By Alec Meer on July 28th, 2009 at 9:05 pm.
A little while back, I spent a few hours playing Gearbox Software’s upcoming, toon-styled, free-roaming FPS-RPG. I was horribly, desperately hungover at the time, and was almost sick on Randy Pitchford while he was cheerily explaining the thinking behind Borderlands to me. I am the most professional of all the games journalists.
But that doesn’t matter. Only the game matters. Here’s how it is.
(Click on the pics for bigguns, by the way).
It was mutiny. Gearbox head Randy Pitchford didn’t want it – he just wanted to finish and ship the damned game. His artists, though, were bored and frustrated. Mutiny. In secret, they returned to work.
They created an art style that totally reinvigorated Borderlands, one so impressive that Pitchford immediately abandoned his plans to shut down this little troupe of breakaways. He also claims that it was enough of shock to also dramatically shake-up Gearbox’s whole approach to development. (I’ll be bunging up an interview with him on such matters in the next couple of days, incidentally).
Here and now though, what matters isn’t so much whether the happy accident of the comicbook character outlines and semi-cell-shading should or shouldn’t have happened, but whether it suits the game. Or, whether the game suits it.
The answer to that is an even more important question: how does Borderlands play? We’ve heard about the thousands of weapon combinations, that there’ll be free-roaming of a sort, a post-apocalyptic wasteland and Mad Maxian vehicles, but what we don’t know is, well, what happens when you sit in front of your PC and fire up this game.
It’s like Fallout 3. No, wait, it’s like Hellgate. No, wait, it’s like Doom.
Well… it has some of the core values of all of those, but a very different implementation. It’s an RPG-FPS, fundamentally. But unlike Fallout 3 and Mass Effect and Hellgate, this isn’t an FPS-like targeting reticule built awkwardly on top of dice-rolls and statistics. It’s statistics and dice-rolls built on top of a first-person shooter. That simple inversion is key to why Borderlands works – this is an action game first and foremost. You won’t find yourself lost eight phrases deep in a dialogue tree. You won’t find a precisely-targeted headshot failing to hit because of some invisible maths, and you won’t find that aiming somewhere within a 20-foot radius of someone automagically punches a bullet through their chest. You will find that hiding behind a rock or running away stops you from getting shot. As does shooting first, and accurately.
The RPG stuff comes as a result of playing the FPS stuff well – you take out the various homicidal men, mutants and mutant-men efficiently, you earn yer XP and your loot drops. It sounds phenomenally simple, and it is. It’s just that no-one’s done it right before. Well, there’s Deus Ex and System Shock 2, but this is scarcely attempting to be those. No moral deliberation, philosophical pondering or literary references here. This is about the joy of meatheadery.
It’s very fast and very silly – more TimeSplitters than Half-Life. You battle Mutant Midget Psychos and are guided around by blind drunkards and crying robots. You wield triple rocket launchers and quad-barrelled shotguns. You respawn instantly into a New-U clone body upon death. You score critical hits on rad-addled dog-things by shooting them in the open mouth. It’s openly ridiculous, and the hyper-stylised look only boosts the glee of that. Pitchford describes it as “the polar opposite of Brothers in Arms”, and he’s not wrong. This is a game geared utterly towards instant, out of the box fun. There are 30 core story missions and 120 side-missions; after a spot of being shepherded through some introductory stuff, you’re free to go fairly off-piste. Alternatively, you can go straight to the co-op mode.
Procedural weapon generation based on combining a raft of randomly-selected elements – e.g. x base gun template + x barrels + x type of ammunition + x barrel-length – means there are more guns in the game than Gearbox can count. It’s somewhere in the hundreds of thousands, they think. If you pick up something incredible (the now traditional white, green, blue, purple loot colour system denotes something’s degree of awesomeness), you’d better watch your back. When you die [yikes - my useless memory managed to conflate dying with a system crash that did cost me all my stuff] sell or discard a gun, that massive, massive degree of randomness means you’ll probably never see the same one ever again. If you find something spectacular, you can consider it nigh-on unique. Sadly the vehicles weren’t on show at this demo, which also meant I didn’t get a clear sense of how freely you can roam, but if it’s based upon similarly unbound, randomatic principles, I’m expecting only good things.
