INTRODUCTION

The planet of Athenas is a peaceful, mountained sanctuary. Within Borderlands 3, it’s one of the least-fleshed-out locations available.

The monastery is built into the sides of mountains on Athenas, with buildings and pathways winding along the edges of hills. The entire area was taken over to be used for the resources in its ruins. Although Athenas is quite large, not much time is spent on the monastery or its ruins relative to other areas of the game.

In my take on Athenas, a small faction of the Crimson Lance have staked out a passage along the mountainside next to a section of ancient Eridean ruins, trapping a group of monks on the other side. To free them, the player will need to move through a series of narrow passages and mountainside ruins to clear the area of enemies and unlock the doors barring the monks’ exit.

Along the way, the player will pick up keys to unlock the monastery doors. Pieces of a powerful gun are also rumored to be scattered through the narrow corridors of the ruins; find them all, and the player will unlock a new, more powerful weapon.

INSPIRATION

Athenas is a small, heavily mountainous planet within Borderlands 3. The area has a distinct feel to it, with deep purple and blue lighting and tall, symmetrical, monastic architecture.

The location fits somewhat unusually into Borderlands 3; Borderlands is more often than not a loud, chaotic game, and the environment of Athenas contrasts that tone.

Design Considerations

  • Mountainous terrain; steep dropoffs and high cliffs
  • Ruined and inhabited buildings existing in the same space
  • Placement of interactable objects
    • Ammunition pickups
    • Keys and corresponding doors
    • Loot chests
    • Weapon components
  • Player abilities
    • Run
    • Sprint
    • Jump
    • Shoot
    • Crouch

MAP

In creating the layout of the level, I wanted to focus on giving the player agency in where they went and what they focused on within the level. To achieve this, I created multiple layers of the map: a main path along the side of a cliff, a lower path tunneling through the mountain, and a higher path along an aqueduct. By moving along different combinations of these routes, the player has a variety of approaches to choose from: mainly, focusing on the main objective along an easier and more open main path, or collecting pieces of a more powerful weapon along the narrower low and high routes.

Key items, including doors, keys, and weapon components, were scattered throughout the level, with higher concentrations of loot along the more difficult upper and lower routes.

Although only three weapon components are required to create the more powerful gun, four pieces are scattered around the level, in case the player misses one.

DESIGN PROCESS

Before starting on the main level, I created a metrics gym, which included the main measurements and mechanics of the level. Some of the most important things I wanted to focus on with this test level were the player’s ability to interact with objects such as ammo and weapon components and the overall feel of the level.

Both because Borderlands 3 has such a distinct visual and tonal style, and because Athenas itself is so striking within the Borderlands universe, I wanted to focus on recreating the feel of the world. Within the metrics gym, I experimented with adjusting the lighting and color of Unreal’s built-in skybox and lighting, then added additional point lights and spotlights throughout the space to highlight the player’s path.

I started creating the level by placing to-scale versions of my original maps onto planes in Unreal Engine, then used the built-in landscape tools to sculpt the mountains and cliffs around the level.

I then moved to Autodesk Maya to create a basic set of blocks, including several variations on wall pieces, roofs, string lights, and pillars; I also created two tree variations in Houdini. I attempted to keep all of the blocks simple, while still capturing the feel of Athenas’s architecture, and I used these blocks to create the majority of the level, starting with the ruins near the beginning of the level and the tall monastery at the end.

Once the most important components of the level had been placed, I added simplified lighting, mimicking and tweaking the style I had created in the metrics gym.

From there, I built out the rest of the level in layers, first adding large structures like buildings, then moving on to smaller interactables like loot chests, enemies, and weapon components. I repeatedly playtested the level to check the pace and flow of the level, as well as the location and visibility of key elements, particularly the main tower of the monastery.

Once I was happy with the bones of the level, I took one last pass through the level to adjust the spacing and size of some of the pathways and to add clutter throughout to make the space feel more populated.

VERSION 1 PLAYTHROUGH

VERSION 2 (IN-PROGRESS)

REFLECTING & RESTARTING

I really enjoyed working on a level inspired by Borderlands 3, but at the end of the project I wasn’t very satisfied with where I had ended up. The level was much shorter than I had intended it to be, and I struggled a lot with getting the Blueprints pack I was using to cooperate with me, so the gameplay ended up feeling unfinished and very un-Borderlands-y. As one of the first full level blockouts I’d ever made, I had also made a lot of mistakes that, with a bit more experience, felt very avoidable.

After working on a few other projects, I decided to circle back and take another shot at this level. I stuck with the same general flow, but after some playtesting, I narrowed down the list of things I wanted to fix into a few core elements.

Core Improvements

  • Borderlands is a multiplayer game at its core; there needs to be space for a full party to move and fight, and the level should be significantly larger to reflect this.
  • Searching for pieces of a single weapon doesn’t mesh well with a larger party, and rewarding players for picking a certain path without offering any hint or reason for that choice doesn’t make narrative sense.
  • Borderlands is chaotic and fast-paced. There needs to be movement and life in the world; enemies must be able to do more than stand still.
  • The level should have more variety in both pace and gameplay to keep players engaged.
  • Narrative-wise, the level needs to make more sense.

VERSION 2

When restarting the level, I kept the same core narrative arc and structure, but completely started from the ground up. I created a significantly larger landscape, and used a few rock asset packs to help create more interesting terrain. I kept the same models I had created in Maya for the original map, but ended up scaling several of them up to be much larger–particularly the aqueduct, which I doubled in size and turned into a segment of a foot bridge, which I reused throughout the level.

I ended up removing the weapon fragment mechanic entirely; although I did like the concept, it didn’t feel true to the level I was trying to create. Instead of fragments of a single weapon, I added instances of a variety of weapons around the map, so that a team of four could collect multiple usable weapons throughout the level.

Like the previous iteration, I started by blocking out the landscape with the landscape tool; this time, though, I went in with the rock packs I had downloaded and the staircases and bridges I had built previously and built paths for the player through the entire level.