Borderlands: The Secret Preview of General Knoxx

After one good one and one bad one, Gearbox is just about done developing the third downloadable add-on for its 2009 release, Borderlands. The Secret Armory of General Knoxx, however, seems poised to make its predecessors look extremely shallow by comparison. I recently took a trip up to the 2K Marin offices to talk with Paul Hellquist, Game Design Director at Gearbox. We went through a few of the different parts of this new quest and, as a guy that's had a level 50 character sort of languishing around since the original retail release, I'm definitely looking forward to playing through it.

Of course, I could play through it right now. We left that meeting with a pair of hard drives containing level 50 characters and an early version of the DLC. But those characters aren't my character. Playing through that stuff with a basic Brick or Mordecai would be almost completely pointless, especially now that the level cap has been raised to 61. Apparently getting that done is a lot harder than just jacking up the number of levels and hoping for the best. With another 11 skill points to be earned, Gearbox claims those high-level characters start getting pretty overpowered. As a result, the developers have gone back in and made changes to the skill tree, tweaking a few percentages here and there to prevent your vault hunter from getting a little too good at killing everything.

Speaking of vaults and the hunting of them, the General Knoxx plot takes place directly after the game's main story. Once you've opened the vault and taken care of the game's final boss, you can start getting missions in T-Bone Junction, the first new zone you'll visit. Here you'll find Scooter, who's set up a new shop and is working on getting you some new vehicles. You'll also find out that you're the second-most-wanted "criminal" on Pandora, at least according to the Atlas Corporation. Atlas, it would seem, is returning to Pandora to take it back from lawless scum like yourself, so expect to see all sorts of new Crimson Lance enemies, like the Rocketeer, which, as you might expect, has a jet pack. There's also a medic, which will toss out a turret that heals nearby enemies. And a shock trooper, which attempts to roll you up quickly with electrical attacks. The enemy variety, from what we saw, looks pretty good.

Along with Atlas comes General Knoxx, who isn't too happy about his assignment and just sort of wants you dead as soon as possible. It sounds like you'll be fighting your way in his direction for main plot, with a grip of side quests thrown in to give you even more to worry about. At the end of it all lies a bunch of Atlas technology. Yeah, new guns. The DLC will offer one new rarity class, along with some new gun parts that allow for more unique effects. Players that don't purchase the DLC will still be able to see the new weapons, thanks to a patch that'll hit at the same time.

So new guns, new vehicles, a raised level cap, and a plot that picks up where the main game left off. When you spell it out like that, The Secret Armory of General Knoxx sounds like a pretty good idea. It'll be out for $10 on PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC soon. Be sure to watch our video interview for more info.