In Deep Water: Battleborn Introduces Alani

Drip drip drop

News by Philippa Warr Contributor

Published on May 25, 2016

Gearbox's hero-centric shooter/MOBA/co-op project, Battleborn [official site], has given a proper look at the first of its five additional heroes - Alani, the water-bending warrior monk. Alice mentioned her a while back but there's now a run-down of her abilities if you're interested in playing as her.

The official release is on 31 May but if you picked up a season pass or the digital deluxe version of the game you can unlock her early with a hero key. (Also if you played in the PS4 open beta of the game but I don't know if we're allowed to mention that on a PC gaming site without alarms sounding and the walls starting to crumble.)

Here's her intro video:

"Alani is the last vestige of an Eldrid monastic warrior enclave on the freshwater ocean planet, Akopos. Raised with a deep reverence for water, Alani learned to embody and manipulate low-viscosity fluids with the use – er – rather, the warranty-breaking misuse of a water-soluble nanotech. This technology and her training allows her to manipulate water all around and even within her own body, healing injury and ailments."

Looking at her skills, she has:

Torrent which chucks out bolts of water - I think this is her basic attack

Wellspring which coats an ally in healing water

Riptide which is a wave to damage enemies and give movement speed to allies

Geyser which is a ground targetted ability causing a gush of water that binds enemies it hits

Emergence (her ultimate ability) which summons a water dragon to damage foes. The actual animation looks like a whirlpool with a dragon that shoots out of the centre

I feel like the music in her video really wants to be Lady Gaga's Let's Dance and it really throws me off every time I go to watch it. You can also read my thoughts on Battleborn as a whole in our WIT.

Before they sign off on the blog entry for Alani, Gearbox also tease the second of the five new characters. He's a snake assassin called Pendles who wears a hoodie and sneakers. I assume they're teasing him early because you can unlock him without the season pass stuff if you've earned 47,500 in-game credits so this is to give people a heads-up that they'll need to either pick up a season pass to bypass that time requirement or invest the time.