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New Borderlands 2: Guns and Plot Interview


dividedbyn1ght

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Borderlands 2 is going to blow your mind. We had a chat with developer Gearbox to learn more.

 

Borderlands 2 is a massive project for Gearbox. Building upon the solid template laid down by the original Borderlands, the Texas-based developer is currently hard at work creating something very special indeed.

 

To better understand just how vastly improved Borderlands 2 is becoming, we sat down with Gearbox creative director Paul Hellquist and lead level designer Jason Reiss.

 

Before you read on however, know this – Borderlands 2 is going to smash your expectations in every way imaginable. For starters, it has 18,000 varieties of grenade. No, we’re not kidding either. Enjoy!

 

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Before we launch right into new information on Borderlands 2, could you tell us how far along the project has come so far?

 

Paul Hellquist: Oh it’s really starting to come together. We’re super excited about it, and we’re pretty close to having all of our brand new weapons in the game, and they are really looking amazing. The story line is all in the game now, and we’re playing it on a daily basis.

 

What appeals about Borderlands 2 from the outset is that it takes place five years after the events of Borderlands. What sort of new and exciting changes have you been able to implement in the world as a result?

 

Jason Reiss: One of the big changes is how we’re showing you so much more of the world. What we showed you in the first game was just a small portion of Pandora’s world, so we’re transitioning you to another part of the planet, and showing you a whole bunch of new environments that the player can explore.

 

PH: From a narrative standpoint, the main thing that has happened is that the Vault was opened at the end of Borderlands, and a brilliant man called Handsome Jack, who is our villain.

 

Handsome Jack has exploited the Iridium – this mineral that has appeared all over Pandora since the Vault opened – and become so filthy rich that he has bought the Hyperion Corporation, which is one of our gun manufacturers in Borderlands 2.

 

Hyperion is now a very significant presence on Pandora and players will be dealing with their forces as well as Handsome Jack. Jack has sort of become the despot of Pandora, and the player has to prevent him from awakening an ancient alien beast that he is planning to use to put the entire planet under his thumb. : One of the big changes is how we’re showing you so much more of the world. What we showed you in the first game was just a small portion of Pandora’s world, so we’re transitioning you to another part of the planet, and showing you a whole bunch of new environments that the player can explore.

In the middle of all of this, the Vault Hunters from the original game will be making a comeback in Borderlands 2. What can you tell us about their new role in this changing world?

 

PH: At the moment we only want to talk about Roland, and he’s sort of a freedom fighter at this point. He’s started rounding up the leftover Crimson Lance troops that were stranded on Pandora after you destroyed General Knoxx’s armoury, and forming them into a force to fight back against the Hyperion Corporation and Handsome Jack.

 

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We also saw that Gearbox was holding auditions for a live-action Lilith role - and although you’re not able to talk about her role in Borderlands 2 at the moment - what can you tell us about the audition, and what you were looking for?

PH: We were looking for someone who looked the look and was a decent actress. You know, we need them to carry emotions that the character is experiencing at certain points in the game. The audition went really well, we had an amazing turnout, and we’re confident we found the right girl for the job.

 

Main characters aside, we understand that Gearbox has upped to NPC count in Borderlands 2. Was this a response to areas in the first game feeling under populated?

 

JR: Yeah, and in the first Borderlands you kind of got used to your characters and really loved the people that you ran in to, but we wanted to introduce some new NPCs for the player to interact with and to learn their back story.

 

I really think that in Borderland 2 we’ve brought in an array of character from different backgrounds and disciplines that are very interesting. I think players are really going to enjoy it when they run into some of the truly random guys we’ve brought into the world of Pandora.

 

PH: We’ve also improved the way NPCs interact, talk and animate, and we’ve really brought the game forward a big way in that department. Our towns and such are much more populated, with more people walking around, doing things and talking to you.

 

When talking with these NPCs, were you ever tempted to go down the dialogue option route in the game, or do you feel that this isn’t what Borderlands 2 is all about?

 

PH: No, and that was a decision we made early on, as we knew that Borderlands isn’t really about dialogue trees, and we're not trying to compete with BioWare and Bethesda in that department.

