How Long is Borderlands 3’s Campaign? We Now Have a Better Idea

For anyone that’s ever played a looter-shooter — much less any of the previous Borderlands games — it’s abundantly clear that such games are much longer than their optimal paths. More than half the fun is playing through the story once, then grinding for top-tier loot before looping back baddies and bosses with your new firepower and kick-ass gear. 

Following in that vein, then, Borderlands 3 is sure to be hundreds of hours long. However, the game’s Creative Director, Paul Sage, recently told PC Gamer that Borderlands 3 will take about 30 hours to complete “If you beeline it through… the main story.”

To be clear, he is only talking about the game’s campaign. Sage is not referencing the hours of ancillary content available in the game, or the content players will create for themselves through grinding and looting. He is also not referencing the four confirmed DLC packs, events, and raids the game will receive after launch. 

And that’s if players run through the campaign as quickly as possible. 

To put things into greater perspective, previous Borderlands games average around ~30 for non-completionist runs according to the website, How Long to Beat. The original Borderlands clocks in at about 22.5 hours, while Borderlands 2 clocks in at about 30.5 hours. 

While it remains to be seen exactly how long it will take the average player to complete Borderlands 3, we do know that the gameplay looks just as chaotic and nuts as it’s always been. 

During a recent gameplay livestream infodump, Gearbox shared a plethora of new details about the looter-shooter. Aside from confirmation that the game will include co-op and that it’s “more than 1 billion guns” will include alternate firing modes, we now know that players will travel near and far to find vaults on both Pandora and other planets. 

Announced at PAX East earlier this year to great fanfare, Borderlands 3 will launch September 13 for PS4, Xbox One, and PC. In an announcement that wasn’t shocking in the slightest, Gearbox also said that the PC version of Borderlands 3 will be exclusive to the Epic Games Store when it launches. However, that exclusivity will end in April 2020, although it is not clear if the game will then become available on Steam. 

For those that don’t need to know more about the game before pre-ordering, our handy Borderlands 3 pre-order guide can help.