Borderlands turns 10 this year and the third entry in the franchise is finally out after this whole generation without a new Borderlands title. This is odd considering that ever since the release of Borderlands 1 and 2, the video games industry has decided that the Borderlands formula is perfect for most of their games. The weird little game that Gearbox Software released at the end of the 2000s has become one of the most influential titles of the past decade and propelled Gearbox into triple-A developer status. Now that we have a decade of hindsight at our disposal, let's take a look back and see what it was that made the original Borderlands so influential.

Halo Meets Diablo

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In the late 2000s, the first-person shooter genre was completely dominating the video gaming landscape. Whether it was the blockbuster that was Call of Duty or the acclaimed story-driven BioShock, if you wanted to make a game in the late 2000s and you had at least a decent budget, you were most likely designing a dude from this perspective and giving him a gun. Some were successful (Battlefield: Bad Company 2) and some were not (Haze). Shooters were so profitable that Microsoft decided to make their biggest IP a yearly series and the results were good.

While the Halo series picked up the pace and the first-person shooter genre thrived, another genre was nearly forgotten. Diablo II was an addictive game at its release and for years after as well. However, that was at the beginning of the decade. The expansion packs had long since dried up and there was no other company ballsy enough to try and make a game in a similar form. So there was no game scratching that RPG looter itch.

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Enter Gearbox, a company who simultaneously has its head in the future as well as the past. The company at this point was known for the Brothers in Arms series, a bunch of Half-Life expansion packs, and ports such as Half-Life on the PS2, Halo: Combat Evolved on the PC, and Samba de Amigo on Wii. Obviously, the company had a lot of experience making first-person shooters but it was also clear that the company had a love for games released at the end of the 90s and beginning of the 2000s.

Playing The Long Game

So while it seems like an obvious idea now, combining these two genres, one thriving and one dead, was not an obvious choice. There would be no reason to make this kind of shooter when all the rage at the time when scripted, linear FPSs with big set pieces and military themes. In fact, Gearbox had a title like that: Brothers in Arms, and it would've made much more sense to make a sequel to that game. Instead, they took a chance and reintroduced nearly forgotten mechanics to a genre getting comfortable in their structure.

More specifically, these mechanics helped make the historically linear FPS genre more open-ended and expansive. It's mission-based design kept the focus on the overall experience rather than the immediate action. This made the game more gratifying for a lot of players. The game, simply due to the inherent nature of RPGs also made the game longer than a lot of first-person shooters. It was longer than the story based BioShock and Halo, and it was definitely blowing Call of Duty's campaign out of the water.

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Bringing Mascot Platformers To Shooters

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Borderlands was also a lot more identifiable than other shooters. Master Chief notwithstanding, there weren't any focal point character in shooters that you could point to and identify the way you could Mario or Sonic for platformers. The fact that Activision keeps trying to make Captain Price the face of Call of Duty is just sad. Gearbox had the brilliant idea to combine the class system of Team Fortress 2 with the brand recognition of mascots from old platformers. This helps build more of a connection with the characters in the game, strengthening the bond between the player and the game and making the game more memorable and less disposable.

More is More

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Of course, the one key aspect of Borderlands that, for better or worse, has stuck around and infiltrated itself into every game is undoubtedly... Loot! For all the missions you do, all the shooting you engage in, all the upgrades you earn, it's connected in one way or another to the multiple gun types you can find and acquire. While minuscule at first, you can find guns, armor, and secondary weapons that will give you a sense of achievement that will also keep you jonesing for that next upgrade. More importantly, it keeps the player coming back, long after the main story is done, looking for the best of the best. A great gameplay loop when used correctly, and a horrible manipulative sales tactic when abused.

Borderlands has influenced many games. A First-person shooter with loot-based gameplay? Sounds a lot like Destiny and Tom Clancy's The Division 2. Shooter with recognizable and marketable characters that are themselves classes with gameplay-specific abilities and buffs? Sounds like Overwatch. A loot mechanic to keep the player coming back despite being nickel and dimed? Yup, that sounds almost like every game nowadays. This is one that will come back later as a microtransaction mess but there is no denying how much of an impact Gearbox Software little title has left. Yet with all these influenced games, they still don't have the distinction of Borderlands. The characters, the art design, the gameplay! And the loot. The crazy amount of guns, the crazy types of guns, the cool abilities all of it can be traced back to Borderlands but none have been able to topple the originator.

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