Gameplay:

The Borderlands games are first-person loot shooters, set in an open world, with some role-playing game (RPG) elements (Tales from the Borderlands, however, is an episodic adventure game). The concept came from Randy Pitchford's idea to combine the mechanics of first-person shooters like Doom with role-playing games with randomized loot such as Diablo. After developing the mechanics of this shooter-RPG hybrid, Gearbox established the idea of players seeking Vaults on the planet Pandora, comparing the discovery of new loot to opening a Pandora's box.