Borderlands Preview

The editors at Play.tm recently spent some time with Gearbox’s FPS/RPG Borderlands, and have used the opportunity to conjure up a preview of the game.

An FPS with RPG elements is billed, Pitchford stating that the game will make full use of expanding XP alongside a full skill tree, as players work through the world.

Moving through this faux-Western future landscape, players will find themselves collecting loot from downed foes, while a full day and night cycle should really set-off some of the game’s arid desert settings. Vehicles will be essential for traversing what promises to be an expansive open-world, and Gearbox are proud to inform us that Borderlands will include more guns than any game… ever.

This latter feat is apparently achieved via an automated weapon generation system which combines multiple components to create new kinds of gun – which presumably also leaves Gearbox with a serious task on their hands when it comes to balancing. Quantity is clearly important to the game’s developers, and we’re promises a veritable smorgasbord of missions – which will be story-context appropriate, and delivered to the player via NPCs you’ll come across in the game world. The previously mentioned vehicles, like the guns, will come in various shapes and sizes, and the ride we’re shown takes the form of a desert buggy, complete with gun turret.