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[-PXG-]

Found the interactive skill tree for BL1

http://www.borderlandsthegame.com/skilltree/roland

 

[Stumpokapow]

If you want a story, you can exercise your right to use your library card.

This made me crack up, seriously. It's just a great sentence.

 

[GlamFM]

What is the connection between Borderlands 2 and GTA V?

It just seems unlikely that T2 would announce 2 blockbuster games so close to each other.

 

[Yanksfan]

Great news, but as the article states, I really hope those diverse environments arent just different styles of desert. :/

Make it happen Gearbox!

Would it be nice? Yes. Would I buy the exact same world with just new content? Yes.

 

[Deleted member 22576]

Yeehaw!!!! Can't wait!!! Roland will resume rolling through the Borderlands soon enough.

 

[flyinpiranha]

This is probably one of my favorite games of all time. More of this.

I really hope they have more vehicles this time though ... and more variation in setting. If not whatever, I'll buy it anyway.

... the bold evolution of the ...

Quite curious choice of the wording. I hope they don't change it too much visually, I really liked the look.

 

[Confusion Illusion]

I like Borderlands, so I'm looking forward to this.

 

[DryvBy]

Good deal. I'm glad they kept the art the same too.

 

[Live Free or Die]

Yes, my body is ready!

 

[Ichabod]

Was lttp for the first one, but I'll make up for it with part deux. Day 1 mofos!

 

[ii Stryker]

Brick punches things in the face. I win.

Brick FTW

Roland = generic shooter guy x

 

[ShockingAlberto]

I found Borderlands' concept to be fine, but the execution to be way off.

A lot of enemies were just bullet sponges that required nothing more complicated than circle-strafing and shooting. The actual loot mechanic was subverted by having high level weapons near spawn points in cities, while bosses and enemies would drop kind of shitty weapons compared to what you could get by just wandering around town a bit. There was almost no level design to speak of, either it was just corridors of caves, open desert with an occasional corridor in to an arena-type area with exploding barrels, or mountains that were walled off in to basically corridors. The PC port was embarrassingly bad, and moreover, they straight up lied about it. You had to scroll with Pg Up/Pg Dn buttons, change the text size to see the full descriptions for every weapon, play through Gamespy for some unexplainable reason that likely has everything to do with Randy Pitchford's infamous hate boner for Steam that he eventually got over but not in time to actually help the game any. The characters you chose were stocks that had no actual personality and very little gameplay flavor - there was almost no advantage to having a crew of four people with different classes since the game did not take advantage of their skills (though this is a problem that permeates almost every part of Borderlands, it feels like gameplay systems were designed separate from everything else and then pieces of the game were just stuck together with glue after having been finished separately). The enemy design was basically "This is a wolf. This is a person. ITERATE ON THESE FOREVER."

The more I think about it, the more I realize I did not actually like Borderlands that much! And I honestly have no faith that Gearbox will fix everything wrong with it because of all the praise they got for the first game.

I will say that one part of Borderlands felt truly great and like it was building to something. When a buddy and I went in to a city for the first time and were attacked by men in armor with proper munitions and it was challenging and fun. The city had actual level design, interesting new enemies, and a compelling story premise. I thought it would be a turning point for the game, but nothing for the rest of the game was that interesting again.

Oh, and I thought the game was really unfunny, including and especially the claptraps.

 

[Kikarian]

Borderlands 2.

Spoiler

Yes.

 

[Reknoc]

Nice, looking forward to this. Hope they tone down the claptraps though.

 

[Commanche Raisin Toast]

pachter said borderlands was sent to die, it ended up being sold out in a lot of places, and how much has it sold so far? something like 4.5 million?

at first i thought it wasn't right for them to announce it off the cuff like this, but then i realized the game really is kinda niche even for it selling so well and being popular. being on the front of GI helps them even more. also suggests GTA might be a bit further out. it would have had the GI cover if it was close. (maybe next month? *troll face*)

 

[Home]

Steamworks and proper FoV for PC and I'll be there day 1.

 

[-PXG-]

pachter said borderlands was sent to die, it ended up being sold out in a lot of places, and how much has it sold so far? something like 4.5 million?

at first i thought it wasn't right for them to announce it off the cuff like this, but then i realized the game really is kinda niche even for it selling so well and being popular. being on the front of GI helps them even more. also suggests GTA might be a bit further out. it would have had the GI cover if it was close. (maybe next month? *troll face*)

There's your problem. You actually listened to something he had to say. Don't.