It’s the thrill of high-speed violence paired with the compulsion of loot collection. That’s a dangerous combination, and in the wrong hands an incredibly cynical one. Given that Pitchford repeatedly trots out variants of “fuck it, let’s just have fun”, it’s pretty clear that cynicism doesn’t play much part in Borderland’s DNA.
It isn’t a tactical shooter, and it isn’t a talky RPG. It steps back to the base level of both genres and then piles style and energy on top. It’s the opposite of feature creep – returning to why people wanted to shoot monsters in the face and collect shiny things in the first place. From what I played, it wouldn’t be wrong to call it shallow. It would be wrong to call that shallowness a bad thing. Pitchford again: “we’re dancing around innovation more than we’ve ever done before.” In the land of the endless cover systems, unbound carnage is king.
That said, I’m a little worried about the intense-yet-aimless nature of the co-op mode. I’ll need to play it for much longer to get a real sense of it, I suspect, but in the half hour or so I had there wasn’t much teamwork beyond panicked heals (a one-button task) of fallen comrades and occasionally all shooting the same monster. It was fun, and intuitive, and fast enough to scratch a testosteronal itch almost instantly, but it felt perhaps a bit too vague and messy to yield the sense of satisfaction you get from, say, finishing a Left 4 Dead co-op campaign. Then again, I was playing a slim, out-of-context slice. I certainly got a bit more of a kick out of the roaming, questing and levelling up of the singleplayer, though.
What else? XP unlocks new abilities, but your own FPS prowess is absolutely vital. Pitchford talks about a level 4 player taking down level 10 mobs, simply due to his expert way with a targeting reticule.
Oh, and there’s a bunch of different classes to play as – a straight-up Soldier, the sniper prowess and vicious winged pet of the Hunter, the mystical steathing of the Siren and, my personal favourite, the meaty melee of the Berserker. Hand-to-hand combat for everyone else is largely just a panicked stab at an enemy who’s got too close, but the Berserker can enter a frenzy mode (expandable by spending level-earned skill points – eventually, I was gaining health every time I killed someone in rage mode) that maps a barrel-sized fist to each mouse-button. THUMP THUMP THUMP. Yeah, he’s kinda like the Heavy. The Heavy, though, doesn’t get to punch 20-foot-tall mutant insects to death. I’m definitely playing Berserker.
So does Borderlands live up to its art-style? Totally. Of course, the real proof of this death-pudding is in whether it can remain this spectacular and compulsive for a couple of dozen sustained hours. We’ll find that out for sure this October.
28/07/2009 at 21:14 Snooglebum says:
Ooh, so excited.
28/07/2009 at 21:15 Vinraith says:
Thanks Alec. The more I read about this the more promising it looks.
28/07/2009 at 21:17 AsubstanceD says:
any form of narrative, or characters or game world background? I definitely have hopes for this game, but I think to keep my interest it would need something in those areas. Not that it needs to be anything groundbreaking in these areas.
28/07/2009 at 21:18 Professor says:
The art style seems a little too much “inbetween”. There’s a fair bit of cel shading but not enough to make it fully cel shaded. This bastard child looks just plain wrong in my eyes, but I guess I’ll have to play it and find out.
28/07/2009 at 21:22 inanimotion says:
Yaaaay
Looking forward to release now, thank you.
28/07/2009 at 21:25 unclelou says:
Alec, do you happen to know if it also has different armour? The official website alludes to that being the case, but it is never explicitly mentioned, and the characters in the screenshots always seem to wear the same gear.
28/07/2009 at 21:39 Optimaximal says:
The Eurogamer preview alludes too the fact that you can pick a different graphical style for your character – the ones repeatedly shown in the screenshots are just the defaults.
No idea on armour being visible on the characters, but it would make sense…
28/07/2009 at 21:51 Marcin says:
Well this just went from a tentative “this just might be good” to a day 1 buy. Thanks Alec, and looking forward to more info on the expansiveness of the thing.
28/07/2009 at 21:51 Cutman says:
You should do drunked reviews more often. This one is incredible.
