2K Games & Gearbox Software Announce Battleborn

July 9, 2014

With Valve’s DOTA 2 International in full-swing, 2K Games & Gearbox Software have announced their take on the MOBA genre, in the form of Battleborn – a PS4/PC/Xbox One title set to hit sometime in 2015/16.

The game, formally announced via a Game Informer cover, makes some huge departures from other MOBAs. To begin with, the game is entirely first person, but that doesn’t mean that each character will feel the same. Gearbox is going to great pains to make each character feel unique and interesting to play. They describe the broadstroke of character archetypes they’re aiming to put in the game (which so far include elven archers, samurais, a minigun wielding giant, amongst others) as trying to take every possible archetype you’d ever want in a first person shooter and trying to make it work and feel awesome.

The other aspect is story. The core aspect of the game is that each of these heroes are battling over what is the last star in the cosmos. To help with this, Gearbox are including a five-player co-op campaign, but weren’t talking anything about it. Not to mention each character and the battlefield will feature as much personality and energy as one would expect from the creators of the Borderlands series.

“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.”

Battleborn is the first new IP from Gearbox since the launch of the original Borderlands, released by 2K Games in 2009.