Borderlands

Gunplay for fun and profit
One tasty treat in Borderlands is a massive random item system that will keep your characters arming and re-arming as they grow. The 'Gear Builder' AI behind the item generator holds a potential offering of millions of weapons. Manufacturers, materials, weapon classifications, components, and the rest are all there to structure how the AI generates its weapon selections, and it can generate new items for loot drops in real-time as needed.

"There are some unique weapons, though," says Pitchford. "Some specific weapons that our human weapons designers have gone in and spec'd out and named and such. Those tend to be the most epic and valuable weapons in the game. We do anticipate that some of the really rare stuff is going to become very valuable."

And where there's value and there's co-op and multiplayer interaction, there's going to be some trade lust. While things will run pretty free and easy at first, Pitchford sees that they will need to watch how things evolve.

"You can work out trades with your friends and toss weapons onto the ground for others to pick up," he says. "If it gets out of hand with controversy or if the economy becomes really substantial, we'll have to look at doing updates or something to bring new features in-line with priorities of what's important to our customers."

The other possibility of a random item system is when the wheels of randomisation come up all 7s, and deliver a player some kind of uber-gun. You can't help but wonder what Gearbox has done to manage this potential for imbalance.

"Balancing the game IS quite a challenge, but with challenge comes opportunity," says Pitchford. "There are imbalances that can happen and to some extent, that's okay. If you get lucky and find an over powered weapon from some poor bandit you killed, well, you earned that - have fun!"

Changing times
If you've followed the development of Borderlands for more than a few months, you'll have seen by now that there was a significant shift in the art style used in the game. Earlier on, the game looked much like many other shooters. Gritty, grey, brown, and... did I say gritty? When the new style emerged just before E3 Borderlands made an instant shift from 'yet another' territory to a real head turner. Where did this shift in direction come from?

"The whole set of events that led to the art direction change was crazy. It almost didn't happen. I was going to shut it down," says Pitchford. "Here's what happened, as best as I can recall."

"We made some decisions in 2008 to make the game bigger and better. For example, we added a fourth character and we really expanded out the world a lot. We also committed to a robust skills system with the characters and some other details that really have brought Borderlands into its own as a game. But with those decisions came moving the game's launch into 2009. Much of the art was finished and I think some of the artists were thinking, 'What are we going to do?' A few artists, including one of my business partners, Brian Martel, were looking at the original concept art for the game and some of the early inspirations for the visuals and began tinkering with how to render that kind of look in real time."

"At first, I didn't know what they were doing, only that they were being radical and that the implications of what they proposed was going to change the art direction entirely. Brian and I agreed that they could work on a prototype for a few weeks and then we'd look at it and make a decision. When I went into the meeting, I expected to shut them down. Whatever it was, and I hadn't seen it yet, had to be too crazy. We were in production, after all. When I saw it, I was immediately struck. It looked awesome. I was in."

Looking at the size and scope of the world of Borderlands, along with drop-in, drop-out co-op options, there's a lot more in store than just a straight up single player game. Pitchford explains that the main mission chains offer gameplay on par with a longer first person shooter experience, plus side missions and optional challenges that offer more gameplay than the entire main-line of missions. And with four unique characters on offer, you can spend additional time playing and building up each of these individual characters. For even more fun, when you've completed the entire game you can start again in what Pitchford describes as a 'new game plus' mode for an extra challenge.

And then, for those who love to fight, there's the PvP.

"There are a few ways for people to engage in combat," says Pitchford. "You can challenge another player to a duel anywhere in the world, for starters. Or, you can head into one of the arenas and set up more organised matches of deathmatch or team deathmatch in battlegrounds that are designed for competitive multiplayer."

If all goes well for Borderlands at the registers, this won't be the last we'll see of this world either.

"If people want more, I think we'll be excited to offer some future expansions to the game. We'll have to make those decisions when it comes time, but I know there are a lot of people at Gearbox that are excited about that."