 

[Red]

I found Borderlands' concept to be fine, but the execution to be way off.

A lot of enemies were just bullet sponges that required nothing more complicated than circle-strafing and shooting. The actual loot mechanic was subverted by having high level weapons near spawn points in cities, while bosses and enemies would drop kind of shitty weapons compared to what you could get by just wandering around town a bit. There was almost no level design to speak of, either it was just corridors of caves, open desert with an occasional corridor in to an arena-type area with exploding barrels, or mountains that were walled off in to basically corridors. The PC port was embarrassingly bad, and moreover, they straight up lied about it. You had to scroll with Pg Up/Pg Dn buttons, change the text size to see the full descriptions for every weapon, play through Gamespy for some unexplainable reason that likely has everything to do with Randy Pitchford's infamous hate boner for Steam that he eventually got over but not in time to actually help the game any. The characters you chose were stocks that had no actual personality and very little gameplay flavor - there was almost no advantage to having a crew of four people with different classes since the game did not take advantage of their skills (though this is a problem that permeates almost every part of Borderlands, it feels like gameplay systems were designed separate from everything else and then pieces of the game were just stuck together with glue after having been finished separately). The enemy design was basically "This is a wolf. This is a person. ITERATE ON THESE FOREVER."

The more I think about it, the more I realize I did not actually like Borderlands that much! And I honestly have no faith that Gearbox will fix everything wrong with it because of all the praise they got for the first game.

I will say that one part of Borderlands felt truly great and like it was building to something. When a buddy and I went in to a city for the first time and were attacked by men in armor with proper munitions and it was challenging and fun. The city had actual level design, interesting new enemies, and a compelling story premise. I thought it would be a turning point for the game, but nothing for the rest of the game was that interesting again.

Oh, and I thought the game was really unfunny, including and especially the claptraps.

Right on every point.

The only part of Borderlands with any personality is the intro cutscene.

 

[dragonelite]

please have classes that aren't gender bound i really hate that in rpg.
And it is always the class i want to be in a rpg that is female and i just can't play a rpg as a female maybe strange but it doesn't feel right in a rpg to my imo.

 

[Twinduct]

Whoop whoop! Looking forward to this! +1 to PC support!

 

[Bucket-o-roadkill]

Nice. Just the motivation I need to get my lazy ass to play through the original.

 

[GlamFM]

pachter said borderlands was sent to die, it ended up being sold out in a lot of places, and how much has it sold so far? something like 4.5 million?

at first i thought it wasn't right for them to announce it off the cuff like this, but then i realized the game really is kinda niche even for it selling so well and being popular. being on the front of GI helps them even more. also suggests GTA might be a bit further out. it would have had the GI cover if it was close. (maybe next month? *troll face*)

That´s what I think...

 

[K.Jack]

Spend more than 5 minutes on the PC port please.

 

[GeoramA]

Day 1 on this game and issue.

Just what the industry needs: another first-person shooter. Oh joy.

You should play the first game.

 

[IntelliHeath]

This is probably one of my favorite games of all time. More of this.

I really hope they have more vehicles this time though ... and more variation in setting. If not whatever, I'll buy it anyway.



Quite curious choice of the wording. I hope they don't change it too much visually, I really liked the look.

The visual is same.

 

[Mrbob]

Steamworks and proper FoV for PC and I'll be there day 1.

The more I think about this, the more I agree about Steamworks or bust for Borderlands 2. Online play will be junk otherwise. Gearbox uses Gamespy again they should just can the PC version.

Whoop whoop! Looking forward to this! +1 to PC support!

Hopefully Gearbox gives the PC version or Borderlands 2 the attention it deserves.

 

[Brazil]

Fucking YES. It sure took them a long time to reveal this. I'm guesisng they're really putting effort into it.

 

[Deleted member 22576]

I'm sooooo excited. Woke up and read the news on Twitter. OMG, I can't FUCKING wait. Borderlands is nearly my favorite game of the generation.

 

[Commanche Raisin Toast]

There's your problem. You actually listened to something he had to say. Don't.

oh i by no means believed what he said a single bit. by the time he was making the claim the borderlands hype was to big for it to simply fizzle out in the wake of some other titles. besides, his lack of understanding of what an RPG is was pretty apparent in his mentioning that dragon age = rpg and borderlands was directly competing against it and CoD.

i just think it's funny to imagine him commenting on the game's success and the sequel getting the GI cover.

