Borderlands 2: Bigger and Better

IGN is offering a two-pages preview in which they explain why Gearbox’s sequel to their loot-heavy FPS/RPG is “bigger and better”, citing, among other things, its improved art direction and loot system as examples:

Though it’s a first-person shooter, the lure that keeps you playing is the promise of more loot. In Borderlands, that means more guns. Gearbox is taking care to make each of the fictional gun brands more distinct in Borderlands 2. “The hardcore guys really understood the differences between a Jakobs and Tediore,” said Kester, but it wasn’t clear to everyone. The goal in Borderlands 2 was not only to give each brand a distinct look, but also a linked functionality.

Take the Tediore brand, for example, which Kester described as the “disposable camera” of Borderlands 2. Instead of reloading this brand of weapon, your character will simply toss the gun away and magically pull out another. It doesn’t have to make sense, apparently, it just has to kill stuff. “It leads to another level of gameplay that’s interesting because the amount of bullets that are left in your clip is the damage it will do if you happen to hit an enemy with it. So there’s a risk-reward like do I want to throw away thirty bullets but if it hits this thing it’s going to cause that much damage, or do I want to just spend a clip and then throw the guns when the damage is done?”

The loot was great in Borderlands, but the plan for the sequel is to redesign the entire weapon system. “We actually took all the guns we made in the last game and in all honesty we basically chucked those and we started again from the ground. We didn’t want to just re-skin the guns from the last game. Every single gun in this game is different from the last one.”

In creating the new system, more opportunity was opened up to align weapon functionality and make with on-screen appearance. “The system itself works relatively similar but now we have a lot more components to it. We can add a lot more variants. Sometimes they can just be purely visual like there’s a bunch of nails sticking out, but a lot of times that might add to the melee damage dealt with the weapon. We’re trying to make sure all the things we’re adding aren’t just there for show but there is gameplay to support them. We felt that the last game, an assault rifle kind of looked like an assault rifle but you weren’t sure what its attributes were going to be until you fired it. We’re really trying to make sure that that feels right even at a glance. It’s much easier to tell how effective a gun is going to be at this or that due to the amount of barrels it has on it or just the size of the clip. There’s still the tech effects from the last game too and some more surprises as far as that goes.”