Topic: Borderlands: Diablo with guns

[idolminds]

WANT

[Quemaqua]

Awesome.  There's way too much good stuff being displayed.  Must stop reading!

[scottws]

Gearbox.  Meh.

Edit:  The article says "Imagine Diablo in first person, with guns rather than swords..."  Sorry, can't do it.  Diablo is about rapid fire clicking on bad guys all over the screen.  I don't see how that translates to first person at all.  And if this game doesn't have rapid-fire clicking on bad guys, then it isn't like Diablo.

[Quemaqua]

There's more to Diablo than just clicking, though.  They're probably referring more to the way the characters develop and stuff, the loot you can grab, whatever.  I'm guessing.

[Ghandi]

The last Gearbox fps that I bought was Halo PC. I learned my lesson with that one.

[scottws]

Same here and that's basically what I'm referring to.  They also made a WWII FPS.  I heard it was... okay.

[MysterD]

Gearbox.  Meh.

Edit:  The article says "Imagine Diablo in first person, with guns rather than swords..."  Sorry, can't do it.

Okay. Let's look at it like this.

Borderlands sounds like it has some major Diablo qualities to the game -- constant loot-getting, constant skill-tree upgrading, constant killing. First-person shooters don't have this qualities, usually -- those are the usual RPG qualities; namely in Action-RPG's.

I don't see how that translates to first person at all.  And if this game doesn't have rapid-fire clicking on bad guys, then it isn't like Diablo.

With the first-person aspect added to the mix, I think Borderlands sounds more like Hellgate: London -- hopefully, Borderlands will NOT have anywhere near the amount of bugs and performance issues HGL had upon release.

I will explain more after your next quote, how Diablo, HGL, and Borderlands are all alike to me and their minor difference...

Diablo is about rapid fire clicking on bad guys all over the screen

Diablo's more than that -- or else it'd be a click-and-point action game minus any RPG elements. Diablo is also about the constant loot-getting, constant skill-tree upgrading, and constant killing -- HGL had that, Borderlands sounds like it WILL have that, as well. 

Other than that, it's just that the real difference here is Diablo is 3rd person click-point, while Borderlands will be first-person with direct-control style.

Side Note: In HGL, you can switch b/t first and third-person with direct-controls, if you use a character that has guns -- otherwise, you're in third-person with direct-controls.

[MysterD]

Preview from IGN w/ Gearbox's Randy Pitchford...

Co-Op vs. SP

IGN: This is a game built for co-op. But a lot of people who buy Borderlands will end up playing the single-player mode. How do the two experiences differ?

Randy Pitchford: The single player experience and the cooperative experience are very similar, except that with cooperative play friends can work together to fight and win. Single player and cooperative play mingle seamlessly and your character is totally persistent, so you can get some way through and invite a friend or you can join a friend and bring everything you've earned along with you. It's amazing technology and there isn't a single other game on the consoles that offers the kind of persistent character development in cooperative gaming that Borderlands does.

Four Classes & Their Very Own Skill Trees

IGN: You can choose from four different characters, correct? Tell us about them and the advantages and disadvantages that come with each.

Randy Pitchford: You can pick from one of four different character classes and each personalized character will grow as you play the game to have different skills and capabilities from others of the same class.

There is Roland, the soldier. He's an expert with all weapons, though he prefers shotguns and assault rifles. He can deploy a shield turret that can be upgraded throughout the game. He can also buy other skills and augmentations that befit the soldier class.

Mordecai is the hunter. He's agile and is equipped with a sword as a melee weapon. He's expert with sniper rifles. He has a pet Bloodwing, which is, like, a hundred times more deadly than even the best trained falcon. He can send that thing at enemies to rend them apart. The Bloodwing can get tougher and grow in skill too as you play the game.

Lilith is a Siren, which is a mysterious, mystical type that has been touched by alien technology. She has strange powers such as the ability to Phase Walk, which is kind of like when Frodo puts on the ring, except that when she takes it off she can kill everything around her with a shock-wave like nova effect. She's awesome. Finally there is Brick, who is the tank bruiser of the group. He's just as comfortable smashing you to a pulp with his fists as he is blowing you to bits with a heavy rocket launcher. Among other traits he can improve and grow, he has the ability to go into a berserker blood rage which makes him super powerful at close range with his meaty fists.

IGN: As for the RPG elements, how deep is the character upgrade system? What sorts of things can you improve?