 

[Wh0 N0se]

This is great news, can't wait for this!

I just hope it's a little smoother and the graphics are updated a bit.

But I'm sure that they'll do a great job regardless of what I want and I will definitely be getting this!

 

[Data West]

It just seems unlikely that T2 would announce 2 blockbuster games so close to each other.

Duke Nukem was originally going to come out the same month as LA Noire. And even if T2 announced GTA, it wouldn't be out until Mayish, when R* always puts out their games

 

[Infinite Justice]

Currently playing the first one and digging it so i'm interested in the sequel

 

[Teknoman]

Who in their right mind would want a non-cel shaded Borderlands?

Either way, PLEASE kick gamespy to the curb for B2.

 

[Entropia]

Dual-wielding guns....?

 

[plc268]

My wishlist for Borderlands 2 (PC):

1. A fucking minimap and world map. I can't tell you frustrating it is navigating around the world because your turn came way earlier than you expected it and you overshot your turn. At times I had to constantly consult my map just to make sure I was going in the right direction.

Also, there seriously needs to be a connected world map, and the teleporting around the world needs to be interfaced with said map and not some uninformative menu.

2. A hotkey for your healing items. I don't think this needs to be explained.

3. An autorun key... quite common for some MMOs where a lot of running takes place. Again, BL1 was freaking annoying when you had to make long treks on foot, and you had to hold Shift W the entire time. It might sound silly, but damn my fingers hurt after a while of playing borderlands.

4. Armor. We need more armor pieces: helmet, boots, chest armor, etc. It should be visible to other players as well.

5. Guncrafting/Gun upgrading. Gun parts should be reasonably hard/rare to get so that the focus is still on finding that next best weapon... but at the same time allow for satisfying gun upgrades or allow me to build one from stock parts.

6. Less desert

7. Adapt to the PC interface and leave the console conventions out of it, or only enable them if a controller is connected. Yes, that means get rid of the aim assist.

8. This might be an unpopular idea to some, but give me a pvp arena where I can battle 4-6 friends.


There's probably more, but those are just off the top of my head.

 

[Unicorn]

Hook it straight into my veins!

 

[Brazil]

I found Borderlands' concept to be fine, but the execution to be way off.

A lot of enemies were just bullet sponges that required nothing more complicated than circle-strafing and shooting. The actual loot mechanic was subverted by having high level weapons near spawn points in cities, while bosses and enemies would drop kind of shitty weapons compared to what you could get by just wandering around town a bit. There was almost no level design to speak of, either it was just corridors of caves, open desert with an occasional corridor in to an arena-type area with exploding barrels, or mountains that were walled off in to basically corridors. The PC port was embarrassingly bad, and moreover, they straight up lied about it. You had to scroll with Pg Up/Pg Dn buttons, change the text size to see the full descriptions for every weapon, play through Gamespy for some unexplainable reason that likely has everything to do with Randy Pitchford's infamous hate boner for Steam that he eventually got over but not in time to actually help the game any. The characters you chose were stocks that had no actual personality and very little gameplay flavor - there was almost no advantage to having a crew of four people with different classes since the game did not take advantage of their skills (though this is a problem that permeates almost every part of Borderlands, it feels like gameplay systems were designed separate from everything else and then pieces of the game were just stuck together with glue after having been finished separately). The enemy design was basically "This is a wolf. This is a person. ITERATE ON THESE FOREVER."

The more I think about it, the more I realize I did not actually like Borderlands that much! And I honestly have no faith that Gearbox will fix everything wrong with it because of all the praise they got for the first game.

I will say that one part of Borderlands felt truly great and like it was building to something. When a buddy and I went in to a city for the first time and were attacked by men in armor with proper munitions and it was challenging and fun. The city had actual level design, interesting new enemies, and a compelling story premise. I thought it would be a turning point for the game, but nothing for the rest of the game was that interesting again.

Oh, and I thought the game was really unfunny, including and especially the claptraps.

I agree with you on all points. The game was lacking in many, many points - but, somehow, it was still fun. I'm hoping for major improvements on this version, though. I think Gearbox knows what they're doing.

 

[Live Free or Die]

uh oh, Developer calls accurate Borderlands 2 report "shoddy journalism"

 

[Gilgamesh]

Wasted my money on the first one. I just don't like loot games. I get no satisfaction from killing hordes of the same enemies to get a weapon that's only marginally different than the one I already have. I have to have a stronger narrative focus in my games. Getting to the next cutscene and advancing the story is what drives me, not getting more "epic" loot.

