Play Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel in Third Person, Thanks to This Mod

Less than a week after its launch, modders have already gotten a new perspective on Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel. Thanks to a standalone mod, the newest entry in the popular first-person shooter franchise can be played with a third-person, over-the-shoulder camera angle.

Created by Youtuber TFXLive, who previously released a similar (but not quite as streamlined) mod for Borderlands 2, the mod is great for players who prefer the third-person shooting of games like Gears of War and Uncharted. It’s especially nice for Borderlands, considering the game’s extensive list of custom character skins that you can usually only see in the pause menu (or by other players).

The first Borderlands was easily modded into third-person via a simple edit to the game’s .ini file, TFXLive wrote in a comment, but with Borderlands 2 the series’ code no longer accepted such edits and a change had to be made to the game memory. The Borderlands series runs on a modified version of Unreal Engine 3, and the mod takes advantage of a fixed behind-the-character camera that exists in most versions of Unreal.

The Pre-Sequel mod is standalone, unlike TFXLive’s previous third-person mod for Borderlands 2, which required various third-party programs to inject the script into the game. Another great thing is the mod’s fluid transition into first-person for more accurate “iron-sights” aiming. One downside is that you can’t see characters’ melee weapons.

The mod works well with a mouse-and-keyboard control scheme, but less so with a controller—it takes a bit of input remapping in the game’s code files if you want to play with an Xbox pad.