached which is worth the watch alone.
All images via gearbox.com
Last Updated on November 27, 2018.