 

[Rikyfree]

Gaming heroin. Shoot the shit into mah veins!!!

 

[IlludiumQ36]

My wishlist for Borderlands 2 (PC):

1. A fucking minimap and world map. I can't tell you frustrating it is navigating around the world because your turn came way earlier than you expected it and you overshot your turn. At times I had to constantly consult my map just to make sure I was going in the right direction.

Also, there seriously needs to be a connected world map, and the teleporting around the world needs to be interfaced with said map and not some uninformative menu.

2. A hotkey for your healing items. I don't think this needs to be explained.

3. An autorun key... quite common for some MMOs where a lot of running takes place. Again, BL1 was freaking annoying when you had to make long treks on foot, and you had to hold Shift W the entire time. It might sound silly, but damn my fingers hurt after a while of playing borderlands.

4. Armor. We need more armor pieces: helmet, boots, chest armor, etc. It should be visible to other players as well.

5. Guncrafting/Gun upgrading. Gun parts should be reasonably hard/rare to get so that the focus is still on finding that next best weapon... but at the same time allow for satisfying gun upgrades or allow me to build one from stock parts.

6. Less desert

7. Adapt to the PC interface and leave the console conventions out of it, or only enable them if a controller is connected. Yes, that means get rid of the aim assist.

8. This might be an unpopular idea to some, but give me a pvp arena where I can battle 4-6 friends.


There's probably more, but those are just off the top of my head.

Aim assist can be disabled in the menu options. And while you're absolutely right about the interface being PC-enhanced by default, there are several INI tweaks that can bring it pretty close.

Nice list.

 

[plc268]

Aim assist can be disabled in the menu options. And while you're absolutely right about the interface being PC-enhanced by default, there are several INI tweaks that can bring it pretty close.

Nice list.

Yea, but what I mean is that it should be off by default and be able to be turned on in the menu options.

I forgot to mention that there REALLY needs to be an adjustable FOV. The default FOV for BL1 is really small, and while you can change, it gets wonky if you start sprinting (if I remember that right). There were ways around that, but it wasn't nearly as elegant as it should be.

 

[ShockingAlberto]

Developer calls accurate Borderlands 2 report "shoddy journalism"
By Ben Kuchera | Published 26 minutes ago

Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford is known for speaking his mind, and he seemed particularly annoyed when the news of Borderlands 2 broke last night. Eurogamer was given information from an unnamed source that the game was in development, with a major announcement coming soon. Pitchford called stories about Borderlands 2 "shoddy journalism" on his Twitter account.

uh

 

[Live Free or Die]

Dual-wielding guns....?

I noticed that too. Awesome!

 

[Gully State]

I found Borderlands' concept to be fine, but the execution to be way off.

A lot of enemies were just bullet sponges that required nothing more complicated than circle-strafing and shooting. The actual loot mechanic was subverted by having high level weapons near spawn points in cities, while bosses and enemies would drop kind of shitty weapons compared to what you could get by just wandering around town a bit. There was almost no level design to speak of, either it was just corridors of caves, open desert with an occasional corridor in to an arena-type area with exploding barrels, or mountains that were walled off in to basically corridors. The PC port was embarrassingly bad, and moreover, they straight up lied about it. You had to scroll with Pg Up/Pg Dn buttons, change the text size to see the full descriptions for every weapon, play through Gamespy for some unexplainable reason that likely has everything to do with Randy Pitchford's infamous hate boner for Steam that he eventually got over but not in time to actually help the game any. The characters you chose were stocks that had no actual personality and very little gameplay flavor - there was almost no advantage to having a crew of four people with different classes since the game did not take advantage of their skills (though this is a problem that permeates almost every part of Borderlands, it feels like gameplay systems were designed separate from everything else and then pieces of the game were just stuck together with glue after having been finished separately). The enemy design was basically "This is a wolf. This is a person. ITERATE ON THESE FOREVER."

The more I think about it, the more I realize I did not actually like Borderlands that much! And I honestly have no faith that Gearbox will fix everything wrong with it because of all the praise they got for the first game.

I will say that one part of Borderlands felt truly great and like it was building to something. When a buddy and I went in to a city for the first time and were attacked by men in armor with proper munitions and it was challenging and fun. The city had actual level design, interesting new enemies, and a compelling story premise. I thought it would be a turning point for the game, but nothing for the rest of the game was that interesting again.

