Always good to get confirmation of a date. Bring on October.

 

Cannot wait till Oct 10th, its a good thing I signed up for an online class more time to play .

 

I can't wait any longer. I need it to be October! There are so many good games coming out soon.

 

Bloody must-haves coming out right after my birthday.

 

nick... its oct 20th. at least thats what @gearboxsoftware says

http://twitter.com/GearboxSoftware/status/2785659298
http://www.gamespot.com/news/6213803.ht ... tory;title

anyway... super-pumped, but still bummed about no online splitscreen

 

Ah crap. Fixed the date.

 

This game is gonna be awesome =o

 

I must be living under a rock because I've never heard about this game until now. Huxley seems silly by comparison. I wonder how Borderlands will compare to Rage.

Regardless, the game looks incredible. Thanks for keeping us updated.

 

You're obviously new here if you don't hear me frothing at the mouth every time this game is mentioned
It's Diablo! With guns! 5 million of them!

 

his post count is 6... must be new... we've captured another one! he'll never leave! *evil laugh*

i was pumped about huxley but that died off a long time ago. borderlands looks really awesome. haven't seen much about rage though

 

I hope this game is good, I don't want the hype to turn out to be wasted.

 

An AI that can design it's own weapons systems! This is the beginning of the end, Skynet is coming!

 

But it's not perfect. They had to cut something like 50 million guns or something because they were stupid.

 

honestly i think they're just hyping it. diablo and dungeon siege (off the top of my head) did the same thing but at a smaller scale if you think about it. they just have a subset of different bonuses that can be applied to a base weapon depending on where you are in the world. borderlands just took it to the next level and added visual differences in them (long barrel, large magazine, scope etc). still, the variety is impressive. i like that they have different manufacturers and materials they prefer plus all the different powerups, ammunition, size/capacity, etc.

@hobo: only 50 million? that's a shame

 

I think I might not get it. They cut 50 million guns. There can't be any variety left! Just 5 million guns? No thanks. I'll stick with Halo 1. You only need one weapon.

 

The North American version of Huxley has been in closed beta since June.

Rage looks to be incredible. Check these out.

I hope Borderlands is nothing like Diablo (isometric click fest). From what you guys are saying (especially about the guns & Diabloesque), I'm reminded of the hype that surrounded Hellgate: London. That game turned out to be such a stinker.

 

wow... check this out...
http://www.gamespot.com/ps3/action/bord ... ailer?hd=1

 

I think this will make it easier for the less experienced RPG stat comaprison players like myself. I've always had trouble understanding what is better than what, and by doing it visually I think this might help me out.

@Old Guy: Although details are scarce, Brink is another game to keep an eye on over the coming months.

 

50 Bazillion guns? That's more than 5 craptons!

 

wasn't it 87 bazillion? is that more than eleventy-billion? anyway, now they're just being ridiculous. i wonder what the actual number is (if they even know).

i also like "the RPG and FPS made a baby" quote... and the dancing robot. i mean its a dancing robot! can't get much better than that.

@Old Guy: i meant to say my excitement about huxley died off, not huxley itself. and the comparison to diablo is mostly because of all the loot.

 

You were 37 bazillion guns out - that's quite a number to be wrong by .

 

I appreciate you posting that, but...

After watching the trailer, I'm a very disappointed with the game's tone. I was hoping it would be an apocalyptic survival / scavenger game with gangs & factions rather than a cartoonish monster grind. The outlined style of the character design is a huge turnoff. I really hope the vehicles are integrated into the combat and story rather than just being tacked on as an afterthought.

And the "gun porn" angle to Borderlands is moronic. Ten moves into a game of chess you're already at 590 trillion potential permutations. What separates a good player from a great one is being able to filter out the pertinent moves from all the static.

I've seen this gimmick used before, and it's almost always there to mask a lack of depth in the game's story or design. Gearbox should have pushed it from the angle of customization & individualism rather than advertising the number of combinations. Who cares--the cutesy angle really distracts from what could be an amazing IP.

It's a shame, because I can see that feature being used to its fullest potential, rewarding creative players by giving them many alternate ways to solve missions. Unfortunately, this isn't going to happen in 2009.

Thankfully they are focusing on co-op and foregoing the obligatory adversarial modes. I hope there are quests built around the unique skills of each character rather than just increasing the hp & damage of mobs.



Yes, pardon me if it seemed like I was correcting you. I was just letting people know Huxley is still around since it's been off the radar for so long.

I think Borderlands looks and feels more like PSO than Diablo. It's definitely a console RPG based off what's shown in the trailer.

Hopefully Brink will deliver...a Splash Damage / Bethesda joint project sounds extraordinary. Thanks for mentioning it, Zonf86.

