Borderlands DLC, Demo, and Release Discussed

Nicholas "bapenguin" Puleo July 7th, 2009 at 12:10 PM    


 

Ever since the first Art Style screenshot was leaked onto the internet, it seems Borderlands can't get itself out of the news.  That's probably on purpose - and we aren't arguing.  Shacknews sat down with Gearbox's Mikey Neumann, known as a guy who can get things, to talk about the upcoming four player co-op shooter.

Some real gems are discussed, including the game's excellent showing at E3.  Word of mouth brought it increased traffic as the show went on, and before long people were talking about what they saw.  It wasn't just how great it looked in motion, no, part of it was the randomly generated mutant enemies.  The most famous one, well it had baby arms.

Shack: But dynamically-generated foes with baby arms? Have not seen that before.

Mikey Neumann:  It's funny, the band of psychos, the midget psychos, they take enough damage and you leave them alone, they actually try to kamikaze you. They pull a grenade off and run at you. When it's like, baby-armed dude holding a grenade and running at you, it's pretty much... it's gaming bliss, really.

That certainly sounds strange.  And while it might sound like a bug, well it's anything but.  Speaking of which the game is just about feature complete, meaning Gearbox is busy squashing bugs for the game on all three platforms, getting it ready for certification.

Even though the game has three months or so to go till its October release, this puts a lot of the staff in an idle state.  Or does it?  You see there's still plenty of work for artists and level designers to do when it comes to DLC.  So while they can't change the core game, they can create new content which will be available later.  

This is where those "release week" DLC type scenarios come from.  It's the ones the internet forum posters complain about - claiming it was simply content "cut" from the final game.  I highly recommend reading that section of the interview concerning DLC, it's eye opening to hear it from a game studio's perspective.

Finally with a three month waiting period, well, you would hope for a demo to get your hands a bit dirty before release.  Sadly, it looks like that's not the case.

Mikey Neumann: We talk about a demo every day. We would love to do a demo. There's obviously factors there. If and when we do one, I don't know if it'd be pre-launch or post-launch, because ...there's a lot of factors there.

We would love to promise a demo, we can't quite yet, we just want to get the game done. That's always the hardest thing for developers to do--you never quite know how the time's going to work out. We're doing really well, but I can't promise it.

I expect we'll be hearing a lot more about Borderlands for the next three months.  

Source: Link

 Tags: playstation 3 xbox 360 4 player co-op pc borderlands interview


    N4G : News for Gamers  GamerBlips: vote it up! Share

 



14 Total Reader Comments

Agentfyre at 07:26 AM on 7.7.2009
I'd love to see some gameplay videos of Borderlands, if anyone knows where they might be on the internet? There may not be any yet...

Yep, I don't think I can get more hyped about this game.
 
Zonf86 at 07:29 AM on 7.7.2009


There were some glimpses of gameplay in the trailer from E3 I *think*. Like a few seconds in between other footage.

Dynamic baby arm enemies ftw!
 
Mrxknown_JG at 07:54 AM on 7.7.2009
The E3 video wasn't as good, I couldn't tell anything from the video since it was slow-motion and kept changing what was happening.

Not to mention whether I streamed it or watched it after I downloaded it, it was just not the best for me.
 
smurphster at 09:23 AM on 7.7.2009
IMO, to get the best feel for the game, you almost have to watch the new trailer and E3 2009 gameplay video THEN dig up the lengthy walk through they did at E3 2008, and then use your imagination to put the new artsy look over the top. the graphics look a lot different since E3 2008 but they give a pretty good taste of the gameplay (which has probably changed a bit since then).

i WAS really excited until today when i found out you can't go online w/ a split-screen buddy. arg... now i'm not sure if i'll get it or not (see borderlands thread).
 
bigmunch at 09:30 AM on 7.7.2009
I can't wait for this game but the lack of demo kind of scares me. Often devs will hesitate to put out a demo because the game isn't very good or what was promised. Oh well here's to hoping.
 
smurphster at 10:30 AM on 7.7.2009

i think in this case its just a lack of time.

besides, most games don't have demos these days.
 
roland at 11:15 AM on 7.7.2009


I wonder about the value of demos sometimes. It is the rare demo that really sells me on a game. Usually based on friends, forums, blogs and reviews (reviews are decidedly last on that list), I have a firm impression about whether or not I want a game.

The only games lately that demos have swayed me on are the XBLA, PSN and Indie PC games, the ones that are less likely to be heavily covered. I have no doubt that Borderlands will get plenty of coverage about its quality when it drops. I really think the time of AAA demos could pass and it wouldn't affect much.
 
smurphster at 11:30 AM on 7.7.2009

yes but we probably aren't the average game purchaser. i'd bet demos sway quite a few gamers. some people (especially parents) have no clue what games are even available before they browse the shelves and read the backs of games.
 
roland at 12:26 PM on 7.7.2009


Ah, this is true, I do tend to space of that the majority of people with video game systems don't visit gaming sites every day.
 
seshat at 12:36 PM on 7.7.2009
Hey smurf, where did you read that split-screen cannot go online? The IGN article says that if you want to play co-op offline you have split screen, but this doesn't mean that you cannot go online with split-screen.

I really hope this game has the split-screen option for online games!!
 
smurphster at 02:52 PM on 7.7.2009


http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/100/1001352p2.html
 
seshat at 03:54 PM on 7.7.2009
Oh, so it seems it won't be included at launch, but hopefully they'll include it as a patch. I guess I'll wait for the patch (the same way I am waiting for the patch for Sacred 2 for the PS3)

"Gearbox is working on allowing for as versatile an online setup as possible. Though split-screen co-op online isn't going to be implemented for console gamers at launch, Pitchford told us what to expect. "You can play on your system on both the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 and you can join people online or you can have a friend play with you in a split-screen scenario, but right now we're not able to bring the split-screen online. Maybe we'll be able to find a way to do that later, but that's a technical limitation with the amount of data that's going on it just can't work. That would be something that we'd love to do, and I hope people love the game so that conceivably we could invest in that and find a way."
 
smurphster at 04:02 PM on 7.7.2009
i'm definitely hoping for a patch but he's definitely not promising anything with that statement. if this game becomes a hit, i'm sure they'll be more likely to do it. if not, well then i probably don't want it anyway.
 
bigmunch at 10:15 AM on 7.8.2009
I am hoping this will settle my Diablo fix since it looks like the Too Human trilogy might be dead and I can't get my friends to buy sacred2.
 


Login to Co-Optimus to comment.



Comment

Related Games

Borderlands

Platform: Playstation 3
4-Player Online Co-Op
2-Player Local Co-Op
4-Player LAN/Ad-Hoc Co-Op

Borderlands

Platform: XBox 360
4-Player Online Co-Op
2-Player Local Co-Op
4-Player LAN/Ad-Hoc Co-Op

Borderlands

Platform: PC
4-Player Online Co-Op
4-Player LAN/Ad-Hoc Co-Op

Arcade, Gears, Halo, Rainbow 6 vegas 2. Sounds good to me. Though Virtuoso and I have some IP issues. my tags are below.
undefined 11/20 8:34 pm
You would think they would patch the USB port stuff.. Its just silly to have to unplug stuff that you usually just leave plugged
Yeah but I think it would still be cool!
Thanks for clearing that up! I probably won't buy it though.
I recently picked up a 360 after nearly five years of Warcraft, so... well, I have some catching up to do. My current game libra

846 Co-Op Games
4275 Members
1714 Reviews
8059 Ratings
Detailed Stats

 RSS Feed

 News Only Feed

 

Puleo Web Enterprises © 2009


Powered by LiquidWeb