Interview with John Mulkey (Design Director) & Randy Varnell (Creative Director) on Battleborn. The lovely people at Game Informer got to play Battleborn and featured the game for a month. They enjoyed playing the game and tried to identify/define what kind of game Battleborn is.
Is Battleborn a MOBA?
The main question in this video is if Battleborn Gearbox’s MOBA? And the short answer to that is No, Battleborn is not a MOBA. The folks at Game Informer got to play one of the multiplayer modes that has MOBA influences but Battleborn draws inspiration from other game genres as well.
Battleborn is a blend of genres. Because the Character roster is so diverse, the character select screen is inspired by fighting games. But the game also features some extensive RPG elements, therefore, it’s not simply; game#1 + game#2 = Battleborn.
At the core Battleborn is a FPS (First Person Shooter), however, there are melee characters. Therefore, you can’t really stamp the term FPS on it. Just like some aspects are sci-fi while others are that of a fantasy setting. Just like the heroes in the game that come from all over the place, Battleborn also incorporates this with its gameplay elements. Fine-picking all the best ideas from all over the place and fine-tuning them together. Before Borderlands no one knew what a “Looter Shooter” was, with Battleborn, Gearbox Software wants to create a whole new type of game, the Hero Shooter!
Tuning the MOBA aspects of the game resulted in several changes to the gameplay. Using static towers was dull and didn’t fit into the FPS genre, so they got changed to Spiderbots that can move around. You are not playing on a flat surface the minion behavior had to be adapted to work in these environments. The multiplayer maps aren’t your 3 lane gateways.
Towards the end of this video, Randy & John talk about the campaign mode. How this is structured and the different gameplay and character.
