Battleborn trailer introduces villain Lothar Rendain

Battleborn Rendain

'Lothar Rendain' is certainly the kind of name a villain might have, doubly so if they're a baddie from the Star Wars universe. Turns out this Lothar Rendain is the big bad of Battleborn, Gearbox's definitely-not-a-MOBA *wink* multiplayer shooter.

He's not as funny as Borderlands 2 villain Handsome Jack, but he's mildly amusing, and I guess he does use the words "butt theatrics".

Gamespot recently interviewed Battleborn creative director Randy Varnell, who said this:

"Good villains are really important to us here. Part of making a good villain is to be sure they have motivations for what they do. We like to avoid what we call 'mustache-twirling' that is, evil for the sake of just being evil. That’s how you get cartoon villains. But I think the great villains are a bit more complex. Complex, though, is sometimes hard to get across in a fast-moving action game, so Rendain and the Varelsi are both important parts of our conflict."

Rendain, by the way, is around 20,000 years old. He doesn't look a day over 19,998.

We recently questioned whether Battleborn was just Borderlands by another name, and made a couple of videos about it. The game's due out on February 9.

Tom Sykes

Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.