Randy Pitchford: We've linked the characters in the game to the classes because the characters are really cool, but you'll name your own character and pick your favorite colors for them and all that. As you play, your character will get tougher and more skilled. You'll level up and get stronger in the usual ways and in some ways that are unique to Borderlands. Each character also has a skill tree where you can develop your character in unique ways to make them more powerful with the play style you prefer. It astonishingly robust for a first person shooter, but we've made sure to make it super accessible and not too complicated. It won't slow anyone down – just add value to the growth experience.

Guns, Guns, and More Guns Insanity

IGN: Last I remember hearing there was a claim that Borderlands features more than 650,000 unique weapons. Are you sticking to that statement? And if so, how is that even remotely possible?

Randy Pitchford: Actually, 650,000 guns is the safe number. We've now got some other new types of weapon classes and a lot of different weapon manufacturers and we have created a bunch of super rare and unique epic weapons and other gear, so the actual number of different weapons in the game is quite a bit higher than that. There are more weapons in Borderlands than in every shooter on both the 360 and PS3 added together. It's an absurd number of guns to the point where talking about it isn't really relevant any more. What's relevant is to realize that you'll be able to find lots of varied and better weapons and gear as you play to become more and more powerful.

[W7RE]

Something to note about the fact that it's Gearbox (who did a bad Halo PC port): The demo videos in the first port here is being shown on a console (you can sort of tell by the player's hugely inaccurate aiming, plus the guy keeps talking about "if you press the X button" and such). So can we look forward to the PC version being a shitty port from the 360 one?

Otherwise the game looks badass. I love fps games, and I love Diablo, so this (if done right) is a really great idea to me.


Did HGL ever get it's bugs worked out? Is it worth picking up now that they've had time to fix stuff? (does it still have that weird subscriber thing where you can't get the best stuff without a monthly fee?)

[MysterD]

Something to note about the fact that it's Gearbox (who did a bad Halo PC port): The demo videos in the first port here is being shown on a console (you can sort of tell by the player's hugely inaccurate aiming, plus the guy keeps talking about "if you press the X button" and such). So can we look forward to the PC version being a shitty port from the 360 one?

I hope not.

Otherwise the game looks badass. I love fps games, and I love Diablo, so this (if done right) is a really great idea to me.

I agree -- if done right, it'd be awesome.

Did HGL ever get it's bugs worked out? Is it worth picking up now that they've had time to fix stuff?

Hard for me to answer that, since I only did MP -- which is currently offline in the USA. I didn't do SP side.

On the SP side, HGL was not even nearly as patched-up as the MP was -- I didn't really try the SP when I had the game, I stuck to the MP -- since the MP got patched-up way more often. So, no clue on the final SP version and how it was, honestly. I have no clue what the modders did accomplish or not, but last I knew, a team of modders that were subscribers were going to take Beta Version 2.0 MP and drag all that content in the SP and release a mod for it. I'd have to look into it, to see if they progressed along, still working on it, or what.

HGL's MP is currently down in the USA. Flagship went under; HGL's MP in USA was pulled offline; Hanbit took the game's assets and IP over; and Hanbit's working on Version 2.0 of the game. On the MP side, yes -- a good deal of the bugs and performance issues got fixed, before it got its plug pulled, before MP Version 2.0 was being worked on.

The MP Version 2.0 that Flagship was working on before the game got its plugged pulled, was to add some new content, fix stuff, change stuff, and add stuff people requested. For subscribers, this version was out in Beta testing before Flagship went under -- and from what I heard, it made HGL a hell of a lot better. Of course, Hanbit took the IP from them -- and well, they are working on their Version 2.0 now.

Here's the problem -- Hanbit has the full IP rights to HGL outside of USA, while Namco has the exclusive USA-only rights to publish HGL. So, Namco's blocking Hanbit currently from bringing HGL Version 2.0 to the USA -- probably until Hanbit buys the USA distribution rights from Namco. So, don't expect any new official SP or MP patches until this mess gets sorted out -- if this mess EVER gets sorted out.

(does it still have that weird subscriber thing where you can't get the best stuff without a monthly fee?)

Not anymore. The game's MP in the USA is down, until further notice -- until Hanbit and Namco can work something out.

[MysterD]

E3 2009 Trailer released.
Shows off the cel-shaded look in action and all.

[Xessive]

Huh, that cel-shading is new. I watched the gameplay demo video interview at GameTrailers a couple of weeks back and it didn't look like that at all! I guess they felt the game needed a more stylistic approach.

