Vibrant cel-shaded characters and varied environments make Borderlands 3 (opens in new tab) a good-looking game (once you get past all the desert), but if you ever wish your loot-shooting exploits could reflect the deep darkness in your soul, I've got the mod for you. Or if you just wish that every game could look more like Limbo (opens in new tab), that other creepy platformer from the makers of Inside (opens in new tab), this will work too.
The Borderlands 3 Limbo mod by RedxYeti (opens in new tab) removes all color and detail from the game world, leaving behind only solid silhouettes in shades of gray. It sounds like an ambitious total conversion of all the in-game assets, but it's really a simple repurposing of something Borderlands 3 (and most other 3D games) already have: a depth buffer.
To shorten a long technical description, depth buffers are what 3D engines use to determine how far objects are from the camera. This way the engine knows which elements to "draw" on top of one another, so you never have to worry about that craggy peak in the distance obstructing the view of your handgun (and giving you a total mindf$#% in the process). You don't typically see the depth buffer itself in games, just the final rendered image it helps create. This mod uses the Reshade (opens in new tab) tool - which supports many other games - to display the depth buffer instead, rendering distant objects as brighter and close objects as darker.
The end result is something that looks very eerie - and if you're a fan of Playdead's games - like Limbo. Viewing Borderlands 2 (opens in new tab)'s depth buffer yields similarly desolate results.
It's cool, it's creepy, and it gives you a little more appreciation of all the technical tricks that go into making a game world that just seems real. Or in the case of Borderlands' cartoonish, chaotic world, real-ish.
Gear up with our list of Borderlands 3 Shift Codes (opens in new tab).
- Games like Limbo that are steeped in atmosphere
