According to the game’s Producer, the humour which will no doubt fill the Borderlands 3 writing will still be ‘edgy,’ but will not cross the line into being ‘cruel or insensitive.’ This statement was recently made by Gearbox Producer Chris Brock, who spoke with PCGamesN at Gamescom. According to Brock, the studio aims to be more careful with their humour with the latest entry in the franchise.
Gearbox’s Approach to Humour in the Borderlands 3 Writing
“We talk about it and think about it a lot more,” explains Brock; “I think in the past, we’ve just kinda done stuff. But now we say ‘okay we have this joke and we want to run it by the studio.’ And the studio’s huge now – we have 400 people in Dallas and 100 in Quebec. So we go ‘how does this joke land with everybody?’ We’ve all got a personal line, some of our lines will be crossed, but we have to as a team, understand that we’re putting our best foot forward.”
The producer went on to clarify that their approach was to; “Be edgy, be funny, don’t be cruel, don’t be insensitive, be understanding, be sympathetic. We have a very diverse studio culture, and everybody wants to represent that”. Certainly, that sounds like a reasonable approach. Gearbox faces a difficult task with their Borderlands 3 writing; living up to the expectations of thousands of fans, while simultaneously staying true to the franchise’s roots and writing for a much larger, modern audience. Borderlands’ humour has always been edgy, and there are instances in past games of jokes which might not be appropriate. (Indeed, jokes that were pretty questionably appropriate when the games launched.)
Gearbox has recognised this in the past, of course. The studio stopped using the term “midget” as an enemy name in Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, for example. Indeed, back in May, Gearbox reiterated that they would not use the term again. For now, it’s unknown how the Borderlands 3 writing and humour has been put together, as Gearbox has released very little footage of cutscenes or dialogue. However, fans don’t have long to wait. The game is due to release on the 13th of September, in less than three weeks’ time.