28/07/2009 at 21:52 Cutman says:
You should do hungover reviews more often. This one is incredible.
28/07/2009 at 21:57 Wirbelwind says:
SILLY ROBOTS RUN AWAY FROM SANDVICH!
28/07/2009 at 21:58 ScubaV says:
Sounds intriguing, but the key unknown for me is “Does Borderlands have direction?”. If it’s a sandbox, make-your-own-fun style a la Fallout 3 or Morrowind, then I’ll be quickly bored. But if it has narrative drive like Stalker or to a flimsier extent Far Cry, then the fusion of FPS and RPG is going to have me very interested.
28/07/2009 at 21:58 Serph says:
No one’s done an RPG+FPS with loot drops and exp before? Weapon combinations? Skills and classes? Customizable armor? Wait, what was that game…it started with Mass…Mass, errr…..
This game ought to have a humorous plot to go along with the arcadey combat. Otherwise it’ll just end up being “that apocalyptic shooter thing” no matter how much “shallowness” is extolled as a virtue.
28/07/2009 at 22:03 unclelou says:
Sounds intriguing, but the key unknown for me is “Does Borderlands have direction?”. If it’s a sandbox, make-your-own-fun style a la Fallout 3 or Morrowind, then I’ll be quickly bored. But if it has narrative drive like Stalker or to a flimsier extent Far Cry, then the fusion of FPS and RPG is going to have me very interested.
I don’t expect it to be like any of those games you mention, really. I guess it’ll have a simple story, and the RPG aspect will be limited to levelling up – which suits me fine in that genre. Shoot stuff, collect loot.
28/07/2009 at 22:04 fishmitten says:
Mass Effect is by no means a First Person Shooter.
Borderlands looks pretty fun. I’m not sold on the gunplay yet, but it’s hard to tell from a handful of videos.
28/07/2009 at 22:05 hamsterfury says:
So……
SUCK IT PLANETSIDE!!!
28/07/2009 at 22:06 unclelou says:
No one’s done an RPG+FPS with loot drops and exp before? Weapon combinations? Skills and classes? Customizable armor? Wait, what was that game…it started with Mass…Mass, errr…..
I expect Borderlands to have as much in common with Mass Effect as Diablo 2 has with Baldur’s Gate – nothing at all. The only FPS/action-RPG hybrid I am aware of is Hellgate: London.
28/07/2009 at 22:06 Dominic White says:
“No, wait, it’s like Hellgate.”
This will immediately send half the internet running for cover, screaming bloody murder.
But not me. See, I’m one of the few people who liked Hellgate – well, at least liked it AFTER patches (the launch was a goddamn trainwreck). In the final couple of weeks of its life, where they actually had gotten their act together, added several gig worth of patches and content and made it into what it probably should have launched at, it was actually a rather good shooty/looty/levelly hybrid.
It’s sad that this only lasted for a couple of weeks, though. Maybe Borderlands can pick up where it left off.
28/07/2009 at 22:07 Serph says:
FPS, TPS…same difference. Personally, I prefer FPS because TPSs make me feel a bit disconnected from the action, and make me less responsive to damage my character takes. Still, not enough to call it totally groundbreaking.
28/07/2009 at 22:08 Alec Meer says:
- There’s a core storyline with around 30 missions, and 120 optional side-missions (I’ve just added that factoid to the main piece, btw). Takes about 15 hours to do just the story missions, but Pitchford reckons people’ll do plenty of side-missions because a) fun b) otherwise you’ll remain fairly low-level and may struggle.
- Didn’t catch what the major plotline was (honestly – didn’t care. Boderlands seems more about showing off a bunch of fun locations and enemies than destiny quest gubbins), but the missions I did play involved taking out various ‘orrible raiders who were troubling civilian settlements, and fending off attacking beasties. It was pretty humourous in tone throughout, especially the tiny robot (see last screenshot) that’s essentially a mobile tutorial. There are thematic similarities to Fallout 3, but it doesn’t take itself especially seriously and the voice acting didn’t make me want to die.
- Armour pickups take the form of shields with varying degrees of damage resistance and health regeneration, but visually the only costume tweaks is colours, which you can do for free at pretty much any point. Or so I recall. By chance I’m meeting Gearbox again on Friday, so will double-check.
