Gearbox Software, developers of the revered Borderlands games, are working on a new title called Battleborn for PS4 and Xbox One. Battleborn has been dubbed a “hero-shooter” by the dev team, as it combines fast-paced first-person shooting with cooperative combat by a variety of diverse heroes.
Set in a distant future, Battleborn tells a story of players whose only hope for the last star in a dying universe is a new breed of warriors who must put aside their differences to drive back an unstoppable menace. The basic premise sounds cliche, but with Gearbox at the helm it could turn into something pretty slick.
Players choose from several powerful heroes to fight alongside their friends in a narrative-driven coop campaign. Alternately, they can battle against their friends in fast-paced competitive multiplayer matches.
In honor of San Diego Comic-Con this week, it also has a nice visual vibe, as you can tell from the screenshot above.
Gearbox is saying all the right things to get gamers excited about the company’s all-new franchise. “If Borderlands 2 is a shooter-looter, Battleborn is a hero-shooter,” Gearbox president Randy Pitchford said. “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.”
That strong talk is being backed-up by 2K Games as well, which will publish Battleborn for PS4 and Xbox One.
2K President Christoph Hartmann said “the size, scope, and ambition of Battleborn are unlike any other title in 2K’s history.”
The timing of 2K’s Battleborn reveal is nothing if not conspicuous. Although its visual style varies significantly and its plot seems to differ a tad, the words used above to describe Battleborn make it sound an awful lot like Bungie’s and Activision’s Destiny.
The Destiny beta has been going strong on Sony’s PlayStation platforms for a week, while the Destiny Xbox beta kicked off today.
Fortunately there’s room for both games in our online shooter fan hearts. We’re could be more stoked for Destiny, and Battleborn definitely has our attention as well. The games will ship far apart, too. As of now there’s no Battleborn release date, as 2K has simply said it will release “during Take-Two Interactive Software Inc.’s fiscal year 2016 ending March 31, 2016.”
That’s a long-ass wait. In the meantime, you can watch the first teaser video for the game below.