Here at Ars, we're usually reluctant to write stories about the mere announcement that yet another announcement of a video game is coming soon. But we'll make an exception today for apparent news about Borderlands 3, the long-expected continuation of a popular shooter series that has been missing-in-action for years now.

The latest hint that the sequel is actually, finally ready to be shown off is a single tweet from the official Gearbox account. It shows a cel-shaded highway sign in a very Borderlands-style desert with the words "March 28 Boston MA" written on it.

That info corresponds to the time and place of PAX East, where Gearbox just happens to be hosting a "main theater show" at 2pm EDT on March 28. That presentation promises "never-before-seen reveals, exclusives, and surprises" according to its public schedule listing, which is pretty suggestive in and of itself.

As if that wasn't enough, the highway sign featured in the tweet is for "Exit 3." Go ahead, get the Half-Life jokes out of your system now...

The long wait

The wait for a full-fledged new Borderlands has been so long now that the cheekily named (and surprisingly good) Borderlands: The Pre-sequel—intended to fill in the gap after 2012's Borderlands 2—is now over four years old itself. That game stuck to the Xbox 360 and PS3 (along with the PC) in 2014, meaning Borderlands 3 will likely be the first game in the series to debut on the latest generation of console hardware.

Since the Pre-sequel, we've seen Gearbox and publisher Take Two dip into the franchise for spin-offs and re-releases including Telltale's episodic, narrative-focused Tales from the Borderlands, 2015's remastered Handsome Collection, and last year's VR revamp of Borderlands 2. But Gearbox's development resources during that period were largely focused on titles like Battleborn, right up until that game's relatively quick demise.

Officially announced back in April 2016, the last public hint of Borderlands 3's progress came during an extremely brief Unreal Engine 4 tech demo at the Game Developers Conference two years ago. At the time, series scribe Mikey Neumann was announced as the writer for the game, but he left due to health concerns later that year, leaving the sequel's current writing direction in question.

Gearbox's Randy Pitchford (currently embroiled in some strange legal problems) also hinted at the game's development during PAX East 2017, saying that 90 percent of the company was "working on the thing I think most of you guys want us to be working on." Assuming he didn't mean Battleborn 2, we'll probably hear more about that development later this month.