Funny games: Borderlands 3 and the rise of the comedy shooter
Mindless violence and inane gags go together like Monty Python and a killer bunny, but when it comes to video games, especially shooters, gritty, pofaced realism tends to win out over comedy. But 2019 is bringing an explosion of comical madness, from the superhero antics of Crackdown 3 to the Mad Max-style mohawks and DayGlo insanity of Rage 2, out in May. The bright, cartoonish Fortnite dominates battle royale, while among competitive shooters, Overwatch brims with colourful personality. Games with guns don’t have to rely on military stylings and a dull colour palette any more.
The first Borderlands game, in 2009, was an interesting forerunner to the “looter-shooter” genre Destiny has popularised. This series was one of the earlier first-person shooters to blend bullets and bawdy jokes, bringing humour to a genre that could be pretty dour. Borderlands 3, to be released in September, retains its distinct pop-art style, and in-your-face irreverence. The cell-shaded art has been updated, but carefully maintains its graphic novel-style black edges. Texasbased game developer Gearbox promises “over one billion guns” (they’ll be procedurally generated for virtually limitless weapon possibilities). It’s like a shooter concocted inside the mind of a foul-mouthed 14-year-old.
“Describing humour is really weird – it’s almost like describing ‘fun’ – but it’s got to be genuine,” says Gearbox creative director Paul Sage. “When we’re thinking about how we design our missions and how we write for characters, it’s got to have an element of surprise, something that makes you say ‘I wasn’t expecting that!’. As long as the audience is there for that playfulness, the jokes work.”
Near the beginning of the hour of gameplay that Gearbox is livestreaming today, for instance, a Windows 95esque terms and conditions page suddenly pops up. It’s so unexpected that you can’t help but chuckle.
The tone of this third game is closer to the first Borderlands than the second. “The first game could get a little morose, a little monotone, and the second one could get a little meme-y and silly,” says art director Scott Kester, who has worked on all of the Borderlands games. “In this game, we’re trying to find a better balance of the two.”
Borderlands’ humour is brash, loud, and not exactly pitched at those with nuanced tastes. But if you think shouting and swearing are funny – and the gaming YouTube proves that teenagers absolutely do – you’ll be in stitches. One of the locations you visit on a mission is called Fort Piss-off; the doorway opens after one character, Lorelei, shouts: “Open the bloody door before I shove a bloody coffee grinder up your arse!” A side mission revolves around people trying to get coffee, a gag that sprung from “a dumb conversation” in the writers’ room, Kester explains.
Influences on the tone are wideranging. Sage is a fan of Rick and Morty, while Kester cites Paul Verhoeven as a key inspiration: “RoboCop, Starship Troopers, Total Recall … these dark comedies are about entertaining people, and then blowing someone’s head off. Make them laugh, and then make them squirm a little bit.” Sometimes it makes you squirm for the wrong reasons, however. While the people behind the dialogue are passionate about it, the gags can miss the mark, and some risk excluding players who aren’t 13-year-old boys. Popping in to Moxxxy’s Bar, a dive run by a bustierbusting Harley Quinn-esque barmaid, you’ll find the a tip jar on the counter asking you to “insert your tip”.
It doesn’t feel like an enormous amount has changed between Borderlands 2 and 3, other than a vast increase in the size of the game: you now use your home base of a spaceship, the Sanctuary III, to travel to new planets outside of the already familiar Pandora. But Borderlands 3 brings refinements to the multiplayer loot-shooter and role-playing ideas that the first Borderlands pioneered. “Loot instancing” means people can now play cooperatively, without competing for cool guns, because everyone sees their own rewards on the map – but it can be turned off if you prefer to swipe rewards like a filthy loot ninja. People with different skill levels can also now play together, and will only encounter enemies and weapons of a level similar to their own. It makes for a co-op Borderlands that is easier to play with friends, regardless of their experience.
A bright, cartoonish style has never been more popular in this genre than it is right now – so Borderlands has to work harder to stand out. The tone isn’t for everyone (“Claptrap is super annoying,” admits Sage, albeit lovingly, about your robot sidekick, who returns for this outing). But even though there are more than a billion guns in the game, humour could be Borderlands 3’s greatest weapon.
• Borderlands 3 is out on 13 September.