Borderlands 2 Will Be Insanely Well-Armed

[Jeremy Wilkinson]

Borderlands 2 Will Be Insanely Well-Armed

Gearbox's new shooter has so many guns, it can't even begin to count them all.

Thanks to its random generation system, Borderlands had a ridiculous number of weapons. In fact, if you were to combine every other FPS released across the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, you wouldn't come close to Borderlands' 17.75 million guns, a figure that earned the game a Guinness World Record. Now, that towering achievement looks set to be overshadowed by its successor.

Randy Pitchford, the head of Gearbox Software, has revealed that Borderlands 2 will probably repeat its predecessor's accomplishment by having more weapon permutations than every other shooter this generation, Borderlands included. "Probably" is the operative word here, as Pitchford hasn't yet counted the possibilities. He went on to say that beyond a certain point the number itself becomes insignificant, remarking that "players should feel there are many different types of guns, not just slight variations."

Pitchford said that this was mainly possible due to a gradually-increasing budget. Initially Borderlands 2 was planned to be about as large as the original, but as time went on and sales of Borderlands snowballed, the investment initially given to the title doubled. The final result is a game twice as large as was originally intended, both in its scope and content.

As with the previous title, there's very little chance that players will ever experience the full range of items on offer. Between the insane number of weapons and the recently-announced "Badass" system [http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-07-13-borderlands-2-badass-system-has-infinite-levels-of-progression] that offers infinite character progression, the game seems focused on keeping players interested for a long time to come.

Borderlands 2 will be available this September on PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

Source: Eurogamer [http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-07-16-how-many-weapons-are-in-borderlands-2]

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[Falterfire]

I am so very very happy that he took time to note that more guns is unimportant if they're all slight variations. After all, technically you can add 100,000 guns just by having every combination of pistols with every whole number of damage between 1 and 1000 and accuracy between 1 and 100.

 

[Qitz]

Oh I hope so. I loved Borderlands but the fact that you only have so many types of guns to play with wasn't as fun. Granted the Helix Rocketlaunchers were fun but I would have loved to have a Grenade Launcher or some such.

COME FASTER SEPTEMBER I NEEDS MAH BORDERLANDS 2!

 

[Weaver]

I really hated this statement from the first borderlands, and I hate it now. There are just base weapon types that, sometimes, have physical modifications and different stats. It's a randomized system; these aren't designed weapons.

Giving me a gun that's green and a gun that's blue, that fires the same way and maybe does different amounts of damage, is not a different gun in my opinion.

 

[Dreadman75]

Day one purchase, I'm not even gonna try and hide it! The more I hear about this game the better and better is sounds.

Do we have the future GOTY 2012 on our hands?

 

[Waaghpowa]

All those randomly generated weapons and I'll still probably get stuck with the shittiest of the shittiest stat combinations like I am with every game.

 

[Frank_Sinatra_]

I really hated this statement from the first borderlands, and I hate it now. There are just base weapon types that, sometimes, have physical modifications and different stats. It's a randomized system; these aren't designed weapons.

Giving me a gun that's green and a gun that's blue, that fires the same way and maybe does different amounts of damage, is not a different gun in my opinion.

/thread

I totally agree. Just because it looks different in color and a slight damage/effect change does not make it a different gun.
It's like changing the barrel of a .45 M1911 to a .22 round caliber (yes it can be done) and calling the M1911 a different gun.
It's still a 1911, just a different caliber of round.

 

[GonzoGamer]

I heard that it was going to have even more guns.

What surprising is the mention of a "Badass" system; sounds like the CoD prestige thing.

See publishers; this is how you reduce used sales. You make a game that people will want to keep playing long after launch.

 

[Falterfire]

I totally agree. Just because it looks different in color and a slight damage/effect change does not make it a different gun.
It's like changing the barrel of a .45 M1911 to a .22 round caliber (yes it can be done) and calling the M1911 a different gun.
It's still a 1911, just a different caliber of round.

I am cautiously optimistic about Borderlands 2. Borderlands 1 had a lot of this, but there was also some seriously different guns. For instance some of the revolvers had shotgun rounds, there were burst fire rocket launchers, there were rocket launching shotguns, there was an assortment of interesting unique weapons, etc.

Obviously with millions of weapons, well over 99.9% of them will be the same but slightly different, but based on reading reviews I get the impression that they're trying to avoid having, to use your example, nothing but M1911s with different caliber boolets. (Although that'll still happen of course)

 

[Zachery Gaskins]

I heard that it was going to have even more guns.

What surprising is the mention of a "Badass" system; sounds like the CoD prestige thing.

See publishers; this is how you reduce used sales. You make a game that people will want to keep playing long after launch.

I wish this had been the fate of Blur.

 

[scotth266]

Does it use Gamespy like its predecessor? If the answer is yes, I'm not buying - I'm tired of that crappy service ruining potentially great multiplayer games.

 

[Shjade]

Does it use Gamespy like its predecessor? If the answer is yes, I'm not buying - I'm tired of that crappy service ruining potentially great multiplayer games.

This would be a true statement for me as well if I were planning to play it in multiplayer mode. Since 94.7% of my time spent in Borderlands was single-player, it's not a dealbreaker for me if they go with Gamespy again.

That said, the fact that they used Gamespy was one of the major contributing factors to my continually refusing to play it online. >.>

 

[Saegrim]

It doesn't really matter to me how many guns they have. The game as a whole needs to be way more substantial than the first Borderlands was, considering that the first barely had a plot, they mostly abandoned humor after the first zone, and it came down to shooting the same exact poor sods over and over again for hours on end.

 

[gigastar]

Does it use Gamespy like its predecessor? If the answer is yes, I'm not buying - I'm tired of that crappy service ruining potentially great multiplayer games.

This would be a true statement for me as well if I were planning to play it in multiplayer mode. Since 94.7% of my time spent in Borderlands was single-player, it's not a dealbreaker for me if they go with Gamespy again.

That said, the fact that they used Gamespy was one of the major contributing factors to my continually refusing to play it online. >.>

Well i cant pull proof for it, but apparently it will use Steamworks. Sorry if i ruined your day further due to a irrational hatred of Steam.

 

[4173]

Why does Borderlands get so much shit for story problems? I don't remember complaints there was no story in fucking Dialbo II's Cow Level...

(which isn't to say a better story wouldn't improve the game, but why so much focus?)

 

[Tiamat666]

When developers claim that their game has 14 million different weapons or 63 quadzillion potions, because of different combinations of parts and random effects...

IT IS LAME

 

[Goofguy]

Regardless of the degree of variation between the 17 million weapons in Borderlands, the guns were different and diverse enough for me. If Borderlands 2 is only going to make that better (even if not by much), then I am happy.

All this talk changes nothing, I am still buying this game because its predecessor was some of the most fun coop I've played in a while.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

Regardless of the degree of variation between the 17 million weapons in Borderlands, the guns were different and diverse enough for me. If Borderlands 2 is only going to make that better (even if not by much), then I am happy.

All this talk changes nothing, I am still buying this game because its predecessor was some of the most fun coop I've played in a while.

QFT. I thought there were enough different guns that finding and shooting them was pretty fun, even with no other players to bounce jokes etc. off of, and I honestly don't foresee Borderlands 2 as being different from that. Sure, you can be cynical if you like, that's your lookout, but at least in terms of that GWR, a different gun, regardless of exactly how different it is, is still a different gun.