- Mass Effect wasn’t even slightly an FPS. And I’m not talking about its camera perspective.
28/07/2009 at 22:09 unclelou says:
Agreed, Dominic. Hellgate: London was Doom with stats and loot. A lovely combination. If it had been commercially succesful (and spawned addons, as additionally planned), I wouldn’t have needed another game for a long time. ;-)
28/07/2009 at 22:09 Psychopomp says:
@Serph
Mass Effect falls in with Fallout 3, in the sense that there’s a bunch of dice rolls going on for everything you do. Borderlands, if you aim at the head, you hit the head.
28/07/2009 at 22:10 Torgen says:
Borderlands = Auto Assault done right?
28/07/2009 at 22:10 Plant42 says:
Yeah yeah, note how revolutionary the art style change was. That whole ‘revolution’ just happened to occur a few months after devs from Prince of Persia gave a cell shading talk at GDC in 2006, and were kind enough to give away actual examples of code they used for outlining, stair-stepping falloff mapping etc.
Quite a few games went cell-shady after that talk.
28/07/2009 at 22:11 Heliocentric says:
Opposing force was great, as were the first 2 brothers in arms game. The third bia tried to be an fps and failed at being an fps and failed at being a squad tactics game. I’ll be needing a demo to drop money here. But the class based expansion reflex based expression is very planetside. And non mmo planetside sounds good to me. Games which have vehicles but arbitrarily force you to be on foot annoy me (crysis gets a pass by letting you punch cars over and throw people at people who you were using as a human shield.) i mean, having a gunship would help combating xenoforms? They can’t jump that high. What do you mean it isn’t sporting? I’m trying to save the world/president(‘s daughter)/universe/myself.
28/07/2009 at 22:13 jsutcliffe says:
I am still completely and woefully in the dark about the single-player experience. So many previews talk it up as a first-person Diablo and its multiplayer promise. Is there a single-player game in there anywhere?
28/07/2009 at 22:17 unclelou says:
- Armour pickups take the form of shields with varying degrees of damage resistance and health regeneration, but visually the only costume tweaks is colours, which you can do for free at pretty much any point.
Thanks for the clarification. Not too happy about that – much of the compulsion to keep on playing these games comes from seeing the character gradually change his wimpy cotton pants to a full-body titanium armour.
28/07/2009 at 22:24 Cutman says:
Umm, could someone delete that first post of mine, and then this one too please?
I must of been hungover myself when I did that.
28/07/2009 at 22:34 Jason says:
“My love for you is ticking clock BERSERKER!”
I enjoy playing high-damage melee characters in games, and this one sounds promising indeed!
28/07/2009 at 22:57 Vinraith says:
@jsutcliffe
Err, did you read the article? This is almost entirely about the single player mode, the differences between it and the MP mode are noted towards the end.
28/07/2009 at 23:06 Taillefer says:
Silverfall had a similar style. It had the option to turn the outlines off, and looked better without them.
I’m undecided about the game. I’m worried It may be a little too shallow, by the sounds of it. Possibly a bit chaotic. And I have no interest in the multiplayer. My decision rests on a demo.
28/07/2009 at 23:07 Doctor Doc says:
Do you know how the save system works? If you can just save at any time then you could easily prevent ever losing your awesome gun anyway.
28/07/2009 at 23:11 Carra says:
As a wow purist I have to say: no grey, no orange?
28/07/2009 at 23:23 Markoff Chaney says:
“Would you like to make some Fuck? BERSERKER!”
I spent, when all was said and done, over 400 dollars on the promise of Hellgate. I love the FPS + RPG marriage concept so much. My biggest issue with the game, after patches, was that my ability to use a mouse to aim wasn’t rewarded as much as I would have liked.
This game seems better on most all accounts and I look forward to it greatly. There’s a time for deliberate, considered movement in an FPS and Arma 2 can scratch that itch of mine. It would be nice to replace Painkiller and Serious Sam for that twitch itch and add in some “one more level, one more drop” carrot dangling for extra incentives. Multiple classes for different playstyles and co-op with friends… I’m worried I’ll wake up with sticky sheets.
