Gearbox have unveiled three new heroes for Battleborn

I honestly keep forgetting that Battleborn exists, which is surprising considering it’s basically the love child of the Borderlands franchise and the MOBA genre. By all means, I should be stupidly excited and have the release date of May 3rd marked on my calendar, but I just don’t.

My lack of interest stems from my hands-on time with the game. It did little to wow me, truth be told. Regardless, one should never judge a book by its cover, and it would be wrong of me to just assume that Battleborn is mediocre. I did only get to play one level afterall, and I’ve obviously not yet played every single one of the 25 characters.

Speaking of which, not all of them have been revealed just yet. Gearbox did just recently unveil another 3 though. Here’s a sneak peek of all of em (via PC Gamer):

Shayne & Aurox

Shayne is pretty much what you expect from an angsty teenage girl staring down the end of the universe: She’s a punk. Hanging around the Detritus Ring in Rogue territory, Shayne’s survived by scavenging, picking up work where possible and grabbing anything that wasn’t nailed down. What I can’t figure out is how she’s somehow bonded with a &^@#(-ing creature and is still alive! These things hover in space and eat energy like you’d slurp a bowl of cereal – and she’s got this monster tethered to her torso! Well, whatever the case, she’s got lots of potential as a scrapper, but a moody kid with that much power? She could be trouble. Useful, but trouble.… I’ll let you handle her.

Kelvin

Miko has to keep reminding me that Kelvin isn’t just some big, lumbering Ice Golem – but, I mean, c’mon, this thing is huge! But it’s also really small. I still have trouble wrapping my brain around the fact that Kelvin is actually an entire, sentient microorganism civilization taking shape as this huge, hulking Golem. Mental note: Kelvin thrives in the extreme cold of space. Bring a jacket.

Whiskey Foxtrot

I know he was introduced to me as one of the early groups of “Mike” clones, but there is something really – I think “off” is the word I’m looking for here – with Whiskey Foxtrot. The only item that I’ve been able to find out about him is a number that keeps coming up in the system: RDC-WF02-1221. I suspect that he has ties to some off-shoot Peacekeeper unit, but all of Whiskey’s gear seems cobbled together, scavenged or, in some cases, reverse engineered Peacekeeper tech.

There’s no denying that the overall character design of these three (and others in the roster for that matter) is rad. Shayne & Aurox in particular look really interesting. If you’d like to have a closer look at these new heroes and their abilities, you can do so right here.

Battleborn draws a lot of inspiration from Borderlands, which in my eyes, isn’t a bad thing at all. It’s one of my favourite franchises – I’ve poured hundreds of hours into it! If Gearbox do things right, I’ll definitely be doing the same with Battleborn. There is a lot of potential here I only hope they manage to tap into it.

What are your feelings on the game? Are you interested in Battleborn, or like me, do you keep forgetting it’s due for release in under three months?

Last Updated: February 26, 2016