 

We know that our game is more about getting your missions, going back out into the field and just mowing down lots of enemies, so we didn’t want to get bogged down in dialogue choices.

 

But you do get a lot more missions from people and more information about why they want those jobs done. You get more context with missions, and this is much strong in Borderlands 2 than it was in the past.

 

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Would you say that the nature of these missions has shaped the world of Borderlands 2, or has the world dictated the nature of missions?

 

PH: I think it really comes from both directions, as Jason’s guys will do some really awesome location and we’ll come up with a mission that goes really well with that, or we have some really neat storyline we want to tell, and a cool environment will be created.

 

Returning to the characters for a second, Gearbox has already talked a bit about Salvador, the new ‘Gunzerker’ class character. Can you tell us the inspiration behind Salvador, and the kind of experience players will get from using him?

 

JR: I think the first initial inspiration for Sal started with us sitting down in a meeting and just talking about some of the new action skills we wanted to bring to Borderlands 2.

 

We realised that in Borderlands we had a game that presented so many possibilities for the type of weapons players could have. But we thought, “Wouldn’t it be better to fire two of those weapons at once?” (laughs)

 

Players get so attached to their weapons that many of them wish they could fire more than one at once. I know that was one of the inspirations, but as for the look of Sal, I’m not sure where that came from. Paul?

 

PH: The look came from when we were bringing our cast together. We had to make sure that we had different character styles and different attitudes, so that all sorts of different players could find something that they could get excited about.

 

Salvador is in the pedigree of Brick from the first Borderlands. You know, he’s what we call a ‘Gunzerker’, and he’s the evolution of the berserker class. So that mean’s he’s really thick, very tough, and his skills are similar to Brick’s in that he goes into a rage.

 

But instead of running in and punching like Brick, Salvador whips out a second gun and goes crazy with it. We’re really excited about the ‘Gunzerking’ ability, which allows players to whip out any of the millions of weapons in the game.

 

So that means double rocket launchers, a sniper rifle in one hand and a shotgun in the other. It creates some really wild combinations from the ridiculous, to the expected but still awesome double pistol load out.

 

 

There was one Gunzerker skill in particular that we wanted to ask you about, which is ‘Down, Not Out’. This lets Salvador dual wield weapons while downed, but does this affect his Second Wind recovery at all?

 

PH: Yeah, the whole Second Wind mechanic was something that I felt was an untapped area for our character classes to interact with. Usually when you go into the downed state and you’re fighting for your life, you’re limited.

 

You’re not allowed to use action skills, zoom in with your weapons in order to create tension. But we thought that it would be fun in Borderlands 2 to start allowing players to break some of those rules through their skill choices.

 

So for Salvador, he gets this amazing ability of being able to do his action skill, which makes him super resilient. If you choose that skill, you’re probably going to get a Second Wind because of the strength of firing so many rounds at a time.

 

Thing like that really change how players are going to interact with that mechanic, and that’s something we’re trying to do more with our classes this time around.

 

We want to make sure that each class and each skill tree has a skill that changes the way you play the game and makes you think differently.

 

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NowGamer Interview

Edited by dividedbyn1ght
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Some people might hear about skills that make getting a Second Wind easier and assume that Borderlands 2 is easier than the first game. It’d be fair to say that the original Borderlands got insanely tough towards the latter DLC packs, but just how difficult is Borderlands 2 by comparison?

PH: We want the difficulty curve to be similar to Borderlands, because we want people to get through the game, experience our story, build their characters and explore a lot of the skills.

 

Where we do plan on increasing the challenge – similar to the first game, but we want to make sure we nail it – is in your second play through. So after you’ve finished the Borderlands 2 story, you can play through again in order to reach the level cap.

 

We’ve spoke about second play through a lot in design meetings and decided that this is where we really want to separate the men from the boys.

 

Players really have to dig down, understand the systems and have a maximised character with the best gear to survive a second play through. So that’s where we’ll crank up the challenge for all of our hardcore fans.

 

When you say “Understand the systems”, there are many role-playing games coming out today that sacrifice RPG staples like dice rolls and stat crunching in favour of all out action. Are you mindful of shifting away from the balance between the two struck in the first Borderlands?

