With the fall of Handsome Jack, fans of Borderlands asked for more. More loot. More vault hunters. And even more mayhem. Shoot and then loot; that’s the law on Pandora.

Players will be playing as one of four vault hunters: Amara, a siren, FL4K, a beastmaster, Zane, an operative, or as Moze, a soldier, as you try to stop the Children of the Vault Cult and their conquest for absolute power. Players will continue to play in Pandora, the main planet of the game, but will now be able to explore other worlds that they have only heard of in the past. 

“Borderlands 1” focused on four vault hunters as they travel around the planet of Pandora looking for pieces of a key meant to unlock the ancient alien vaults. These vaults are rumored to contain advanced alien technology, however, when the vault is opened it is discovered that there is nothing more that some alien tentacles and lasers that are now threatening the existence of the planet. 

“Borderlands 2” focuses on Handsome Jack, the CEO of the Hyperion Corporation, who decided that good could come from the opening of the first alien vault. Five years after the first vault was opened, Handsome Jack enslaves Pandora and murders the population for fun. Soon, Jack hears of a second vault containing an unlimited amount of Eridium, a miracle mineral that is harvested by Hyperion. Seeing the vault hunters as a threat, Jack loures them towards the vault to attempt to kill them, but he fails. Six hunters survive and join forces with the Crimson Riders, a rebellious group seeking to defeat Handsome Jack once and for all.  

“Borderlands 3” was released on Sept. 13 and is now the third installment in the franchise, which does not include the prequel. The game has been released for pre-order with four different editions: the “Borderlands 3” standard edition, the Deluxe Edition, the Super Deluxe Edition, and the Diamond Loot Chest Collector’s Edition. 

“It shows how the community feels about a game and about this series,” junior Carlos Panete said. “And it’s just like when I see these kind of companies that put out the same package, it all depends on how strong the community is and how dedicated they are to see this game improve.”

When the game’s “Diamond Loot Chest Collectors Edition” was announced, fans lost it, and within a few hours, the edition was sold out. This all shocked fans considering that the edition was priced at $249.99. A couple of months later, 2K Games, the creator of the game, announced that the game had struck gold.  

“In the other games, whenever you were on one planet, you’d always hear brief mentions of the other planets that exist in the universe,” senior Kara Jefferies said. “You could always imagine what they look like or imagine what’s on them. But now, you actually get to go and explore new lands that look completely different.”

The developers have announced that there will be a lot more exploring to be done in the new installment. Players will be able to travel to other planets that have been talked about in the previous games. 

“Borderlands 3 is like the first and second one. They have always benefited from more people playing because it just makes the experience better,” Penate said. “Playing Borderlands by yourself is fun, but when you have more people playing with you, you bounce off of each other. It’s just a lot more fun and then focusing more on the multiplayer aspect I think only improves upon it.”

The creators of the upcoming game are pushing the ability to be able to play with your friends online. Even though it has been done with the previous games, it is something that the developers and players both find enjoyable. The multiplayer aspect of the game is one of the many things that have drawn in fans of the franchise. 

“Whether you’re playing it alone or with friends, there’s endless opportunities of stuff to do, and I don’t think people are actually even considering how massive this game is,” Jefferies said. “Everything is different. Everything is changed, but it still feels kind of like home. It still has the same feeling and atmosphere as the old one, but just 10 times bigger.”