“I think [Borderlands 3] would probably move HDR monitors and TVs,” says Gearbox
If you’ve been looking for something to really show off your HDR telly, Borderlands 3 might be just the trick.
Borderlands has always had a timeless art style - one that’s hyper-stylised and doesn’t rely on granular detail. It’s all about colour that pops off the screen like a comic book. According to Gearbox, this particular approach lends itself extremely well to HDR.
“I mean, HDR? This is a game that I think would probably move HDR monitors and TVs, because it’s something else,” multiplayer producer Chris Brock told VG247 during a recent interview. “If you see it side by side, it’s like, ‘Oh my god.’”
As well as adding HDR support, Gearbox has upgraded the game’s lighting system for this sequel.
“We’ve switched our lighting engine, we switched over to, it’s called PBR, it’s physics-based rendering,” Brock said. “So rather than this weird facsimile of light, it’s more like, ‘Cool, we’re going to put a light in here, and it’s going to send out photons. It’s going to bounce around the room as such, based off the materials in the room.’
“So the newer hardware allows us to do that, and there’s no way we could’ve done that on the last-gen of consoles. It’s just very computationally expensive. And I think that, honestly, the lighting in this game is really, really beautiful.”
Borderlands 3 also switched to Unreal Engine about a year into development, which should allow the game to be remastered for next-gen consoles rather easily. Borderlands 3 launches on PS4, Xbox One, and PC on September 13.