Even though Hyperion became super big and profitable thanks to what happened after Borderlands 1 and The Pre-Sequel, rendering Atlas completely unable to compete and going bankrupt, I still think SOME parts of the corporation are still out there.
We’ve only seen Pandora and Elpis, and according to Borderlands 2’s ending - there’s a crapton of planets with Vaults, waiting for the Hunters to come and find them, maybe even other solar systems. As such - there’s quite a chance that Atlas is still alive, maybe not as big as it was prior to Borderlands 1
I think we also gotta factor in that with Jack being dead and Helios destroyed - Hyperion corporation will either suffer big losses or go bankrupt as well, opening an opportunity for other companies to return and overtake the business on Pandora. At least I don’t believe Hyperion will focus on any kind of weaponry now.
This would be a perfect time for Atlas to step in and rise to its former glory once more. Hell, you could make BL3’s story around this entire thing, or make an Atlas story DLC for the game
It’s already said in TftBL that Rhyes is the owner and CEO of Atlas now since he took the document of ownership from Jack’s office, so it seems kinda clear that Atlas may well be coming back.
Given that Atlas is basically under new ownership (I mean, other than that one random scientist, they’re starting over from scratch). I would be surprised if Atlas weapons made a return with the BL1 gimmick of just kind of being the best in that weapon ecology. I think Gearbox will continue with the trend of more pronounced gimmicks for their weapon manufacturers as they did with BL2, in which case, Atlas won’t be the same, the same way Dahl, Torgue, and Tediore weren’t quite the same when they came to BL2.
At some level, Atlas is just a name (with a big backstory to be sure); if they assign this name to some line of weaponry, it would be the same to me as any name for that same line. So let’s ask this question: if Atlas as a brand does come to BL3, and if their weaponry will take a slightly different direction than BL1, what weapon mechanic sounds good? Charged shots? Active reload (kind of like Gears of War)? Some sort of alt-fire?