Oh, and I thought the game was really unfunny, including and especially the claptraps.

Agree with you on all points. I was especially irked about how they lied about the PC port. They were also touting features like screenshot capturing weapon cards and a benchmark function which turned out to be things that could only be accessed if you dug around in the console command menu. I will say though that thanks to fan made tweaks and MLAA, the visuals finally shine on PC the way they were mean to shine. The horrible execution of the game was basically saved by the concept (not to mention a playerbase starving for loot based co-op game) and art direction.

Gamasutra Post Mortem on Borderlands

For those of you that thought the realistic art style would've been better...

The New Art Style

Along with numerous other aspects of development, at a certain point Gearbox completely reevaluated the game's art direction. This is how the team did it, using the initial town "Fyrestone" as a proof of concept:

"Not long after the Fyrestone test was completed, Randy Pitchford took this example to 2K to pitch The Change. This was a risky prospect, and we had no idea how 2K would respond. Internally, we knew what kind of risk this posed to production.

"There were a lot of influential people, Randy at the top of that list, who thought it was probably a very bad idea to open the door to that level of change so late in the project. But everyone who saw it recognized its potential, and almost everyone had a strongly positive reaction to it, especially when they saw it working in game and could navigate a space with the style implemented.

"Fyrestone served exactly that purpose. When Randy made the trip to 2K in San Francisco to pitch it, they decided to make the bet on it with us and embrace the new style. That helped cement our productive relationship with them, and was a great catalyst to get us to focus together on how to mobilize to ship later that year.

"With the new art style, everything started to fit together. We had art that matched the evolving attitude of the game. It was now fine for players to jump high up in the air, for enemies to take varying amounts of damage based on level, for missions objectives to be zany, for psycho midgets to run at you, for brains to pop out of heads intact and fall on the ground, and for a wisecracking unicyclebot to show up in the game as your guide.
"The Visual Design Team described it as "ill-mannered whimsy" and the project’s director, Matt Armstrong, promoted the notion that our attitude should take inspiration from Paul Verhoeven, director of Starship Troopers and RoboCop—movies where over the top violence takes on its own brand of dark humor. It was now okay for things in the world to be humorous, whereas with the previous realistic style, the team was shooting for designs that played as "serious business."

"The new feel was something that the entire content team could get behind. Productivity shot through the roof. We got into a magical cycle of art inspiring design inspiring art.

"The new style brought with it an added, very practical benefit -- the process for creating assets could be clearly specified and a state of completion could be articulated and evaluated by the art leads. When we were going for a more realistic style, very often it was unclear if assets were done.

"With the new style, there was no doubt. There was also room for iterating efficiency and quality within the new style. We had one particular member of the art team with a background in comic book art who set the benchmark for quality that the rest of the team constantly shot for; and just as they were hitting it, he leveled up the quality of his work with new techniques.

"For example, in experimenting with being more efficient and increasing texture quality, he showed that "color up" is better than "ink down" for our style—a very different way of approaching art than game artists are used to. In your typical next-gen art workflow, artists bake normals and AO, then use those maps as a guide to color in the texture.

"In our new style, most assets don’t need a normal map because we ink in the details—similar to graphic novel illustration. Fortunately, we had expertise on the team to help us understand the best way to execute and scale into full production. A constant process of improvement began, and it included all of our artists, our very small number of trusted outsourcing partners, and our art directors. This was a great art team motivator."

 

[Spiffy_1st]

I couldn't get into the first due to my friends never wanting to play when I wanted to and vise versa. Maybe we'll plan a schedule for the sequel.

 

[DimmuBurgerKing]

Glad they're sticking with the art style!

 

[Stallion Free]

uh oh, Developer calls accurate Borderlands 2 report "shoddy journalism"

He is wrong. What he should have said was that they were a bunch of cunts for ruining the surprise.

 

[Raziel]

i liked borderlands; it grew on me. i would never call it funny though or even really know where it was supposed to be. very few of the characters even had spoken dialogue. some people are really reaching for the game's supposed humor. the names of the quests? my sides are splitting.

there was however clap trap which - and i say this with no hyperbole - was one of the most annoying and worst characters in a game in a long time for me.

 

[Nirolak]

Since apparently the magazine isn't being shipped out for a few days, I figured appending Borderlands 1's sales to the title was probably the most appropriate thing to do.