28/07/2009 at 23:26 Jad says:
It’s statistics and dice-rolls built on top of a first-person shooter. That simple inversion is key to why Borderlands works – this is an action game first and foremost.
This is why I’m excited about this. While I like many genres, my favorite still has to be the FPS. I’ve been playing a great deal of Fallout 3 recently, and while its an awesome game, every time I engage in non-VATS combat I’m reminded that its not really an FPS even if it looks like it.
Also, there are some actual FPSes that don’t quite seem to get the traditional feel right: I found the shooting in Bioshock to be too … loose, with inconsistent feedback in the basic did-my-bullet-hit-my-enemy way. Its a very subjective thing, of course, but there seems certain companies that can do the basic mechanics, the visceral feel of an FPS better than anybody else. I’d put Valve and iD and (personally, at least) Infinity Ward in that list. FEAR had an unusual but very satisfying feel to the combat as well. I’m not sure if I’m explaining myself as clearly as I’d like here — does anybody else get this feeling too?
Anyway, Alec: in your opinion, would you rate the bare-metal moving-and-firing FPS actions of Borderlands on the level with, say, a Valve game or an iD game?
28/07/2009 at 23:42 Sinomatic says:
Don’t suppose anyone could tell me whether the co-op games can be hosted on a paid for server (like I can with L4D)? I play with friends worldwide and hosting games ourselves is not a possibility.
I like the sound of this, but not much point if I can’t play it with my mates below a ping of 2000…
28/07/2009 at 23:43 Riaktion says:
This game has taken the place of Dragon Age as my “need to buy on release” game. I never buy games on release.
28/07/2009 at 23:48 JKjoker says:
any words on the DRM this game will be dipped into ?
28/07/2009 at 23:57 Meatloaf says:
Based on what I’ve seen, this game is going to be brilliant.
Most games drag you around by the wrist like an energetic child, eager to show you this and that and this other thing in hopes of impressing you. “See? Look at this! It’s so cool! Oh, now come over here and look at this, and then this too!” Gears of War 2 comes to mind, particularly.
Borderlands, on the other hand, doesn’t need to be played to have fun. It’s already having a wonderful time by itself. It’s just inviting you along.
29/07/2009 at 00:03 TheJimTimMan says:
A quick bit of maths done in the windows calculator, assuming 15 to 30 variations of each “part” of the weapon, would suggest a figure between 7,796,250 and 24,300,000 weapons in the game.
That’s… a lot of guns… and this isn’t taking into account special properties weapons might have.
29/07/2009 at 00:10 JKjoker says:
@TheJimTimMan: too many guns is not necessarily good, remember Diablo 2 where 99.999% of item drops were freaking useless because there were way too many useless traits in the combination lists
29/07/2009 at 00:22 TheJimTimMan says:
@JKjoker: Very true, that’s why I’m hoping Gearbox’s generator can come up with some interesting combinations; I probably won’t stick to one sniper rifle or shotgun the whole time because of higher damge values or better properties since I might find a cool sounding or looking assault rifle or pistol that I’ll use until I get bored of it or run out of ammo.
Also remember that Diablo 2′s combat system was very much different in that it was a “pure” RPG, not one where skill-based accuracy played much part due it’s reliance on attributes.
29/07/2009 at 00:28 Marcin says:
Alec: please to be telling us more of vehicular mayhem and … well, this is subjective but “the feel” of the shootery. As well as possible, much obliged :)
29/07/2009 at 00:34 Baris says:
Oh man, this is by far the game I’m most excited about this year.
29/07/2009 at 00:45 roBurky says:
You make it sound like the combat is going to be Serious Sam -esque. Would that be right?
(I don’t fancy any more Serious Sam)
29/07/2009 at 01:06 Serph says:
Well, a game that is first and foremost an FPS, and adds the RPG elements to that, seems better than an RPG that just happens to have guns.
