Christoffer Radsby

Gaming Weekly W43: Borderlands

Monday, October 19, 2009

Borderlands is a First Person Shooter and Role-playing hybrid, it’s much like Diablo 2 with a lot of guns. The game is developed by Gearbox and is a game for looters. You play as one of four main characters running around in a big world called Pandora alone or together with up to three friends. You kill monsters and humans as you go, you loot and get experience to level up. That’s what it’s all about and the formula seems to work for many.

Questions questions questions

So since the game is so big and there are a lot of questions circling around, I thought that I would try and explain some of the questions before the games EU release on Friday.

What is the world like?

The game takes place in Pandora, a planet once populated by many different people and corporations, now it’s abandoned and a dangerous wastelands. It also acts as the home to bandits, thugs and creatures of all different sizes.
There are various terrain such as desert, swamp and snow-like environments. There are also small towns and camps scattered about, the world is also very big and at least 50 square km, I believe Oblivion was about 41 square km, there will be a fast-travel feature, but hey, if you don’t use the function you’ll get more hours out of the game

The game features a day and night cycle, the cycle lasts thirty minutes and it is said that the moon of Pandora is the cause for the quick change. There are around 30 story missions and 120 side missions. It is said to be 15-20 hours, over a 100 hours if you try to get everything and try to play it through with every character.

The dialog in the game is linear, this means no dialog trees to chose answers from, the game features an open-ended kind of environment so the game never ends, you can keep playing even after you’ve completed the game.

How does the generated monsters work?

There will be a lot of monsters in the game though only limited base categories of monsters, do not fret though they all vary in size, shape, shielding and weaponry/ability. You might meet some very large monsters in the game and you will also encounter “Badasses” which are extra-tough versions of the normal base categories, they also yield better rewards.

The enemies does not scale to your level, weaker and stronger enemies reside in different areas, if you wander into the wrong area you are most likely to get some monster tentacles up your b-hole. Since monsters exists to give the player a challenge the players might not be awesome enough to keep up and ends up dead. The penalty of losing all of your HP is that you go into a “Last stand”-type mode, where you’ll be on your knees unable to move. From here two things can happen, if you score enough damage with parting shots you can revive yourself and regain some health OR a teammate can manually revive you. If neither succeeds you’ll be revived at the last checkpoint and lose some of your precious money.

What about generated weapons?

The game is said to have over one million different type of guns, there are plenty of weaker weapons but he more elite or rare weapons all have a different colors and names. There will be plenty of element-based weaponry, causing fire/electrical/acid damage etc. There are eight basic categories of guns, pistols, revolvers, shotguns, submachine guns, combat rifles, sniper rifles, rocket/grenade launchers, and alien weaponry. All these basic categories + different damage types and more creates a lot of variety to the guns. No gun will be the same, but many similar to each other I believe.

The weaponry does not degrade though ammo can be scarce, you’ll have to buy or find it. OR use some of the class skills to get a hold of more ammo. There are also a lot of different kinds of modifications, we got shield modifications. A shield absorb damage like Halo, the mod determines the shields attributes. Grenade mods add special effects to your grenades, and there are also class mods, which are class-specific equips with unique effects on your class. You can aim down the sights with weapons, scoped or not.

Character types

* Brick (The Berserker) Bricks weapon of choice is explosive weapons and his fists.
Brick is a tanking character, who can be trained to excel with explosives, launchers and damage resistance. Oh yeah he also get some sweet close-range fist-to-face action skills.

* Lilith (The Siren) Lilith is a master of incendiary, shock and corrosive guns.
She is a spell-caster, who can daze enemies, reduce their speed and accuracy. Use Area effect attacks and take advantage of elemental weaponry more efficiently. The also has phase-walk ability, which allows her to become invisible and create damaging shockwaves upon activation and deactivation.

* Mordecai (The Hunter)The sniper and gunslinger, also carries a blade.
A sniper-class, excels with snipers, revolvers and guns. Acquires a hawk-like pet called bloodwing which can be used to attack enemies.

* Roland (The Soldier) the soldier of the group. Uses Combat Rifles and Shotguns.
A balanced character who can be trained to excel with varied weaponry, healing and ammo drops. He can deploy a defensive turrent to help the players take down their enemies. The turrent can also be used as a cover.

- Skilltrees
There are three different skilltrees for each character class, it’s up to the player to put his rewarded skillpoints to good use. To play the character he/she wants to play. Each skill can be boosted up to five points to enhance the effectiveness of the skill. Once 5 points are allotted to any combination of tier one of the skilltree the second tier of that particular path opens up. This forces players to specialize, and it will give some variation when meeting other players playing the same character.

Vehicular Combat

Yep, there will be vehicles which will be customizable with a variety of mounted weapons. Vehicles can be spawned and modified at different stations around the world. Many of them has multiple seats for the co-op action and the different seats can be swapped without having to stop the vehicle.

General questions

I NEED GORE, is there gore in this game?
Yes, there are some gore, much like Left 4 Dead.

Multiplayer questions

- Can everybody play as the same character co-op?
Yes everybody can play as the same character, each character can also change their characters color-palette. The aesthetic customization is limited though.

- Can you play with bots?
There seem to be no bots in this game, this means no co-op together with three other bots or bots to fill in for you and your buddies.

- Is there splitscreen co-op?
Yes there is splitscreen co-op but only offline, the players can’t join a game online. There are up to four player co-op online though.

- So I’m playing my game and my friend drops in along with all his experience, guns and loot from his game. Does he take all the loot and experience back to his game after we have played?
Yes, you take all the stats and equipment back to your game, online or offline.

- How does the quest-progress work?
You are tied to the host quest progress, like Diablo 2. If the host has completed a quest in his game, the quest can’t be completed again until you create a newgame or continue a new game+ (keeping your experience, stats, equip etc on a new game)

Does more players = more monsters = more loot?
Yes, the loot isn’t necessarily better though, there is just more of it.

- Can players split up and take different paths to the goal?
Yes you can, though it seems to be limited to the zone the players are currently in. I don’t know how it works actually.

- Can a higher level player give a higher level gun to a lower level player?
Yes, but all the equipment seem to have level requirements.

- If I’m level 20 and my friend is level 1 and we join up and play together, do I have to wait for him to level up to get exp?
No, you both get EXP.

- Any player vs player action?
Yes but limited, at any time a player in the group can challenge another player to a duel. The duel will happen on the spot in the current environment.

- How is loot divided?
It isn’t, it’s free-for-all.

-What is the levelcap?
The level cap seem to be around level 50.

Trailers

Check out some gameplay “here”. The visual style is pretty awesome.

Gearbox_Software
Gearbox is an American video game development company in Texas, it was founded in 1999 by five previous members of Rebel Boat Rocker: Randy Pitchford, a defunct developer. Gearbox started out developing expansions to Half-life. In 2005 the launched their own original game, Brothers in Arms, and later on Brothers in Arms Earned in Blood. They have much experience working with first-person shooters and they also are creating the game Aliens: Colonial Marines which is said to have its’ release after the the new Alien VS Predator game in 2010.