What if I told you the most broken weapons in history Borderlands influenced the future of the franchise and you have unknowingly been farming new iterations of these unexpected unicorns?
This video is inspired by a conversation I had with my friend KillerSix as he replied to one of my social media posts. Initially, I thought his reply was like; “We want Pearls in Borderlands 4” but taking that to the next level by saying; “We want Hybrids!”
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Borderlands Hybrids
For those who don’t know about Hybrids, these weapons from Borderlands 1 were happy accidents… well, at least for the most part.
Due to a mixup in the code, some legendary weapons in that game can spawn with an unintended legendary weapon part creating a hybrid weapon that stacks the abilities of 2 legendary weapons into one. This resulted in some really powerful weapons.
While not every Hybrid became a supercharged version they did become collector’s items.
From Bug to Feature
So how did Gearbox Software turn this bug into a feature?
If you break it down, 1 weapon gets 1 unique weapon part that supercharges its capabilities and that’s what Gearbox did in Borderlands 3 because we all have been farming for the Boom variant of the Sickle because that’s the only version that deals splash damage and the damage type gets augmented from Assault Rifle Damage to Shotgun Damage.
They added 1 weapon part into the mix that supercharges the weapon but they stayed true to the weapon’s design.
Another example would be the Overclocked Troubleshooter because that specific version comes with a Grip that cuts the ammo consumption in half, making it a much more effective weapon.
Then there is the Clairvoyance that has 4 different triggers. 2 are your normal single-shot assault rifle, 1 turns it into a masher by increasing the projectile count while another one turns the weapon into a full-auto Gatlin gun.
This implementation replicates what Hybrids did but in Borderlands 3, it allowed you to get a Unicorn version of a legendary. My point to Gearbox Software would be that they didn’t convey that to you. there is an indication that the item has an anointment because you can see these additional sparkles in the loot beam, however, there isn’t an indication you stumbled upon a supercharged version.
I think they should add something like a flame to the loot beam and make the item card stand out because there are so many weapon name prefixes that a simple name adjustment doesn’t make the item stand out.
Besides creating these supercharged versions, Gearbox Software did create a few hybrids in Borderlands 3 as they combined the legendary effects of 2 items into one. The “Void Rift” is an example of that which merged the effects of the Impaler and the Black Hole. However, I could argue that this created a whole new item instead of having 1 weapon part that takes the item to a new level.
My Takeaway
Borderlands 4 should embrace these supercharged variants and add flair to them so the community can celebrate these types of weapons. It gives the community something to chase after, maybe the Borderlands 4 community hunt can award bonus points if you farm a supercharged version of an item.
But those are some of my thoughts and now it’s your turn because I would love to have a conversation about this so let me know what you think about this in the comments below.
