WARNING: BORDERLANDS 3 MAIN STORY MISSION NAME SPOILERS IN IMAGES BELOW
So, I did some light research.
Here are the numbers:
Borderlands 1: 216 missions including DLC
Borderlands 2: 268 (!!!) missions including DLC
Borderlands The PreSequel: 103 missions including DLC
Borderlands 3: 94 missions total before DLC
This means that, despite having been 5 years in development and massively (over?)hyped, unless the DLCs for Borderlands 3 somehow add 123 missions onto the game (they won’t), Borderlands 3 will be the third shortest of the series.
As it stands, it is the shortest by 9 missions.
This makes me sad.
Now, obviously, the maps are somewhat bigger, and, of course, not all missions are created equal, but, there are a LOT of “go here, kill unique enemy X” missions with no dialogue or story given, and some of them are given MULTIPLE times.
These distressing facts, combined with the fact that much of the PreSequel plot has been ignored or put off for possible future titles, and the scarce appearances by BL2 or TPS characters in favour of new characters or TFTBL characters, is very disappointing to me.
I feel there are enough for the amount of zones we have. I for one do not need more fetch quests or more “wait for me to finish talking and kill a wave of enemies”. We’ve got enough to level up decently IMO.
I am only level 17 and working my way through Promethea and its zones in full completionist fashion and I certainly do not feel under-levelled or starved for things to do.
I appreciate that you went and grabbed the numbers for us - I had been wondering about this too. I’m only halfway through the campaign, but I have definitely missed the feeling from BL1 and 2 where there were so many quests that you had to decide whether to pursue the main story or keeping getting sidetracked. And I actually enjoyed that a lot of the side quests were dumb and silly, and had novelty rewards sometimes that were hardly useful. It’s also the perfect way to flesh out background for the zones. I love the game, but I agree with you.
Borderlands 2 and Borderlands 1 both have mission counts in the 200 hundreds. One being bigger or smaller really doesn’t matter, it’s a huge amount of content. If Borderlands 3 even gets close, which if you look at the amount of missions Borderlands 2 got in DLC is not unprecedented, then it’ll fall in the same category.
Borderlands 3 just released, it’s only 15 missions short on base Borderlands 2 which doesn’t include the all the non-mission side content that it has more of. Zero’s targets, Hammerlock’s hunts, etc. There’s also just a lot more loot to farm as well.
Counting content just by mission totals doesn’t accurately reflect the overall scope.
There is more to game length than mission count. Borderlands 3 has lots of exploration based content like the crew challenges that help to lengthen it. I don’t find Borderlands 3 short at all. I believe I’m sitting at around 35 hours now and I’m still not to the last planet, because I’ve been doing all side missions and crew challenges as I go. I beat Borderlands 2’s campaign and side content in less than 30 hours by comparison.
When I just…play…Borderlands 3, I have an absolute blast.
But then I go online and read complaints by other people about things I haven’t even remotely experienced yet or things I deliberately ignored spoiler warnings about, then I get disappointed and worried!
I’ve beaten it and played a bunch of endgame and played with a few other characters. Base BL3 is definitely longer than base BL2, if only slightly. The quests in BL3 are a lot more involved with a lot more parts in general and the main campaign seems longer. I can’t remember my total playtime when I beat BL3, but I remember thinking that it took a long time.
2 Likes
Piemanlee
(Goodbye friends and not friends, it's been a fun ride)
#17
Bl 1 and 2 had the problem of quantity over quality.
Bl3 is quality over quantity which is how it should be. I’m nearly finished with the story and have done almost all the sidemissions. Only once did i feel like they overloaded me with them. Bl2 had the problem of having well way to many sidemissions at some points
The main story is the longest one of the series and it’s all been fantastic
90% of which are either technical issues, mainly on PC. If you’re on console the game runs very good. Or they’re about loot nerfs, OP builds, etc. All of which is stupid because we’ve always had OP stuff and drop rates were way to high anyways.
Trust me, i wanted to hate this game, but i can’t. It’s amazing
Yeah, the missions, both Side and Main, definitely are more involved and generally seem to take you all over the map and get you decent gear and levels along the way!
I have just finished the campaign and have around 30 hours played, this was pretty much exactly what I had in Borderlands 2 after the main story line. I still have a lot of side missions to do and TVHM on mayhem to play through so I guess all in all I will end up at around 100 hours played and that does not include any of the excessive farming which I will eventually end up doing. So I cant really say that, a single player game with this amount of content plus the longevity of grinding, is short.
