2K Announces Battleborn, But Do We Need Another MOBA?

World, meet the vaguely-named new shooter (kind-of-sort-of) from publisher 2K and Borderlands creator Gearbox Software, Battleborn. Battleborn, meet your nomenclature-cynical readership.

What’s in a name? To be fair not much when it comes to this sort of thing. It’s the alliterative front, the epitome of anodyne label, the rolls-off-the-tongue-like-a-sugar-pellet fishhook you quickly forget once you’re playing the thing. So let’s forgive Gearbox its lapse in titular creativity and focus on what they’re promising Battleborn is and might do.

For starters, and I apologize if this makes you want to close you browser’s view tab, it’s a MOBA, or multiplayer online battle arena, which is the somewhat superfluous cool-kids way of referring to a real-time strategy game with action-angled house rules.

Gearbox calls it a “hero-shooter,” and that’s the twist: that it’s a cooperative shooter which Gearbox boldly proclaims will offer “an experience unlike anything you’ve played before.” Given the track record for such multiple-times-daily claims, I highly doubt that, but there you have it.

Here’s the narrative summary, which could really be any narrative summary:

Set in a distant future, the only hope for the last star in a dying universe is a new breed of warriors who must put aside their differences to drive back an unstoppable menace. Players choose from a myriad of powerful heroes and fight together alongside their friends in a narrative-driven co-operative campaign, or battle against them in fast-paced competitive multiplayer matches.

If you want a smidgen more, Game Informer has the exclusive reveal, else there’s some stylish prancing and leaping around to think deeply about in the reveal trailer above.

Write to Matt Peckham at matt.peckham@time.com.