[MysterD]

Huh, that cel-shading is new. I watched the gameplay demo video interview at GameTrailers a couple of weeks back and it didn't look like that at all! I guess they felt the game needed a more stylistic approach.

I guess they didn't want the game to look TOO much like Rage.

[MysterD]

OMG, I hope this game really turns out awesome -- since the game's art-style looks awesome and is really speaking to me.

Check out the screens here.

[MysterD]

Here's a preview from G4TV.com

G4 Screenie:


Eurogamer.net Screen:

[Quemaqua]

I actually don't care for the art style much.  It kind of doesn't do it for me.

[idolminds]

Shacknews impressions

Some choice quotes:

As the enemies were turned to corpses on screen, a sort of holographic display would appear above each, with a small box outlining the loot available to pillage. This logical addition allows the player to take a quick glance at the treasure pickups without the need for an action-stopping menu.

After offing a few enemies with grenades and sci-fi blasters, a giant "LEVEL UP!" message was slapped diagonally across the screen like a commercial for a Presidents' Day sale. Neumann explained that one side-benefit of the new art style was a relaxing of the game's tone.

"We realized that plausibility can eat shit and die," he said simply. Weapons that at one time seemed silly, such as guns that came loaded with "healing bullets," now fit in the world.

This, I like. I'm a little tired of every game seeming to want realism. I like over the top crazy stuff! Thats what makes games fun!

[MysterD]

Oh, hell yeah....!

"You guys have heard the shit about our guns," said Neumann, referring to the ridiculous permutations that produce Borderlands' weapons--over a half-million at one count, and now far higher. "What most people don't know is our other content is generated like that."

Neumann described spiders that can spawn as leapers which latch onto a player's face, while another variant has the spiders curling up and rolling like a ball in its attack. There won't be a half-million spider species, of course, but the team is aiming for some pretty wild combinations.

[MysterD]

GameSpot here on this Borderlands.

The new look seems to be suiting Borderlands well. While the game is aiming to be an epic adventure, Gearbox isn't taking themselves too seriously. There is a humorous current running through various gameplay elements, from the creature names (e.g. "Mutant Midget Psycho") to the many places you can find loot (toilets, animal scat) to the mission objectives ("fishing" by tossing a live grenade into a lake and collecting the dead fish). This blend of gravity and mirth jibes with the visual style, creating a gritty, realistic world with an enjoyable, video-games-are-fun undercurrent.

Hilarious!

According to Gearbox, there are 20-30 narrative missions and 130-140 side missions in Borderlands, plus an untold number of outposts, caves, and other uncharted nooks to explore.

Our demo was a mission from Act I, and we're told the game will have three proper acts, with transitional sequences in between. The landscape will change as players progress. Act 2 will be set amidst towering piles of garbage riddled with trash caves, the disposed remnants of a prosperous Pandora where particularly nasty creatures now lurk. The third act will venture into more thoroughly alien landscapes and will feature snowy landscapes, presumably near Pandora's poles.

Or you could run afoul of a fierce pack of adults with a spitter thrown in for good measure. The pack we saw was headed up by a "Badass Fire Skag." Yes, that is what it is actually called. Each word in the creature's name is descriptive, and "badass" is the Borderlands version of "elite" ("We wanted to call them what they are." - Gearbox).

EDIT:
Preview from GameSpy

[MysterD]

AtomicGamer with their own E3 2009 impressions on Borderlands

Action = Chaos.

It's also important to mention that among so many other highly scripted E3 demos this year where the person talking is following a script and the person playing is carefully doing every fight in a way that marketing and PR have signed off on, our Borderlands demo was done much more by the seat-of-the-pants. Sure, we knew they'd finish a quest or two and get into some firefights in a couple of given locales, but the weapons they used were created randomly and the action was chaotic enough in some places that there was simply no way to reproduce it the same way every time. This is a good sign; if doing the same fight repeatedly in a game can result in one of many different outcomes each time you play, it is going to keep your attention longer. If Gearbox can harness that for most of their game, we'll likely have a winner.

Dueling Battles

Gearbox employees Steve Gibson and Allison Berryman tackled a base full of bandits together, mowing them down with great-looking weaponry that had some interesting effects (including a wicked head-melt gun) and a solid look and feel that put this part of the demo squarely in the cooperative FPS arena. But it doesn't have to always be that way: players can also at any point hit someone else with a melee attack, which in the world of Borderlands, is like typing /duel in a MMORPG. If the enemy hits back with their own melee attack, a dome appears overhead - no matter where they are in the world - and they're locked in a 1v1 fight. Two men enter, one man leaves!

