Borderlands 2 Previews and Interviews

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Written by WorstUsernameEver on April 4th, 2012

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Speaking of elemental damage, Borderlands 2 adds one more (to the existing incendiary, explosive, shock, and corrosive) by inventing a new element: cooperation! Or as it's called here, Slag. It doesn't do much damage on its own, but it'll intensify any other weapon type that hits the same target during the next few seconds. I was able to juggle this by swapping weapons back and forth between a Slag-enhanced pistol and a shock-enhanced assault rifle, but considering this was co-op, it was easier to just shoot the same guy Mike was shooting to increase his damage.

I wouldn't call what we played notably challenging (not that that'd be an accurate measure anyway, since Gearbox gave us leveled-up characters to play with), but we did die a few times, particularly when facing badass-level miniboss creatures like the badass shock skag. But even death didn't stop the slaughter for long -- when I went down I had the opportunity to fire from the ground to kill an enemy before bleeding out to restore my health; if I failed (usually because Mike killed the enemy I was trying for) and Mike couldn't be bothered to resurrect me himself, I'd just respawn at the nearest checkpoint and charge back in guns blazing. Because I'm such a team player, when I leveled up I chose an ability that let Maya resurrect a teammate from a distance using her phase lock, so Mike had even less down-time than I did.

Even death didn't stop the slaughter for long. Things will get tricky when difficulty is cranked up and scaled for four players, so that will be the true test. Co-op buddies should be even easier to come by this time, since Borderlands 2 uses Steamworks for easy inviting of friends -- plus there's nothing stopping Gearbox from implementing cross-platform play with PlayStation 3 (a la Portal 2). Gearbox wouldn't deny it was in the works.

My time with the demo was spent playing the new "Gunzerker" class, which can be played as either a defensive "tank" player or a balls-to-the-wall gunner. How you ultimately end up playing depends on which skill tree you drop your points into, and new points are acquired with each level gained. One branch of the Gunzerker tree is dedicated to being a tank, while lending points to another makes him more offensive. One of the tank skills is called "Come at me, bro," which, in typical co-op fashion, has the enemies focus on you as your teammates pick them off. In Gunzerker fashion, though, this is done by first flipping the enemies off to draw their ire.

Although the original game had a huge world, a lot of the foes you encountered were similar to each other. I'm happy to report that I saw at most five skags during my time with the demo. Most of the enemies I killed -- or got killed by -- were robots. Lots and lots of robots. They make their debut in the series in a big way, coming in many shapes and forms. One such robot features propeller-like hands, and shooting at him while his hands spin reflects any bullets fired back toward you. These arms don't protect his back, though, if you get my drift.

The hour we spent with the game was impressive. The combat feels much more dynamic, and missions have branching paths and unpredictable structures - a far cry from the fetch and carry quests of the original.

Guns are also more satisfying to use, with enemies reacting to every shot in a much more readable way. Gibson also assures us that Gearbox are making the game friendlier for solo players, with a more involving story. Borderlands 2 is a radical improvement over its predecessor, and feels like the game the great, but flawed, original always felt like it could be.

In the past we poured obsessively over weapon stats, eager to find the magic loadout capable of handling anything Pandora might throw our way. Now, with the benefit of having two guns out at the same time, there's less concern about having exactly the right tool for the current job. You don't have to choose between the rapid fire of an SMG and the slow-but-heavy percussion of a revolver, for example: you can use the former to spray your target - perhaps dousing it liberally with acid or some other form of elemental effect and then use the revolver to land a couple of extra-painful hits on top. Alternatively, you could just use a pair of full-auto machine guns and drench the opposition with Rambo spam.

Three dicks or no, Gunzerking is almost bewilderingly effective. Brick, Salvador's punchy predecessor, had the disadvantage of needing to be close to exercise his murderous talents. You could spec him out to be the ultimate meat-headed tank, but this was offset by the fact you were usually running at Trouble head-first with gleeful abandon. Salvador, on the other hand, can happily sit a distance and mince everything in his immediate vicinity. Lord knows how much damage you could do if four Salvadors were playing at once. The cooldown on your class power seems to be significantly shorter than in the last game too though that may have been tweaked for the sake of the demo.

For this hands-on event, which would take place through two quite different sections of the game, we hit the ground running at level 20, with a wealth of skills and weapons available to us. Having spent some points and headed into the first map's landscape a sort of rocky grasslands military complex in which weird creatures were imprisoned to fight outlandish beasts. While the mutant-mouthed skag things from the original game made a prompt return, we were also immediately inundated with a swarm of all-new flying, leaping, stealthing waves of alien unhelpfuls. Carving our way through this vibrant bunch revealed a much colourful palette this time around; both literally in terms of the colours used, but also in the range of imaginative plots enemies are now endowed with. But we'll come back to that in a moment.

Soon we were up on a hill and talking to Mordecai, the sniper character from the original Borderlands game. He's lost his bird-companion to the game's new super-villain, and we had to return it. Mordecai was much more alive and animate than the quest-dispensing characters from the original game, and I understand that this time around NPCs will be coming out of their cabins and shacks, and even accompanying players in certain missions. That's a big leap forward for a game where NPCs other than Claptrap were previously little more than a part of the background. This, I think, could be very much to the game's benefit, since it will feel far more alive and, in an small way, far more like an RPG.

