Battleborn’s project name was Poplar. Here is a version of the main menu during development. Judging by the background the game didn’t fully settled on the anime look yet. As we see a pretty realistic planet.
This seems to be the next step in the menu. The player has selected the story campaign and now has choices out of the various missions. I think the ‘domination’ multiplayer mode was used as a placeholder name since Battleborn was planned to be a PvP game first. The Story campaign was later added into the mix.
Here we see an early character select screen. It has the a more comic book look and feel to it. Since there probably were no official character renders all the images of the heroes are from the concept art. Since Battleborn was planned to be a F2P game you can see things like PC (Paid Currency) and EC (Earned Currency).
This menu screen looks a lot more like the one that shipped with the game. The F2P model is still clearly visible in this version with the 2 currencies. Not sure how the character backgrounds are color coded. They do not match the current faction selection.
Here is an old character purchase screen. Back then each hero had its own Pip rating. The Dev Team stepped away from these ratings as it didn’t give a proper comparison between the heroes.
A character profile screen showcasing the players perks, mutators, skin, taunt, and voice pack.
Here is a close up of a bunch of Perk Reward icons. Like, Finisher, Shield Down, Regenerative, Bubble boy, Staggering Blows, and Boom headshot.
The lore challenges screen which unlocks a custom character art and character specific legendary. I hoped that GBX would have added more of these down the line.
This one is very interesting, Battleborn had its own lore bible at one end. The play button suggests it would show videos of certain events. Also note that the planet is called Earth, which means it would have taken place in our universe.
A character command screen. You can see that the helix skill tree went all the way up to level 20 back then. This was later reduced to level 10 as you would be spending to much time navigating your helix instead of playing the game. During the Cooperative Gameplay Demonstration, you can see it still went up to level 15. You can see the various loadouts on the left but most interesting is the mutators. It looks like some of them link certain skills. Not sure what this does, you might unlock a chain of skills if you have the specific mutators equipped? Maybe skip levels to gain more power but miss out on a few perks?
A victory screen showcasing your progression. Character and Command rank unlocked a ‘shield down’ perk.
Victory accomplishments screen. It shows your abilities and the rewards you got from your play session.
Here is a close up view of a bunch of reward icons. You got rewarded for things like; Win your first match of the day, most minions killed, or get a kill streak.
