Modders realise Borderlands 3 cutscenes are easily replaced, comedy ensues
Pandora just got a little bit weirder.
Players are re-writing Borderlands 3 one sight gag at a time thanks to a minor modding discovery. While the real guts of the game aren't easily accessible, Gearbox appear to have left their pre-rendered cutscenes (used in overlays and on video-screens in game) in plain old MP4 video format, letting you simply replace them with whatever tickles your funnybone. Unsurprisingly, things got weird, fast, starting with "Dooger" on Twitter testing the waters with a bizarre russian Shrimp rave.
just started playing borderlands 3 and it turns out all of the pre-rendered cutscenes and videos are all mp4s sitting in a folder and you can replace them with anything pic.twitter.com/IECY7nUq40October 23, 2019
Unsurprisingly, things escalated quickly. It was only a matter of time before the eternally oiled-up Ricardo Milos danced his way into this fracas. As more people discover this trick, expect to see every video with any shred of memetic value making its way into the game.
pic.twitter.com/P0lA8pJ5SAOctober 23, 2019
The sky seems to be the limit here. Borderlands 3 is arguably at its weakest when it's trying to deliver a halfway serious story, so any opportunity to throw a spanner in the works is appreciated. Even if it is just surface level visual changes, it's a start, and I'm hopeful that industrious tinkerers will be able to inject more custom stuff into the game soon.
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The product of a wasted youth, wasted prime and getting into wasted middle age, Dominic Tarason is a freelance writer, occasional indie PR guy and professional techno-hermit seen in many strange corners of the internet and seldom in reality. Based deep in the Welsh hinterlands where no food delivery dares to go, videogames provide a gritty, realistic escape from the idyllic views and fresh country air. If you're looking for something new and potentially very weird to play, feel free to poke him on Twitter. He's almost sociable, most of the time.
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