29/07/2009 at 01:06 reaper47 says:
Sounds interesting, looks interesting…
Still feels a bit like a mix of stuff I already know, and no matter how good the ingredients, I’m not sure if I like the taste…
29/07/2009 at 01:12 blindpsychic says:
The only thing that’s really bothering me is the really poor outlining in those shots. If these were say, an ink comic book panel, the lineweights should be getting lighter as the get further away. But in some shots, the line weights for stuff far away is really thick, and in bl4l.jpg, there’s even inconsistent line weight. Stuff up close like the rebar on the left, hardly has a line, yet stuff in the far distance (those rusty spine shaped things, and the big rock thing) have really super dark outlines, which is really messing up the sense of space. Is this better in motion? Because this screens are really noisy.
29/07/2009 at 01:15 KP says:
Unrelated to news item: I think Rockpapershotgun gave Men of War a favorable review and I brushed over it… got it in the $7 sale and played it with friends… holy SHIT I wish I had listened to RPS! This game is INCREDIBLE. :D
29/07/2009 at 01:18 Rob Jellinghaus says:
On Quarter to Three, someone quoted this article, mentioning the “you lose your gun when you die” part.
Well, that really sucks, because I don’t WANT to lose my gun when I die. You don’t lose your weapons when you die in any other RPG I know of. So why in Borderlands? What is the fun in that? You have the uber weapon, you get taken out by a baddie, and suddenly you have to sift through 1,000 shit guns just to get something that is vaguely able to kill some of the mobs your ubergun ate for breakfast?
I’m not seeing the fun in that.
29/07/2009 at 01:20 Riotpoll says:
@Jad; you’re not the only one, I still haven’t finished Bioshock for pretty much this very reason, the gunplay doesn’t feel right.
This article has definitely made the game catch my attention, so I’ll keep an eye on it now.
29/07/2009 at 01:24 Justin says:
Hey Alec, did you have any chance to interact with any vehicles? I believe I read somewhere that vehicle-based battles were a featured part of the gameplay.
Thanks!
29/07/2009 at 01:25 Dave says:
(I am still playing Hellgate. Though I have completely flip-flopped and prefer Evokers to Engineers now.)
29/07/2009 at 01:34 Po0py says:
This is exactly what Fallout 3 should have looked like. Such a great change in art style!
Borderlands just looked like another dull shooter before they ditched it and there wasn’t anything that set it apart from other shooters except for all the hoopla over the weapon customizing.
That alone just seemed like a gimicky thing and in many respects it still does. Who really needs a bazillion variants of guns? Great that you can tweak and customize and everything but I suspect a lot of gamers will revert to building the kind of weapons they are already familliar with from other games. A more focused approach that forced people down various branches of different styles of guns might be more fun. I’m happy to be proved wrong. I just hope it offers more that just selection of guns skins, bang-bang! sounds, reload times and reticules. If it informs the gameplay in a discernable way then I will be happy.
29/07/2009 at 01:35 Alex says:
This is certainly good news.
29/07/2009 at 02:31 Aphotique says:
I’m almost afraid to imagine how many hours I will probably dump into this. I already know it will be a hit amongst my friends, and being able to play through it with them over and over again will undoubtedly kill any free time I had and will end up making for it.
In addition to that, I imagine this game will get more then enough of singleplayer time from me as well. I have the type of personality that thrives on repetition for increased reward (think, loot grinding in mmos, etc), so the chance to just grind away looking to find all the neat little goodies that the randomization can produce appeals to me to no end.
I’ll get my story and tactics from Diablo III. Borderlands is all about feeding my addictions.
29/07/2009 at 02:35 Spd from Russia says:
sounds 99% hellgate. its ok
gnerated levels are boring though
29/07/2009 at 04:14 sigma83 says:
Mm cellshadedness.
I’m all for devs trying new things.
29/07/2009 at 04:34 j c says:
Did you get a feel for the quality of the PC version, by any chance? With so many promises specifically around co-op and other multiplayer, I don’t have the highest confidence the PC version will end up all that great.
29/07/2009 at 04:50 malkav11 says:
Yeah, really not excited about that “lose your gun when you die” bit. We’ll see how it plays out in practice, though.
29/07/2009 at 06:31 Howard says:
I’m confused: What is the purpose of having such a vast array of potential guns if you don’t get to keep them? Let’s face it, in this type of game you are going to be dying a lot, right, so thought of losing your jammily found/carefully designed weapon each and every time you do sounds like anathema to a game that is being compared to Diablo.
