How long is Borderlands 3? Can you play through in one sitting, or should you plan on clearing out the rest of your evenings (and perhaps early mornings) from September 13 onward? The answer to the first part of that question is “maybe”, if you have the stamina, focus, and bladder capacity of a champion. The game’s creative director, Paul Sage, laid out the facts about how long the Borderlands 3 (opens in new tab) campaign will take to beat if you play exclusively through the central story missions in an interview with PC Gamer (opens in new tab).
“If you beeline it through, and I mean beelining it through, it might take you 30 hours to complete the main story,” Sage said.
As in any other Borderlands game, you’ll miss out on most of the game if you only play through the main story. You can read our Borderlands 3 preview (opens in new tab) to get a feel for what all will be on offer, but you know you’re going to want to spend some time filling out your Borderlands 3 skill trees (opens in new tab) and completing most or all of the side missions. Not to mention farming for optimal guns out of the trillion or whatever possibilities, which has a new layer of complexity now that most weapons have alternate fire modes.
Plus, we know that you can extend your time with the game via some campaign DLC and a set of cosmetic-focused Borderlands 3 microtransactions (opens in new tab), if that’s what you’re into. Or you could probably kill a few hours just sliding around (opens in new tab) like in Apex Legends (opens in new tab).
Find more to play while you wait for Borderlands with our list of new games 2019 (opens in new tab). Or check out our video running down 20 things you need to know until then.