Borderlands 2 Previews and Interviews

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Written by WorstUsernameEver on August 30th, 2011

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Graphically Borderlands 2 definitely looks a bit crisper, the color palette a bit broader, and the animations on characters smoother. An improvement all around I'd say. The biggest change is a completely redesigned interface for managing your character and inventory that got rid of the endless menus in favor of a more focused design. It was here we got a peak at some of the skills for the Gunserker, the one that immediately caught our eye was something called "Sexual Tyrannosaurus." We tried to find out what it did...but we couldn't pry anything out of Gearbox. The comic book style introductions remained for bigger characters as well - the game just oozes style.

The demo found it's way to a fortress protecting a dam. The new arch nemesis, Handsome Jack, launched robot enemies from his moon base. You can literally see a huge fortress on the moon where they launched from giving you time to prepare for them to come crashing down. The robots were also fighting the bandit faction on the dam, making it a three way battle. What exactly were you fighting for? The entire battle followed a prison ship that was transporting Roland, one of the characters from the first game. This added an interesting dynamic to the mission as it forced players to keep up and deal with the transport as well as both factions of enemies.

Another new thing we saw was that the robots could be rebuilt, so if you took out an arm on a robot a healing bot could come by and rebuild it. Once again...something else to worry about killing.

Enemies are still as over-the top as ever, and there have been additions to them as well. We saw multiple Arctic Bullymong in the demo, which is a very ape-like creature that hangs out in the frozen tundra. Being massive, they'll pick up and chuck boulders and ice chunks at you. They're very agile as well, hanging from icy stalagtites and attacking the player with leaping charges.

The Bullymong was also the first example of the (wounded) state that enemies now have. It may get you to feel a little worse for your enemies to see the them crawling away from you, attempting to get to cover (the AI was also given a nice upgrade from the original), but a swift shot will end their misery and have you off and feeling as chipper as ever.

Considering the Bullymong we saw in the demo are (Arctic) Bullymong, I don't think it'd be too much of a stretch to see other types of Bullymong pop up in the game. That'd be a nice way to continue on with making areas feel different, but tying them together nonetheless, but that's just a theory.

Start with Diablo. "Don't worry," Gearbox creative director Mikey Neumann told me, "There are still 87 bazillion guns." My favorite weapon from the demo: A machine gun that was affectionately named "the bullet hose." For me, it was love at first sight. I very nearly swooned as it revved to life -- almost like a minigun -- and blazed to absolutely absurd firing speeds. Enemies squealed in sheer terror; I laughed. Good times!

Add Call of Duty. No, no, not in the hyper-linear-infinite-spawn-closets-everywhere sense. The missions, however, are now far more elaborate. No more back-and-forth fetch quests and wild skag hunts. In the mission I saw, the presenter sprinted to Borderlands soldier Roland's rescue... and singlehandedly ended a skirmish between bandits and the Hyperion corporation's giant mechs in the process. It was chaos of the best variety -- punctuated by a particularly large mech that blew said presenter right over a colossal waterfall.

Multiply by Deus Ex. Borderlands 2 is wild and wacky, but it's not brainless. For one, that mission I just described? Taking a page from Deus Ex's book, it's loaded with options. According to Gearbox, you can free Roland from his evil Hyperion hover prison whenever you please, and the mission will change accordingly. Or you can let him float off to a presumably painful fate (you jerk), and you'll get a mission in a new area to, you know, not fail miserably at rescuing him this time. On top of that, combat now includes a minor tactical flourish. For instance, Surveyor bots fire healing lasers (because everything in Borderlands is a gun -- everything) at enemy mechs. If you don't deal with them first, you'll have quite an uphill battle ahead of you.

gamrFeed: The art styles for Borderlands and Borderlands 2 are very similar, well known, and easily recognizable. What old stuff are you bringing back to Borderlands and what new stuff are you bringing to Borderlands 2 ?

Scott Kester: One of the things we knew (about the original Borderlands) is that it was a little monotone, maybe, to put it nicely. Variety was a big thing for us, expanding on the environments, going to get to new areas. So every few hours, you're in a zone that feels different. Here we're only showing the snow area and a little bit on top of the dam, but we've shown some screenshots of a more green, Scottish Highland sort of area. We have multiple areas that are new that we're headed to, which I think will help with the visual fatigue. Not only that, but lots of new creatures that inhabit those environments and the ways that they live and breathe inside of those. We tried to make sure, whatever we were doing, that we weren't just adding something to add it, but actually creating legitimate value.

The gun system, we've taken and basically obliterated it away, the way we had built them before. It's done in a similar manner, but we re-concepted (sic) all of the guns, the identities to the manufacturers, giving them a little shtick that's their own and their own visual thing. Doing that just means there's a lot more personality inside of those. Character was one of the things we were very proud of in Borderlands, making sure the gun feels like it's part of that, so really doubling-down on the gun creation aspect. There's a lot more components and individuality that you can find inside of those. There's a laundry list of those things from improving the AI to improving vehicle controls. A big thing was to take what we had done the last time, but really expand and add some new layers and some new tacked-on features but also give people more of what was there but make a more solid experience this time.

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