PH: Borderlands has always been – more so than something like Skyrim – more action focused and skill based because of the whole first-person shooter aspect. We didn’t to lose that, so if you want bonus damage per critical hit, you still have to aim for the head, or whatever the critical location of a creature may be.

 

We didn’t want to remove any of that, so we haven’t added dice rolls to the system. What I meant by “Dig down” earlier, is that you really have to get inside how the systems work, and how the elemental weapons are effective against different creatures.

 

Have you ramped up the location-targeting mechanic at all – such as aiming for the head or shooting a Skag in the mouth for example?

PH: Yeah, our creature department are the guys who make our enemies, and they’ve just gone really above and beyond when compared to the first Borderlands.

 

We’ve got all kinds of interesting things like, you still have your classic headshots, but sometimes you’re fighting things that may not have a head, so that department has gotten very creative as to where those critical hit locations are.

 

This means that players have to use different tactics in order to expose those locations, and we’ve got skills that relate to identifying critical areas and more. So yeah, we’re really improved on that mechanic in Borderlands 2.

 

Have you guys focused more on how multiple players can exploit an enemy’s weakness this time around?

 

JR: Oh definitely (laughs)

 

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The gun count is the same as the first game, but with more varied combinations.

 

Is the process of creating different player skills that compliment each other well in co-op a hard thing for you guys to balance?

 

PH: Yeah of course, and often we have an idea while we’re in a meeting about what the class skills we’re going to do, and we sometimes it’s something we think is really going to pan out, but then we get it into the game and it doesn’t work.

 

But through this process, something that really works in co-op that you hadn’t even considered using before suddenly pops into your brain, and these are the things that really start to shine as people start to utilise them. When it comes to balancing these skills in co-op it’s all about play test, play test, play test!

 

In a broader sense, in what ways have you looked at improving co-op play in Borderlands 2?

 

PH: There aren't a lot of games that embrace the split screen part of the market, and we found that Borderlands fans played an awful lot of split screen. So we’re looking to improve the interface for split screen, so the experience is better for those players in Borderlands 2.

 

We’re also allowing split screen players to go online, so you and your brother can be sitting on the couch, while playing with two other players online anywhere in the world. So we’re looking to bring the split screen experience to the larger co-op community as well.

 

 

And have you looked to overhaul any elements of co-op in particular, such as loot and experience sharing?

 

PH: Not so much with loot sharing. We talked a lot about it on consoles but the interface challenges are pretty extreme. You know, in an MMO on PC you can bring up pop-up windows that sit on the side, and you can share inventory quickly like that.

 

But on a console, when every button is doing something important, this becomes tricky, and when there’s a lot of action, you don’t want pop-up windows obscuring what you can see.

 

We sort of embrace the ‘wild west’ nature of Borderlands 2 by taking a ‘let god sort it out’ attitude to who gets what when it comes to loot, and when working together in co-operatively play.

 

Have you added anything new to duels?

 

PH: With our duelling feature, we’ve given players the option to duel for loot. So you can like, put up something you’ve found as an ante, and whoever wins the duel will get the gear that you guys are betting on.

 

JR: We’re also bringing in a trading system for players who do want to safely share loot. With the first Borderlands, we read a lot about players standing in front of each other, taking five steps back, throwing their loot on the ground and cautiously walking to pick up and swap gear. It’s a very paranoid, sort of ‘wild west’ form of trading. (laughs)

 

PH: And while two people are doing this in a very gentlemanly way, some loot ninja dude who had just joined the game will run up and steal all of the gear, then drop out. All of a sudden everyone’s unhappy. (laughs)

 

So yeah, we’ve got a much more secure system that means I can interact with your character directly, open up a private trading window, and trade items. It’s a much more friendly way for people to do that.

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In terms of co-op questing, have you thought of new things for players to do together? Are you interested in things like in Gears of War where one player will hold open a door while the other slides under, or is that not the Borderlands style?

PH: No, we haven’t really focused on those things as Borderlands is at all times a multiplayer game, and at all times a single player game. We basically need to ensure that people can complete Borderlands 2 in single player 100 per cent of the time.

 

Gears of War can do a lot of those things because even if no one else is playing with you, the AI is controlling your partners. But in Borderlands 2 we don’t do that with the AI, as we want to focus on all of the other systems we deliver.