What Duc can talk about is how much more important weapons and their brands are this time around and why.

"We have internal focus groups that come in and play the game ... and tell us what they like and don't," he said. "One of the interesting things we've been getting back is even after an hour of playing the game they are able to identify a brand they like and describe it.

"That's been pretty exciting to hear."

In the world of Borderlands 2 there are eight weapons manufacturers. Each has a distinct look and feel. While the game procedurally generates the weapons players find, the developers used these brands, and their codifying visual rules, to make sure that weapons had one of eight cohesive looks.

Borderlands 2 takes the opportunity of a sequel to also revamp the mission style. It's a chance to get rid of the Borderlands 1 missions that were all too often composed of boring fetch quests.

Rather than simply carrying out a fetch quest, you will occasionally be offered a choice in Borderlands 2. During one questline in Caustic Caverns [minor spoilers] I was presented with the choice to either return the contents of a safe I had just recovered for Marcus, or to bring the nudie pictures that were inside to Moxxi [take a breath]. Your choices are more for momentary fun than any real impact on the main story. It's a refreshing change of pace to the otherwise standard routines of following arrows on your map.

Playing as Maya - a Siren - we found her action skill to be extremely handy. The phaselock can suspend an enemy in the air, immobilising them. It seems that the bigger the enemy, the less effective the skill is, but it has a short cooldown period and every couple of seconds is invaluable especially if you have three other companions unloading bullets at the beast at the same time without fearing retaliation.

If you go deep into the skill tree, you can even upgrade the phaselock so it can revive allies instantaneously. Points can be spent with the Siren to, for example, up the chances of elemental damage or critical hits. She can also become more durable with extra shield capacity or regenerate health during phaselock.

The mission we embarked upon, alongside a stumpy Gunzerker dwarf co-op partner, was called Wildlife Preservation and it involved the return of familiar character. Mordecai, the sniper class from the first game, had lost his Bloodwing, the dragon-like creature that constitutes his unique special ability. It was our job to get him back.

It's in this way that Gearbox promises both to revisit the old playable characters of the game, who have been completely replaced, while also delivering a stronger narrative. The former is a nice touch, but we didn't see much evidence of the latter, to be honest. You'll still just be visiting static NPCs to pick up veiled fetch quests.

The weaponry may be more devastating this time around, but it's certainly not done in your favor. These new toys are put in place so that you can survive. I'll admit that it's been awhile since I've taken a trip to Pandora, but the A.I. in Borderlands 2 which scales to both skill level and the number of players is relentless. It helps to keep the tension (and fun) high when you're playing but also adds another reason as to why you'll have to depend more on team tactics than your natural shooter-playing ability than you did in the first game.

While murdering Skags, I had a brief talk about video game endings in general with Randy (you already know what I referenced, but we're not going there). He transitioned the conversation to discuss the original Borderlands and how the team at Gearbox took a lot of the fan feedback they received from the ending of that title. Taking into consideration some fan complaints about the original game's conclusion and how it may have felt a bit brief, he assured me that this time around even though they're still not officially talking about any plans for DLC that players can expect to receive a better sense of completion from the stand alone game.

The first game's foes weren't a very varied bunch, but we didn't actually realise this till we sat down to spend a few hours with the sequel. We counted about 20 different types of foe within the first hour of Borderlands 2, and by the looks of things there are plenty more to come.

There are more extremes in terms of size, speed and firepower. Tiny foes dart around in groups with an alarming speed, while epic beasts advance more slowly. Enemies often have multiple locations for critical hits, each of which cause different effects. Blow a robot's arms off, and it won't be able to shoot - smash it in the tiny red sensor and it'll be absolutely useless.

This diversity makes it harder to steamroll the opposition, encouraging you to use weapons wisely. When playing co-op with a bunch of mates, the ramp in difficulty means you'll need to employ careful positioning - distracting the enemy with frontal attacks, for instance, so your buddies can scuttle round to the rear.

Strategy Informer: One of the most common criticisms about Borderlands was the fact that it wasn't that fun to play by yourself. Have you done anything to improve the single-player experience?

Steve Gibson: Yeah, we need to give those guys a better sense of world and motivation. You do that through storytelling and environment and all those things, which combine to make that experience better. Like what we did with the missions system in Borderlands, we had it so that you got a mission, you went and did it, and then you go check it in. But that's not conducive to storytelling, why am I going back over and over? This doesn't feel like a story.

In Borderlands 2, the mission system has been set up, and the story has been set up to all work together. You get a sense of reason for your missions, and then you get to where you need to go and find out that there's other stuff you need to do before you get to the main objective.

...

Strategy Informer: Talk to us about the PC version.

Steve Gibson: Yeah, did you see the love letter we put out to PC players? We felt like PC players should be reassured that at Gearbox we're thinking really hard about the lessons we've learned, and we wanted to tell them early. (Hey, you wanted these things, we're listening and we're working on getting them to you) but that's not the entire list, we're working on everything we can to make the PC experience the best it could possibly be. There's going to be some things that will surprise PC players, and we hope it remains a surprise until the very end.

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