![]() Overall, the best analogy here would be the move from older Pixar movies to newer ones. They aren’t in your face, but they add up and make the cel-shaded aesthetic all the richer. ![]() Nevertheless, when you get into the game itself, you’ll notice these enhancements almost immediately. That’s why so many people were unimpressed with the initial game footage. The irony here is that Borderlands’ art style makes precisely these change the hardest to discern. Unreal 4 pushes the Unreal toolkit in significant ways, with an emphasis on material quality and lighting. The biggest change coming from Borderlands 2 (and the Pre-Sequel) to Borderlands 3 is the move to the Unreal 4 engine. While the game eminently playable for us, this points to a very disturbing performance picture overall: cards like the GTX 1070 might not even be able to sustain 1080p maxed out. Even then, there were occasional drops below when the fighting got intense. Turning that down to medium had next to no impact on image quality, but allowed us to get a solid lock on 60 FPS, with everything else maxed out. After all, if Mass Effect Andromeda could do it, why could Borderlands? That pesky Volumetric Fog effect kept the average below 60 in the canned benchmark and frequently brought performance down to unplayable levels in-game. Considering that Borderlands 3 hits absurdly high framerates, regardless of resolution, we expected 1440p/60 to be a walk in the park. Our test platform features an RTX 2070 Super (overclocked to 1980 MHz), an OC’d Ryzen 1600, and 16 GB of RAM, running off an SSD. Our experience on PC was good, not great. In resolution mode, the game ran at a locked 30fps on both consoles with a much higher resolution than found in performance mode. We get the feeling that the One X is primarily CPU-bound here, while the Pro is running up against both CPU and GPU limitations. The average framerate was well below 60, with dips into the 40s during explosions. On the Pro, though, the situation was much worse. Xbox One X made a good fist of maintaining a 60 FPS, though drops were common in areas with intense particle effects. Performance mode targets a 1080p/60 FPS lock on both consoles, but fails to achieve that. Both the Pro and One X feature two distinct performance modes that can be toggled: a resolution mode prioritizing resolution over framerate, and a performance mode that prioritizes framerate. We had a look at the PS4 Pro, Xbox One X, and PC versions of the game. ![]() Performance problems are an issue that’s dogged Borderlands 3 since launch. Note that this tool gives us a mere demonstration of the game’s performance, because an exact 1:1 representation of performance can only be provided by the developers themselves since they have access to vast of array of tools and profilers. On the console front, we analyzed the game’s performance by taking some sample scenes from the game and running it through trdrop, an open source software. ![]() PS4 Pro vs Xbox One X vs PC Graphics Comparison: But nevertheless, whether you like it or not, it’s Borderlands. Is it a AAA technical leader? Not by a long shot. Is it better than Borderlands 2? Absolutely. But even here, the answer is far from simple. Instead, we’ll be focusing solely on how Borderlands 3 evolved in terms of technology. Thankfully, you’ll be spared having to address these heavi(er) topics in this feature. The bigger question is where does Borderlands 3 fit in all of this? Destiny, Anthem and the like provide meaningful experiences all their own. But the entire looter shooter genre–which Borderlands played no small role in creating–has evolved considerably since 2012. We’d probably end up covering it in a 2025 list of the greatest games ever made. If Borderlands 3 came out a year or two after the original, I’m pretty sure it’d have been hailed as a phenomal achievement. Does that necessarily make it a great game in 2019? With the depth integration of mechanics, storytelling, and emergent gameplay we’ve come to expect in a post-Witcher 3 world, that’s a much harder question to answer. It’s bigger and better in every single way, from a greater variety of guns to a more diverse map to all the visual enhancements brought about by the move to Unreal 4. If you loved Borderlands 2, you will adore Borderlands 3. Is it a better game? In a word, yes, it absolutely is. Borderlands 3 arrived last week, shouldering the tremendous weight of expectation that any followup to 2012’s legendary Borderlands 2 would’ve had to bear.
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