 

So it’s always a single player game and simultaneously a co-op game, and a lot of that relies on how our combat mechanics work. You’ll need to really work together to figure out how a lot of the combat mechanics work, especially as the challenge ramps up depending on how many players you have in a session.

 

There is a big focus on both single player and co-op at play here. Do you think that competitive multiplayer would detract from what you’re trying to achieve in Borderland 2?

PH: We talked a bit about competitive multiplayer when we were in the early planning phases, and we really believe that our strength is in the friendly co-operative gameplay, so we just wanted to improve that experience, and improve the sense of connecting with your friends.

 

This includes finding your friend’s games easily, as well as connecting to them, and across all formats, this is amazingly much better than it was in the original Borderlands.

 

We really decided to focus on this, and to make sure our co-op experience is the best, so we chose to put competitive multiplayer on the back burner for perhaps a later day.

 

The trading system, along with co-op is a neat mix because of the random weapons in Borderlands 2. No one is going to see the same guns in a play through as their friend. How have you tweaked the random gun system this time?

PH: Oh man, we’ve blown the doors off in all different directions with our gear this time. With guns we basically threw out every gun that we built in the first game, so those millions of guns are all gone. We’ve now made another ‘millions of guns’. (Laughs)

 

In Borderlands 2 the weapons look so much better, they move better, sound better and we’ve also dramatically improved the feel of each weapon manufacturer.

 

We always had this concept of the different weapon manufacturers having their own strengths and weaknesses, but we’ve really gone in and brought that to the feel and function of guns.

 

This covers everything from how they feel, how they shoot, how they respond, how they reload, so all of that stuff is dramatically different. We’re already seeing players have favourite manufacturers like never before.

 

The grenades have expanded, as in the first game the total number of grenade variants was about 120, but in Borderlands 2 we’re currently into the 17,000 to 18,000 range, so they are massive in terms of functionality. We’re always finding wacky new variants.

 

JR: I’ll be sitting in the office and a lot of the guys will have been playing Borderlands 2 the night before. They’ll come in and talk about the new gun that they found, and it really is just never ending. Every day you find something you haven’t seen before.

 

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It's safe to say there are a lot of guns in the first Borderlands. In Borderlands 2, the trend continues.

 

Could you even begin to estimate how many guns possibilities there are in Borderlands 2?

 

PH: I haven’t looked at the numbers, but it’s very similar to the original Borderlands, except this time the qualitative difference - the difference in feeling - is dramatically different.

 

We have focus testers who come in and find that a whole class of manufacturer’s guns are completely useless and the worst things ever, but then another guy sitting next to him will say, ‘You’re insane, these guns are the best things ever!’

 

So we’re really excited about how much of a different feel people are getting from the gear in Borderlands 2, and that is going to make a huge difference in how people choose the guns that they use.

 

Are you bringing back the grenade mod system in Borderlands 2?

 

PH: Yeah, we’ve just implemented the way that mods come together, so you will find a lot of things from the first Borderlands as well as a ton of new additions. You might remember that there were Longbow Grenades in Borderlands that you tossed, they’d disappear, and then reappear down range before exploding?

 

Yeah

 

PH: Well that’s now what we call a deliver mechanism, and we have about four or five delivery mechanisms that you combine with behaviour mods. So you can now get Longbow Sticky Grenades, or Longbow MIRV Grenades, where before you would just get Longbow Grenades just by themselves.

 

So we have four or five base grenades multiplied by four or five delivery mechanisms, then multiplied by our elemental types, and it just expands so much that you never quite know what you’re going to get.

 

Another thing we wanted to touch on is Borderlands 2 DLC, and although you probably aren’t even thinking about it now, what is your broad approach to DLC in general?

JR: Well we had a lot of success with Borderlands DLC, and we don’t really get our heads down and thinking about DLC until much later, usually as we get near the end of finishing the full game and a lot of our development guys have nothing more to work on. (laughs)

 

When you look back at what Gearbox did with DLC for the original Borderlands, you really were getting a lot of additional content for your money – more so than most. How important is it to really nail the balance between value and content?

