PAX Prime 2011: Charting Borderlands 2

i still, i still need to play the first one D:

so ready

That sounds like a better Borderlands but gotta wait to see how it actually looks and plays.

yes please

Borderlands had potential, but I felt that it fell short in nearly every aspect. 
 
The itemization was terrible. Forget the fact that there were very few truly unique or crazy weapons, there just weren't enough item types to keep things interesting, and you found useful things at such a slow rate. I hope the sequel has more meaningful loot that is discovered at a better pace. It could also use multiple traditional armor slots so you have more to keep an eye out for, which would in turn emulate Diablo's feeling of constant improvement. 
 
Story and characters? Grating.  The humor was terrible and delivered in such a way that it felt like the game couldn't let a bit of halfway decent writing go by without shoving your face in it repeatedly and asking you if you got how clever it was.
 
The environment was surprisingly dull. This was an alien landscape, yet there were very few memorable locations. They're mixing things up in terms of ice and lava and whatnot, but I really hope the actual layouts and panoramas are interesting.  There were also too few enemy types populating each area.
 
Skills never felt right. Having more creative skills (whether activated or passive buffs with interesting effects) and fewer stat increases would go a long way to making your character feel unique and rewarding.
 
I also hope they change the way looting works. In FPS games, picking up loot is much more tedious than when viewed from above since you have to manually run to each and every item. Money and health should automatically be vacuumed up when the player gets within a relatively wide radius, and you should be able to remotely vacuum items by aiming at them and hitting a collect button. This would also help in those rare moments that an enemy dies and pops its loot down the side of a cliff.
 
That said, the act of shooting felt fine and the art worked, even though it became a little dreary and samey after a while. I'm hoping that Borderlands 2 feels like a significant step forward rather than more of the same with more story and a few new textures.

First Borderlands was boring and monotonous. Got to the Rak hive before giving up on it. Let's hope this one doesn't suck as much.

Wow. Recording the sound must have been bloody challenging.

Man, I'm definitely going Gun Serker.

Wow there are a lot of positive comments up in here.

Duel snipers sounds silly to me.

Great interview Jeff, burned out on the last game after 15-20 hours of playing it but I will check this one out for sure

I laughed at the idea that players would have a 'strong connection' with the old characters. They were a skill set and a character model.

Oh my god, dual rocket launchers.  That is my all-time dream.

Dual wield sniper rifles? CHALLENGE ACCEPTED.

Great jo-

Nevermind

Borderlands had a decent framework but wasn't a good game, Borderlands 2 sounds great however.

Bastion music!

@crusader8463:

You have to open your ports. It's the cross a PC gamer often has to bear, but it's not that big of a deal...

First Borderlands was boring and monotonous. Got to the Rak hive before giving up on it. Let's hope this one doesn't suck as much.

dual snipers...

First thought. Goldeneye cheats.

This might be late night crazies talking...but I feel like the video should have paused at some point and their t-shirts should've battled for t-shirt supremacy!!! MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA     -_- I love Borderlands.

Was there equip-able armor, because if there wasn't then I don't give a fuck.

Very excited for this game hurry the fuck up 2012.

Sexual tyrannosaurus is a reference to Predator.  
 
Chewing tobacco makes you into one.

@crusader8463 said:

@weeman105: It was impossible to play it online. I had bought a 4 pack on Steam to play with people, and not a single one of us could even log on let alone get a game going. Took about 6-8 months before they finally released a patch to get it somewhat working, but by then we were all too pissed off at the stupid thing to even play it.They never even acknowledged the game released completely and utterly broken, let alone apologized for it. So I refuse to support a company that thinks it's ok to screw over their customers like that, and it's going to take a fuck of a lot before I will even consider buying this. From what I read other places as well, the UI and feel of the game was pretty terrible too.

Same experience here. Fuck em. Played at a mates house on the 360 and it was a much better experience, shame that couldn't of happened with the pc version.

@crusader8463: What was broken about it?

Great job, Jeremy.

@Dread612 said:

Eh, more Borderlands, uhhh, no thank you. The first one was kinda of boring. I played about 8 hrs of it and I must have killed 100,000 Skags. Hmm how to make this game even dumber. Dual sniper rifles? Good job.

Seems like you stayed in one spot for 8 hours and tried to level up. Great job Jeremy!

man i can't wait for borderlands 2 to come out i sunk so many hours into the first one and all of the improvements he's said was shit i definitely hoped they would fix

i've got 1750/1750 on the first one and i'm still playing it.
 
stupid ass game is impossible to stop playing.

After getting tricked into buying the broken POS the game was the first time around, it's going to take a lot to get me to buy this one.

So glad they've improved the driving and environment diversity, my only real gripes with the original.

OMG Jeff you had him so lined up for a "first or second half" follow up on that 2012 release date! :D

New characters, vehicles, abilities, environments. All this sounds good, but come on guys.. still no armor equipment? I am kinda disappoint.

Gripe alert:

I'm really cheesed at the BL2 PAX booth design. They were the only (or nearly the only) set-up with no footage view-able by people outside their booth. With only a one-day pass it was impossible to hit everything, and as nice as a stage demo can be I really didn't want to stand in a 2-hour line to not get hands-on with BL2 with so much playable stuff there. Other games which I didn't play I was able to look over the shoulders of players, or watch the big screen demo while standing in another line, but the giant Gearbox box was sealed tighter than The Vault.

Still looking forward to this game, though.

Waaambulance, AWAY!!!!!!

Sounds like they took a good game and made it better.

My Ready is Body.

Are there gonna be guns in this one?

@Rob_NYY: I kind of agree, kind of don't. Your right about singleplayer, but not so much in coop.

Can't wait, really. This is kind of the perfect sequel game 

No mention of additional active skills, doi. Shooting Spiderants in the ass gets pretty tedious, please spice things up some more.

Borderlands co-op was an amazing experience for me. Looking forward to this!

@Tardcore said:

sexual tyrannosaurus?

I can't believe I'm saying this, but I think "you're not gonna get stuck on every little rock anymore" is one of the most exciting improvements to this game that I've heard so far. That shit was super frustrating in the first game. Really want to see some gameplay footage.

The vehicles better be more durable. Nothing was worse in the first game then having your car get 2 shotted and dying.

Can't wait!

Super pumped!