A Game From the Heart
The question had risen lately about what Gearbox has been up in the past few years. The rumors continuously point to Borderlands 3, but that isn’t what we got to see behind closed doors yesterday during our first day at E3. We were ushered into a small room with 4 gaming stations, and sat down to the yet to be titled Project 1v1. One thing I appreciated immediately as we sat down, was learning that the game is a passion project from the core development team at Gearbox. They consciously decided to not follow the trends of the saturating Battle Royal market, and went with something that can be proud of and that they know best.
As the name implies, one vs one competitive battles are at its core. The game is a first-person arena shooter, very much in the vein of Quake. The visuals were stunning, adopting a near Borderlands art style, but with much greater depth and detail. The environments were particularly stunning. The images you see below are the only images we can share, yet they do a great job of capturing the look of the game.
As far as gameplay, you and an opponent are dropped into a close quarters arena map with the goal to score the most kills within a 5-minute match time. If you win, you are crowned king and then you take on the next person in the queue of players waiting in the hangout lobby. Continuous victories will keep you playing, and losing will send you to the back of the line. In our setup we had 4 players in total, giving you about 10 minutes of downtime between your matches.
The downtime allows you to spectate a match, or tab over to your customizations. There were a few character models to choose from, but we were promised more to come. In Project 1v1 you can completely customize the look of your character. Almost every part of you and your outfit is customizable. The color selections were staggering. There were a seemingly endless selection of hues and patterns. You can also tab over and change your loadout. Weapons and ability selection was vast and diverse, taking the form of a deck of cards.
Building Your Deck
This is what sets Project 1v1 apart from your typical arena shooter. Before your match, you can build a deck of weapons and abilities to define your loadout. These cards vary in power and quality. We observed your typical RPG loot quality system of rare, epic, and legendary to give you an idea.
You can equip 2 weapons and 3 abilities at any given time. To use abilities, you have to run around the arena and collect special card items off the ground which operate as spending points for some of the more deadly abilities. Abilities range from protective bubbles, to short bursts of invisibility, to laying down mines. It was hard not to draw comparisons to abilities in games like Overwatch. However, a few abilities, in particular, sold me to the idea that there is much more to this game than a typical arena shooter.
One of the more powerful abilities was Excalibur. Once activated, you stab a sword into the ground, then have to protect it for 20 seconds while it charges up. If you can successfully defend it against your opponent, you can then pick it back up and wield it as a weapon. The Excalibur delivered one hit kills in addition to giving you an insanely fast and far forward lunge. One weapon, called the Tesla Coil allowed you to gain a loose lock on your target with a wavy stream of electricity, before delivering a much stronger burst through the use of an alternative fire. I also found myself on the receiving end of some sort of particle gun, delivering a beam of energy after a short charging period, causing instant death on my part. A weapon that perhaps needs a nerd, but I definitely very fun to wield.
The game was fast-paced and very fun. It controls almost exactly like Borderlands, with the jumps even feeling a bit floaty. The game also ran remarkably well for such an early stage of development. Gearbox is also aiming for a free to play model, possibly supplemented by a micro-transaction system. Although since this would act as a pure pay-to-win model, it’s hard to say how it might be received. As an agile trading card game collector, I think I’m perfectly ok with this for a free-to-play game. We were able to see that the card packs were earned by getting kills within matches. Again, the details of card acquisition were a bit mysterious, and that could be what is holding up development.
As far as release, we don’t have any dates or even any ballparks. If I had to guess, I’d say they could launch the beta in about 8-10 months. Their next stop is a closed Alpha test, so let’s hope it comes sooner than later. There were many art assets missing and only a handful of character models to choose from. If packaged and polished a bit more, I can see myself getting lost in the virtually infinite possibilities of this game. Will Borderlands 3 still happen? Probably. However, I can be beyond happy until then with Project 1v1.
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