Borderlands 2 Previews and Interview

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Written by WorstUsernameEver on August 28th, 2011

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We were told that the AI is going to much improved this time around as well, and what better way to support this claim than showing it. The enemy psychos didn't just run towards you this time, they actually scaled the level when you jumped around on various platforms. The bandits aren't your only enemies however. The robotic heavy Hyperion (which just so happens to have a home base on the moon) would like nothing more than to see you and everything in their path dead. That means bandits that stand in their way will either get blasted away, or just run away with fear. It's a neat dynamic that shows the hierarchy in how the worlds inhabitants view each other. Much like shooting bandits in the legs, the robots can be slowed down by shooting away their robot limbs. Being the technologically advanced faction that they are, they can summon Servitors that will regenerate and heal any robots that aren't disposed of quickly. This means you either have to concentrate your fire on the robots as much as you can to destroy them completely, or focus on the Servitors before they can swoop in and regenerate the robots.

Vehicles are now more varied and will be able to carry up to four players. The gun generation has seen a massive overhaul (as in, been completely ripped apart and put back together with some significant upgrades), with specific manufacturers now having trademark characteristics on their firearms.

Other big changes include enemy AI improvement and '˜faction' disputes between them. We're going to see the peculiar wildlife of Pandora fighting each other as well as us and other human characters! You'd better have enough bullets if you want to get between them.

Gearbox has also promised a lot more in the way of online features and character customisation no more simplistic colouring-in of character's clothing, then. Is there a competitive multiplayer mode or five we'll be able to enjoy, too? Nothing's certain at this juncture, though we wouldn't be quick to rule it out.

Finally, Gearbox showed off a little bit of Borderlands 2's refined co-op play. One of the biggest complaints logged against the original game was that if your buddy stopped playing for a period of time and you completed a few missions ahead of him, it was really hard to sync your games back up to a point where you were both on the same page again. That's being fixed for Borderlands 2. How exactly is still a mystery (magic, maybe?), but Gearbox assured us that grouping up with four friends and looting the hell out of Pandora will be a simple process in Borderlands 2 that factors in players coming from different progression points.

What would you say the biggest strength that drew people to Borderlands was?

I think it was the co-operative nature of the game. The loot mechanic was really strong and we knew there were a lot of players who grew up playing Diablo or any game that's about that loot. It was a really big sign when as we played the game so much during development, we still kept playing the game.

Or even when you went in and you were just testing something like a bug, you'd still go over to the treasure chest and you'd open it, even though you knew in a second you'd close down. You'd still pick it up! So it was like, okay, we have something here [laughs]. We incessantly kept doing that.

As more people kept playing it, they got the same addiction. I think the co-op nature of it drew a lot people, it had a lot of word of mouth. Split-screen was pretty well received. A lot of people don't do that anymore and now, we're really going over the UI so it works better in split-screen.

Now you can play two player on one screen and still get online and play with other people but I really think the co-operative nature was a big draw.

We often get people emailing the mag about split-screen, do you think it's still an important part of gaming?

It's one of those things that I think we all feel very confident that if we hadn't put split-screen in, somebody might not have. I think more people were exposed to it. We heard story after story of '˜yeah, I wasn't sure about it and then I went to my friend's house and played split-screen and it was totally awesome'.

Then they run out and buy it and word of mouth spread. Our sales slowly went up instead of peaking and then slowly going down. I really feel that was a big mechanic, you know, '˜oh what gun has he got? I want that!' and then you'd want to show it to your friends.

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