What am I missing here?
29/07/2009 at 08:47 teo says:
There’s something slightly off about the art style
It’s like it’s pasted ontop of something else
29/07/2009 at 09:13 torchedEARTH says:
“the polar opposite of Brothers in Arms” in that case I guess I won’t have to listen to Smelly, Ginger or Whiney go on about their pictures of their wives between missions making me want to kill them myself.
29/07/2009 at 09:16 Owen says:
Interested.
29/07/2009 at 09:20 Super Bladesman says:
I really can’t wait for this one – looks like so much fun :)
29/07/2009 at 09:22 l1ddl3monkey says:
Sold on Mr Meer’s enthusiasm alone.
29/07/2009 at 09:40 Ian says:
You know I quite liked the new art style at first but I’m not sure about some of them screenies though. Either way: INTERESTED.
29/07/2009 at 09:41 pignoli says:
@ Jad. I’m absolutely with you on the ‘feel’ thing. Some games get it and some games don’t, but it’s such a vague, nebulous concept that it’s very hard to put down in words exactly what you mean. It’s very much in the subtleties of how the character reacts to movement commands and the ‘snappiness’ of the mouse looking. I think games like Bioshock suffer from that ‘syrupy’ feeling as they’re designed to be played with a little thumb stick rather than a mouse so overall responsiveness seems dulled. I think it stems from the fact that you need a ‘linear’ response to turning with the stick, so no matter how hard you flick the stick over, the turn rate is the same. With a mouse, you can make very rapid twitch movements with a flick of the wrist.
I’d love to hear a developer talk about this, actually.
Anyway, Borderlands. Still pretty excited for it. If it has enough interesting stuff to progress through, rather than falling into the re-iteration trap it’s in danger of, then I can see myself playing the shit out of this game.
29/07/2009 at 09:44 panik says:
you lost me at “It isn’t a tactical shooter”
29/07/2009 at 09:45 Mr.President says:
120 side-missions, you say? That’s a lot. I just hope that not all of them are meaningless mumorpeger chores like “collect 10 wolf pelts”, or whatever.
29/07/2009 at 10:22 Ginger Yellow says:
“They created an art style that totally reinvigorated Borderlands, one so impressive that Pitchford immediately abandoned his plans to shut down this little troupe of breakaways”
I initially read that as “Pitchfork”, and wondered why the snooty music site had launched a vendetta against the developers.
29/07/2009 at 10:35 Alec Meer says:
Oops- thinking more carefully about it, I in fact lost my uber-excellent gun because of a crash, not a death. Will double-check on Friday.
29/07/2009 at 11:03 AndrewC says:
Hahahaha, would you like to go for a heavy drink on Thursday night?
29/07/2009 at 11:22 Flint says:
Ginger Yellow: I did the exact same reading mistake throughout the entire article.
29/07/2009 at 11:34 Alec Meer says:
Re: those asking about vehicles. Please read the piece.
29/07/2009 at 11:45 CMaster says:
So you can’t do the whole campaign-worldy thing in Coop? because that sounded like one of the best features it may have.
Still very interested, still slightly nervous with Gearbox behind this.
@Heliocentric – OpFor was good in many respects, however I can never quite forgive it for not understanding even for a moment what made Half-Life so great.
29/07/2009 at 11:47 Flint says:
Oh, quick random question thing that won’t affect my already-made decision on buying the game but which I’d find interesting to know: are all the guns on the bullets/shells/rockets angle of things or are there any more exotic things available as well?
29/07/2009 at 12:55 Glove says:
“The Heavy, though, doesn’t get to punch 20-foot-tall mutant insects to death.”
Ok, maybe not 20 feet, but tall nonetheless:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjRj82qhkZY&feature=related
29/07/2009 at 13:02 suibhne says:
Good news on the correction re. dying/weapons. That was giving me major pause.
29/07/2009 at 13:03 Mr. Mechanical says:
Alec: Be nice if you could clear up that point about whether or not you keep your gun when you die because I’m seeing that one point being quoted in forums like it’s a for sure kind of thing.