 

i understand your point about the guns but they're not all supposed to be useful. thing about all the crap weapons you pick up and sell in RPGs. its the same thing. i think gearbox is making the mistake of hyping the wrong features. yes, its impressive for an FPS to have that many guns, but what about an RPG? i don't know if anyone ever counts the thousands of permutations of weapons in RPGs. it doesn't matter because you'll just loot and sell 95% of them.

they have said several times that playing as different classes will vastly improve your effectiveness. it also sounds like there will be class-centered quests but they haven't talked much about quests at all.

there's a lot they haven't talked about and i hope that changes soon. i'm excited about this game's potential and i really hope it delivers. i've been waiting for the RPS genre to really get going. i've always liked RPGs but i've hated that i don't have control over the action. you can only tell your character what attack/spell to use, not where to aim, and moving to dodge an attack doesn't do anything. there's too much chance in RPGs and not enough skill.

 

I guess what bothers me most is the notion that Borderlands is creating a new genre. FPS/RPG's have been around for a long time. System Shock 2 had online co-op and it will be a decade old next month (original goes back fifteen years). There were a handful of games in the same vein circa 2000: Deus Ex, Wheel of Time, Gothic, Anachronox, Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption, etc. If you want to get technical, they go all the way back to Stygian Abyss from '92 (sans guns).

There was no need for a new term since the industry has been calling them FPS/RPG's for years. RPS should stand for "Role Playing Sandbox." This kind of marketing crap is lame and has nothing to do with making a good game.

I'm sorry to come off as critical, but I've seen this happen over and over again. Maybe if I expect to be disappointed I'll enjoy Borderlands more.

 

I wouldn't blame the developers. Have you seen the ad for Dragon Age: Orgins that only focuses on blood and violence and has Marilyn Manson music? If you looked at the forums after that came out, the developers made sure everyone knew that was the market department's decision, and not the opinion of the developers. Is this dev team happy about having so many guns? Sure. Gun sex? Nope, that's the marketing department.

 

From the Destructoid article bapenguin used in the original post:

...

RPS stands for role playing shooter, and it's sort of a term that Randy Pitchford, Gearbox President, coined at E3 this year.

Destructoid: I think you guys are calling it a “role-playing shooter,” or an RPS.

Pitchford: Yeah, because that’s kind of what it is. It’s a shooter and there’s role-playing stuff. Yeah, it was really tough. Going to E3, we had these boxes we had to fill out -- little check boxes for the title. You know, there’s a check box for “racing” and there’s a check box for “action” and there’s a check box for “shooter” and there’s a check box for “role playing.” But we didn’t have a check box, so we didn’t know what to do there. [laughs"> We were like, “We need to make a new check box!”

...

Like I said, marketing bullshit. It's an action RPG...and it's not the first to include vehicles.

 

who said it was the first to include vehicles? that's preposterous

ok, maybe it's not the first to blend the lines but they've really mixed elements from both. i've only played a few of the games you listed so you'll have to bear with me. don't take this as fanboy-ism by any means i just want to test your knowledge because frankly i don't know what features most of those games have.

do any of those games have all or most of these?
[list">
[*">1st person perspective[/*:m">
[*">main and side quests[/*:m">
[*">lots of weapons/items with different abilities[/*:m">
[*">4 character classes[/*:m">
[*">skill trees unique to classes[/*:m">
[*">random enemies w/ random abilities[/*:m">
[*">vendor system (buy/sell stuff)[/*:m">
[*">vehicles[/*:m">
[*">4 player co-op[/*:m">[/list:u">
there are games i can think of that have some of those but have never really satisfied my desire for an FPS/RPG blend. borderlands looks to have a nice blend and that's why i'm excited. yeah, its a bit cartoony and maybe the guns/enemies etc are over the top, but we're just catching a glimpse of that in the videos. its hard to tell how it will play out.

i don't think randy pitchford ever said they're the first "RPS" but that's just a term he's been using. what he's said is that they've done some revolutionary things that he's overly hyped about but he's also afraid that people might not like it

 

Here's my problem...

[and I didn't want to get into this, because I currently have no way of backing it up (though I certainly wouldn't if I were still in the industry); but, I think it's relevant to my point of view, so I'll share:">

I knew Randy when he was a level designer at 3D Realms (and knew of him prior to that from a few BBS's). He struck me as a nice, clever guy but not someone who was very technically talented. In fact, he reminded me a lot of John Romero. If you look at their careers, the two of them have very similar histories. For him to be saying what he is about Borderlands after a three year development cycle is reminiscent of the catastrophe that became Daikatana. The hype is nowhere near equivalent, but that trailer (and the linked G4 vid in the other thread) is identical to the crap John did & said when he was "running" Ion storm [into the ground">.

