Intro:

Borderlands 3 remains one of my favorite games in a long time both aesthetically and in terms of level design. With my latest project "When You Gotta Go..." I wanted to explore the design of one of my favorite additions to the game, the Crew Challenges, by making one of my own! Over the past few weeks, I've been putting the finishing touches on the assets and lighting (to be uploaded soon), but in the meantime I wanted to talk about my thought process and design philosophy behind the environment's layout. 

Inspiration and Analysis:

Pictured: The Target of Opportunity Area from Jakob's Estate, Borderlands 3.

Before I tackled trying to design the area, I wanted to get a better sense of how they were constructed. Since the in-game planet of Eden-6 was closest in aesthetic to the mood I was trying to capture art-wise, I scouted out the Target of Opportunity Locations there (more specifically, those located in the Jakob's Estate and Ambermire zones). The results of which (after admittedly dying once to an unfortunate lapse in judgement with grenades) I documented below:

• Each location was situated slightly off the "main route" of the area and it usually marked by an entryway that serves as a choke-point.
• Distance was limited in each location, but movement was not. While I couldn't get away from the combat area, I could still find cover and enough space to quickly reload or use explosives. 
• Locations were designed to prevent spamming. Either higher walls (in the case of the Jakob's Estate area) or the foliage (in the Ambermire) prevented me from simply brute-forcing the target with grenades or launchers and from using the Slam melee attack. 
• Multiple breakables that dropped health/ammo were placed around the area, but rarely ammo chests. 
• Consideration had to be given to different player characters and amounts. Each area could be navigated by utilized by the four playable characters and could still prove challenging to a four player party.  

 With all of this in mind, I got to work. 

Layout:

Pictured: The final layout of "When You Gotta Go..."

Note: The main "target" of the Target of Opportunity mission would be the enemy spawn marked with the "x"

After the requisite choke-point entryway, I designed my version of a "Target of Opportunity" Crew Challenge location as a funnel-shaped path culminating with the target located in the outhouse at the center. With this area, I wanted to add a bit more space to the target encounter without counteracting the close-quarters environments found in the locations I'd explored on Eden-6. To make the most out of this added space, I did the following:

•  Reduced cover in the middle segment between the outhouse and the entrance choke-point. Full cover areas were placed nearer to the choke-point, but had severely reduced visibility to counteract a potential over-reliance on sniping. Additionally, two half cover areas were placed closer to the main group of enemies, which would allow characters with "tankier" action skills such as Amara and Moze to reduce their distance to the target before using their action skills to get close and deal more damage. 

Pictured: Some of the various high cover/low visibility (green) and half cover/better visibility and distance (orange) areas

• Increased the enemy count to include several more standard enemy units in addition to the "target" NPC. While it would increase the initial difficulty of the encounter, this would also allow for players to more easily gain a second wind. By using psychos as some of these standard units, it would encourage more player movement instead of simply staying behind cover. 
• Added in some ammo/health chests to increase survivability for solo players. To counterbalance this advantage, I placed these in areas that would be more exposed to enemy fire and would force players to leave cover, while the less-beneficial breakables were placed closer to areas of cover. 
• Placed an area for lootables in the back of the area. Because of the length from the entrance to the target, I realized that backtracking would be inevitable for the player (*). Especially if the loot rolled from the target wasn't desirable to the player, I wanted to avoid players feeling like the destination hadn't been worth the journey back. The two chests in the back right of the area were meant to address this concern while also further rewarding players for investigating the map fully. 

Pictured: The in-map location of the lootable chests.

(*) while "teleport to vehicle" and fast travel to map waypoints are also options in the game, I didn't want to use these mechanics as a crutch, especially as both these features are not present in every area of the game.  

• Put a second "choke-point" between the entrance and the target. Group-proofing the area was one of my biggest concerns. Especially after deciding to increase the size of the space, I wanted to find a layout that wouldn't give a four player group a dominant strategy for farming. The addition of the secondary choke-point formed by the pathway leading up to the outhouse would help to prevent the stacking of multiple close-range action skills (ie, Bear Fist and Salamander on Moze and Phaseslam and Fracture on Amara) or group attacks with crowd-control weapons (ie, Flakker, Ultraball, or Quadomizer). 

Conclusion: 

Overall, designing this environment was both incredibly fun and an interesting experience in deconstructing, analyzing, and recreating an area type from Borderlands. I hope you enjoyed seeing some of the results from the design side of things, I look forward to sharing the art side of this project on both Artstation and my website in the coming week! 

See you then, and thank you for reading!

-Dixon Dubow