PH: DLC has been maturing as the console cycle has continued on, and you will remember back to the earliest days when Bethesda released horse armour for Oblivion, and it was like, “Horse armour? Are you serious?” (laughs)

 

But at the time, no one knew what people were going to go for and what they weren’t going to go for. I kind of feel bad for those guys because everyone teases them about it. But they didn’t know, for all they knew it might have been exactly what everyone wanted.

 

So when the first Borderlands was finished and everyone was thinking about DLC, it was still in the middle – in terms of how much value and the kind of experience gamers wanted from DLC – and we just decided, ‘let’s just keep making the game that we’ve made’.

 

In the end, I think we’ve been influential in the DLC market, and people look at us and think, ‘these guys are really bringing a lot of value for the money’, so we’re very proud of what we did with Borderlands, and that is something we’re always thinking about.

 

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Turns out Claptrap's 'Robolution' was a total whitewash. Unsurprising really.

 

We also saw a lot of Claptrap in the Borderlands DLC, and since the five years leading up to Borderlands 2 all of the Claptrap robots have been wiped out, with the exception of one.

 

PH: Yeah that’s right, that’s sort of where he’s been over the years, and after the Robolution his product line got wiped out. (laughs) But the main Claptrap that helped you in the first game survives. He’s still around, and you’ll be interacting with him a lot in Borderlands 2.

 

Gearbox has hit a highly defined comedic style through Borderlands and characters like Claptrap, as well as a unique visual style. We know that the first game didn’t always have colourful comic book visuals. As more and more gamers are focusing on photo realistic experiences like Battlefield 3, are you ever worried about how Borderlands 2 will fare by comparison?

PH: There is definitely an area of the market that loves games like Battlefield and Call of Duty. But what is really making Borderlands as a series special, is that we’re delivering something very different when compared to other titles with our visuals, with our attitude, and with our RPG and co-op mechanics.

 

We’re doing something that no one else is really doing, and I think that’s really resonated with the gamers out there, especially what we call in the business as the ‘core gamers’.

 

They really love evangelising the game to the wider world, so in Borderlands 2 we’re confident we can introduce new people to the quirky world and character this time around.

Edited by dividedbyn1ght
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The visuals themselves are a real step up from the first Borderlands, so it’s clear that a lot of time and resources have gone into the game. As Gearbox is always juggling multiple IP and projects at any one time, how challenging can this process become?

JR: It’s challenging, but what’s actually nice is that Gearbox has been down this road several times now, and has juggling multiple projects for years.

 

What’s really cool is that, as you get further into the process of making a game, the whole company really gets behind the project, which really helps us get it done fast and helps it come together at the end really well.

 

PH: The other thing that’s been amazing about having multiple projects in development at once, is that there’s all kinds of awesome technology that gets cross pollinated between projects.

 

There are some AI things in Borderlands 2 that were originally developer for Aliens: Colonial Marines, and then some of the tools that we have in Borderlands 2 that have been used to help Brothers in Arms: Furious 4 come together.

 

It’s really awesome, as all of the games feed off each other, and we’re always aware of what each project is doing, which helps us all benefit from really cool tech, and other things.

 

With all of the chatter surrounding next gen console reveals going on at present, what would you guys like to see from new hardware that would help you realise bigger and better ambitions?

PH: Memory. (laughs) For me it’s always memory. We’re always making trade-offs between memory and performance in that, if you do something to make a game’s performance better, you’ve probably consumed more memory and vice versa.

 

JR: I’d probably say that Gearbox’s official line is always “Memory”. (laughs)

 

Every time we ask that question, everyone says memory. Speaking of next-gen we’re also asking everyone about Wii U, just your personal thoughts, nothing to do with Borderlands 2. What did you make of Nintendo’s E3 reveal?

JR: I think that everything Nintendo brings to the table is innovative and interesting. It’s one of things that people doubt initially, but then you see more of it and it’s in every single person’s house by the end of it. No matter what, I think Nintendo is going to bring some very interesting things to the table.

 

PH: I was pretty amazed by the controller. It was something I was definitely not expecting, and there’s a lot of interesting potential there for a lot of cool stuff. My only fear is like, ‘Oh, I need anew controller, well that’s 120 bucks.” (laughs)

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