Hub Worlds are the in between spaces that separate levels in a video game. They’ve been around forever, typically in platformers, and can be found in some of the earliest Mario and Kirby games. In modern RPGs, Hub Worlds are used to group the most important NPCs and quest-givers together, give the player concentrated access to house keeping systems like gear purchasing, and provide a combat free zone where players can regroup between missions and tinker with their menus without the worry of getting fragged by a random baddy.
In theory, Hub Worlds and Hub Cities are still a great way to consolidate many of the games meta systems. In practice, however, form outpaced function and now most Hub Worlds are a sprawling mess of labyrinthine alleys and multi-leveled nonsense that frustrates when they should streamline. Borderlands 3’s Sanctuary III is one of the worst offenders of this.
Part of the blame should be put on the horrible map in Borderlands 3, something I spoke about at length in this article, because navigating Sanctuary wouldn’t be such a Herculean task if there were incremental quest markets to lead you through the ship to where you wanted to go, but the map system offers no such convenience.
Instead, players are left to their own devices to find their way through the multi-leveled sprawling ship that is full of dead ends and random staircases. I never learned how to get around that damn ship through my entire playthrough. The layout is just absurd.
To add insult to injury, there is only 1 way point on the ship and Lilith never leaves the opposite end, meaning every time you visit the ship you’ll be trekking through the entirety of it. There are things in the ship you can’t find on any of the planets, like ammo capacity upgrades for purchase and various NPCs that give side quests, but nothing about Sanctuary is necessary outside of story reasons.
It’s not just that the ship is too big and awkwardly laid out, I’m sure a lot of people enjoy exploring the many hallways and spaces throughout for the jokes and lore spread around (there’s a large container filled with something called “heatant” which got a chuckle out of me) but it isn’t an optional space to explore: you’ll be meandering all through it for various story reasons throughout the game and every single time is a frustrating experience.
Hub Worlds should be constricted, where everything you need to interact with is immediately available when you enter. Exploration should be an option, but no one should have to work their way through a maze every single time they finish a mission. Destiny 2 has the maximum allowable size for a Hub World. Everyone else, including Borderlands 3, needs to chill out.