There are many people in the gaming industry who've become bigwigs by piggybacking onto the brilliant work of the talented minority. I've seen this happen with Q&A and level designers time and time again. They weasel their way into a position for which they're unqualified, someone else figures out they haven't much of a clue at what they're doing, dissension arises and cliques form, the project either ends up stinking [Daikatana"> or falls through completely [Prax War">, then they mutiny with all the talent and form a new studio in which they get to play the big cheese. Wash, rinse, repeat. American McGee is yet another example, but I don't want to turn this thread into a laundry list.

This is the case with Gearbox. Their bread and butter are mediocre Half-Life expansions and those horribly linear Brothers in Arms games. Speaking of which, there were many promises made by Randy about the co-op in the BiA series, and most of them never came to fruition. The first two on the original Xbox were a definite let down compared to how much they were hyped by the developers prior to release.

I'm sorry to be playing devil's advocate. I'd like for this game to be wonderful because I love a good co-op experience just as much as the next guy. But if you take a close look at Randy's history, he's not someone with the best track record when it comes to delivering (especially considering Prax War...but I won't go there). In fact, he should be thankful every day he wakes up that he bet on Zelsnack and hopped off the Broussard Hindenburg. I feel terrible for the loyal diehards who let George ruin their careers.

...

To answer your question, smurphster, no one game I mentioned had all of those features; I listed them because they were innovative first person action RPG's. System Shock 2 had most (to a degree--i.e. 3 instead of 4 branching character classes), which is very good for a ten year old game. Basically I'm frustrated that this genre never really took off until now, and that all we're getting is a glut of apocalyptic titles. Sure, they're fun, but the market for them is going to become as supersaturated as zombie & WWII shooters.

I made the vehicles comment because Pitchford acts like Borderlands is an innovative IP, despite it being rebadged potpourri cashing in on the ignorance of younger gamers.

If Gearbox can pull this off, I'll be impressed...definitely an eat your own hat scenario. I hope you understand why I'm skeptical when it comes to this studio's propaganda.

And on the slim chance you ever read this, Duval, do you realize what a complete tool you sound like "coining" the term RPS? FOAD, cluebie.

 

oh i totally understand. i've been caught by the hype train of games before and i feel like i've wised up. i'm trying hard to take this one for what it is and i'm only excited because of the features i listed. i'm not pretending that this is the first "RPS", but it blends more features from both genres than any other game before it. i think we're seeing post-apocalyptic games because it lends itself well to RPGs (on your own, against the forces of nature, lots of black market activity, and people generally needing something done) plus modern(ish) weapons that lend themselves to FPSs. i hope developers start finding new grounds for RPSs though (halo RPG? lol).

i really liked brothers in arms (on PC) even though the controls were funky and it was, as you say, horribly linear. but so are CoD, halo, and GoW games. what i liked about BiA was how polished the game was (for the most part) and its drama war movie feel. plus the squad interaction was fantastic even if the controls were a bit odd. i got bored of halflife games pretty quick so i don't think i played any of the gearbox ones. i don't have much else to go by so i'm just hoping gearbox will impress me like they did with brothers in arms.

as for randy, i've always felt he wasn't very strong on the technical side. he reminds me of a guy i used to work with. he knows how things should work and is good at being the middle ground between me (technical) and the users, but he doesn't add all that much measurable value to the end product. he just does a lot of busy work that i could do but my time is better spent designing/developing. obviously we need all types of people in business so i don't discount randy's skills in business, but after hearing what you've said, i wonder if he's not in the right position. this is slightly off topic but many people at the executive level of businesses weren't deserving of many of the positions they passed through to get to where they are. that doesn't mean they shouldn't be where they are, but what it does mean is maybe businesses need to re-think their HR model. most businesses have one route up to the top, if you move sideways you're usually losing ground (sometimes salary) and wasting valuable time. i'm sure randy has some valuable skills, but maybe he's not being utilized quite right so he rubs people the wrong way. you probably know better than i do.

i'm being optimistic and trying not to be ignorant about this game. it has a lot of features that i hope are implemented the way we all expect but i know that is not always the case. one thing i am very thankful for is that they've said there's no online split screen months before release. other studios may not have mentioned that before release and really pissed a lot of gamers off.

i'm typing this while feeding my daughter a bottle on my lap so i apologize for typos, bad grammar, missing your points etc

 

This is some very good discussion, gentlemen. These types of conversations are why I love this forum.

 

one more thing i forgot to mention (and once again, kid on my lap with a bottle)... randy seems like he's very sincerely excited about this game and so passionate about gaming in general. i have no clue how he is to work with but if his interviews are anything to go by, he must be a huge catalyst for gearbox. have you ever worked with someone that is so passionate and motivated it almost makes you sick? that rubs off on everyone and everyone benefits. like i said, i don't know how he is to work with so i could be way off base. if borderlands completely flops, my opinion will probably change. i haven't been following his history too closely so you probably know better.