[idolminds]

haha, that sounds pretty cool.

[MysterD]

Yeah, I really can't wait to hear more info on this game, before it drops this Fall and all. It just looks like it's gonna be a blast.

[MysterD]

Strategy Informer preview on Borderlands

SCREENS:

[MysterD]

Borderlands interview w/ Mikey Neumann of Gearbox.

Co-Op MP & Competitive MP = Not Separate Game Modes

Shack:  You can play the campaign co-op, but is there any competitive multiplayer?

Mikey Neumann: Oh yes. Within just the regular co-op mode, you can walk up to any of your friends at any time, let's say I'm playing with you, I walk up and I literally bitch slap you. And then it tells you that, "yo, that guy just bitch slapped you, what you wanna do about that?"

So you bitch slap me back, a dome comes down, and we go into a dueling mode. You use all your skills and all your abilities, and that's just the most basic thing.

Within the world, there's actually a lot of instances, you can walk into these things we call arenas. The arenas are actually fully hardcore, Quake style level design all about fighting your friends. It's part of the universe, not a separate mode.

Fast Travelling

Shack:  Do you actually have to walk into an arena, or can you quick-jump from the menu?

Mikey Neumann: You can fast travel to anywhere in the game. The fast travel off of the menu is actually from the save stations, those are all over the place. You can travel pretty easily.

PC Version MP will use Gearbox's own lobbies.

Shack:  With Xbox Live and PlayStation Network, I can get an idea as to how the multiplayer setup will work on consoles. But what about PC? Is Gearbox doing its own thing there? Games for Windows Live?

Mikey Neumann: We are doing our own thing. It's gonna be lobby-based, we're trying to keep it as close to Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 [offerings] as possible. We want to make sure that everyone can play our game and have fun, it's gonna be a slightly simpler lobby, we still have all the options you have on the other ones. Maybe more, PC people like their options. We're gonna try to keep it as close as possible.

Gun count = into the millions now

Mikey Neumann:  The stuff we actually cut out of the game was really small. If anything, we're adding stuff. Like, the last time we talked, it was 500,000 guns. Now, it's millions. We're adding as much as we can. We're gonna add new stuff, throw it out there, and be thinking about how to make Borderlands a better and better franchise.

DLC Talk, Why Some Content Won't Be In Retail Box & Certification Process

Mikey Neumann:  We have downloadable content to think about, we have the future of Borderlands to think about. I can't talk about DLC obviously right now because we haven't released the game yet, so that would be stupid to talk about what we're thinking about. We have a lot of really really cool stuff we want to add to the game, to make the universe that much better.

....

Shack:  Can you explain why, even though you're coming up with this stuff now while the game is still in development, you can't incorporate it into the retail release?

Mikey Neumann: We're shooting for October 2009, so you can subtract two and a half to three months for certification time. Certification is what you go through with Microsoft and Sony, and to a lesser degree your publisher.

Certification is to make sure the games are bug free and shippable. Without certification, you'd have games that crash and not work.

Subtract three months off of October and you're, you know, now.

What happens a lot of the time is you finish your game and it's time for cert, and during cert a lot of bugs crop up that you have to fix, and a lot of them are really, really big bugs. You are certainly not adding any content to the game at all. A level? No way.

But, during cert, if you have a lot of level designers who have nothing to do--which is pretty common, you pull level design and art off first--they're gonna be making cool shit and want to make cool shit. That cool shit, that tends to be what DLC ends up being. It's the stuff we couldn't add to the game because we're making it during cert, which is impossible to get into the [retail] game.

Games are hard to make now. I don't know if people are aware of this, but they're really, really hard to make. So we're just coming up with cool ideas and setting them aside so we can do them later.

Let's say I wanted to add an elephant to the game [right now], which I know, your readers are going to be sad, now they just found out there's no elephant.

For the content path of the elephant, you start with the art, probably, do some concept art of what you'd want it to look like. That then goes into a turnaround, which is taking a few pictures of the front and both sides, and putting out a model on top of that. Somebody's gonna go in and make a high poly version, that high poly is gonna get tossed over or go to the same artist to make a low poly version of it with all the normals off. Somebody's gonna have to do the texture maps, and then that's gonna go into the game, you're gonna have to do shader work on that to bring it all together, spec map all that.

While that's happening, hopefully you have an animator rigging it, so that we can now have all the animators working on all the animations. I need the animation list for the programmers that you need handling the AI for that, then that goes over there.

