Pandora is hardly more than a desert teeming with bandits, mercenaries, and adventurers. Their goal is to find the famous Vault, which is said to be packed with unimaginable treasures concealed on the planet by an old, highly evolved extraterrestrial culture. One of those fortune-seekers is the protagonist, who has one advantage: the Guardian of the Vault’s advice.
Borderlands is a first-person shooter/role-playing game hybrid, similar in idea to Hellgate: London. At the start of the game, the player selects one of four characters:
Roland is a retired soldier. He enjoys playing with firearms and shotguns and carries a Scorpio-Turret to free his back.
Lilith is a phase walker and a siren. She can become invisible and fights at breakneck speed.
Mordecai: He is a hunter. He enjoys sniping adversaries from afar and has access to Bloodwing, a bird of prey.
A Berserker, Brick. He dislikes guns and prefers to win all arguments with his fists.
Each of the four characters has three different ability trees filled with abilities, such as increasing bullet damage or allowing the player to resurrect a teammate in a cooperative game. Each level-up grants the player one skill point to spend, acquired through defeating opponents and completing objectives for the many NPCs that populate the planet Pandora. To kill all adversaries and survive the voyage, the protagonist will find guns, ammunition, valuable equipment such as shields or medipacks, upgrades, and money on the enemy they kill in chests spread throughout the environment or purchased from vending machines. Weapons and shields vary in quality, can have a variety of grades, and are usually accompanied by a level requirement. A character can achieve a maximum level of 50.
Because the protagonist must travel a lot, they get a buggy equipped with a machine gun and, in later stages, a rocket launcher or heavy machine gun. The carts have ample room for two players, with one operating the mounted turret and the other driving around the vehicle because the game also has a drop-in/drop-out-coop mode for up to four players.