You kinda have the AI and the animation going out at the same time, you're making sure it moves and does stuff. You're gonna have a lot of bugs there, a lot of impolish there. Go into game design, make sure it does stuff like shoot shit out of his mouth.

[MysterD]

Interview with Randy Pitchford of Gearbox on Borderlands

Storytelling

Destructoid: Right. Get to the action. How is the story told in the game? Is it told through cut-scenes?

Randy Pitchford: A lot of different ways. There’s characters in the game. It’s kind of like how if you play shooters, how stories are told in shooters. It’s a more open-world game, though, so it’s not linear. But the characters will be there, and there’s a couple of cut-scenes. We’re not like a “movie” game where there’s a lot of passive entertainment, but there’s certainly some non-interactive moments to accentuate things.

Back-Story

RP: Yeah, we’ve thought through it. There’s a lot of backstory. We don’t beat you over the head with it, though. It’s kind of like, remember when you saw Star Wars and Han Solo said, “Hey, this is the ship that made the Kessel Run in under 12 parsecs.” And you were like, “Wait a minute, what’s a Kessel Run? And parsecs, that’s not a unit of speed, it’s a unit of distance. That’s weird.” There’s some thinking there that maybe you’ll discover it, maybe not. But it kind of makes it feel, whether you’re exposed to all of that backstory or not, the fact that it’s there makes you believe in the world, I guess. And you believe in it because the characters believe in it, and I think that’s really important when you’re doing science fiction.

Like Firefly has been a huge influence. Did you see the Firefly series?

Destructoid: Uh, of course. Definitely!

RP: Brilliant, man! The thing that sells that is that those [characters] believe it. There’s things that are part of that world that we don’t need to hear the backstory to trust that it’s there, because there’s references that help us understand that. And it also adds a bit of intrigue, and it’s kind of fun, like, “Hey, I wonder what that’s all about?” Maybe you want to dig into that backstory a little more.

Loot & Enemies - Random Drops and Planned Drops

Destructoid: Yeah, that sounds pretty incredible. Are the drops random?

RP: In a lot of cases. They’re random per what’s supposed to happen. So let’s say you’re in an area that’s generally supposed to be for a Level 5 challenge, so most of the creatures you’ll find there are Level 5 balance enemies, and the drops that will come are around that. And they’re randomized; when I say random, it’s using the procedural inputs picking from the possibilities. There are named bosses and named creatures that are more important or more difficult, and those guys we have specific loot tables for. There’s also unique guns, where designers have gone in an custom-crafted them, named them, and given them particular stats.

[MysterD]

Release dates set for Borderlands for PC, X360, and PS3:
USA -- October 20th
Internationally -- Oct. 23rd.

[idolminds]

It shall be mine.

[idolminds]

New trailer

87 Bazillion Guns!

[MysterD]

That 87 Bazillion Guns trailer was F'N awesome.
Oh, what's the song playing?

[idolminds]

(DJ?) Champion - No Heaven

Thats what I've seen people say.

[MysterD]

Thanks, Idol.
I hope that song winds up in the game somewhere.

I really think Borderlands and Dragon Age: Origins are gonna hold down their respective genres extremely well this year. Sure, there's other good-looking stuff out there this year in the RPG genre -- i.e. Divinity 2, for one -- but those two are speaking to me the most.

[MysterD]

Eurogamer
Eurogamer TV - Video Interview w/ Randy Pitchford of Gearbox on Borderlands

RPS
Rock-Paper-Shotgun Preview on Borderlands

GameSpot
GameSpot previews Borderlands - X360 Version.

[PyroMenace]

Giantbomb
Giantbomb - has a hands-on look video and interview.

[MysterD]

G4TV
Another Randy Pitchford video interview here.
This time with G4TV.

Strategy Informer
Strategy Informer - written preview.

EDIT - August 3rd, 2009:
Borderlands preview from PCGamesHardware.com that discusses the graphical features of the game.

[MysterD]

IncGamers
Video interview w/ Randy Pitchford

Rock-Paper-Shotgun
Randy Pitchford of Gearbox answers some questions from RPS.

[MysterD]

Joystiq - Impressions on Borderlands
Single Player impressions
Co-Op impressions

[Xessive]

Cool. I like the seamless drop-in and drop-out system for the co-op mode.

[MysterD]

Cool. I like the seamless drop-in and drop-out system for the co-op mode.

I do too.

I'm wondering what the copy protection will be like...

[MysterD]

Borderlands box art revealed

[Quemaqua]

Haha, okay, that's actually pretty awesome.