Personally I think it’d kind of suck if that were really the case because then I’d be keeping all the cool loot back at the stash and never using it much for fear of accidentally dying and then losing it forever.
Also I liked the piece but I have a question because I keep seeing it being mentioned: Are you able to actually customize your guns using found materials/whatever or are you just at the mercy of the drop algorithms like in Diablo?
Either way I’m really looking forward to this. October can’t get here soon enough.
29/07/2009 at 13:08 Alec Meer says:
Have double-checked gun/death thing with 2K: “you don’t lose any guns when you die. You have ‘em until you throw them away or sell them at a vending machine.”. Apologies for the confusion – my hungover notes written on the day were a tad scattier than I’d like.
I didn’t see any weapon customisation. There really wasn’t any need to when something else silly/awesome will be along any minute.
29/07/2009 at 13:12 Mr. Mechanical says:
Oh you already cleared up my question in the article. Guess I should have checked that first.
CMaster: Pretty sure you can do the campaign in co-op so no worries there.
Flint: There’s alien tech that goes into the weapon/gear generating algorithms so I’d say the chances of there being some really strange permutations is pretty high. Just something to consider, but considering the sheer number of possible weapon permutations (mtv multiplayer blog said it was over 3.5 million) I’m thinking out of all the pre-release media we’ve only seen a fraction of a percent of what’s in there.
Now, 3.5 million is a stupidly huge number and I’m pretty sure a big chunk of that’s going to be basically vendor trash to sell so you can save up for better gear. But a great big part of the fun of games like Diablo and the like is the chance of something really special dropping that just blows you away and makes all that time gathering and trading crap gear totally worth it.
29/07/2009 at 13:26 Songbearer says:
“Torgen says:
Borderlands = Auto Assault done right?”
@Torgen: Auto Assault was done right, it was the best MMO which just didn’t get enough love and died a horrible death and now I miss it so <:(
29/07/2009 at 13:28 Forscythe says:
From the gamespy preview, the story actually sounds fairly decent: “The story revolves around a group of loot raiders who traverse a Mad Maxian landscape in search of coveted alien technology, fragments of which had previously fallen to earth where they were utilized to great power by the humans. At the heart of it all is the Atlus Corporation, a giant conglomerate that reverse-engineered the alien tech to build their empire, possibly leading to the creation of the wasteland. It’s in the mythical vaults where the motherlode of abandoned alien science allegedly remains.”
29/07/2009 at 13:52 Vandelay says:
Alien technology creating a wasteland? All sounds a bit like Stalker there, but judging from this preview I’m guessing that is where the comparison ends.
Looks really promising at the moment. I have to admit that I was a little disappointed to find out that you don’t lose some weapons when you die (judging by the comments, I seem to be the only one.) The New-U clone body all sounds a bit Bioshock, which made for a very easy game. Some real punishment for death would have been nice and losing an awesome weapon would have worked quite well. Perhaps a drop in experience points is going to be used.
29/07/2009 at 14:19 Muzman says:
If the story and setting manages a decent amount of Tank Girl-ish whackiness it might just do for me (some time next year when I finish playing last year’s games).
Note that being about half as whacky as Tank Girl is whackier than just about anything. (but still only two thirds as whacky as Aeon Flux)
29/07/2009 at 15:05 Markoff Chaney says:
Doubleplusgood for not losing weapons on death. I could accept it due to the total random nature of drops, but this makes it so much better… Fantastic.
29/07/2009 at 15:11 Wisq says:
I’ve been playing a fair bit of Fallout 3 lately, even to the point of having written some mods myself. It’s certainly not the best game around, and was possibly a bit overrated by the gaming press, but I’m not sure I really follow the complaints that it isn’t an FPS.
If I aim my rifle at a baddie’s head in FO3, chances are I’m going to shoot him in the head, and it will certainly score me some of that extra damage you expect from a headshot in an FPS — even if it’s not immediately fatal like in real life. (But then, people taking absurd amounts of damage in unlikely-to-survive places aren’t exactly new to FPSes.)
Sure, my small guns / energy weapons / whatever skill might reduce my accuracy if low. And sure, the (in)accuracy is implemeted as “point gun, bullet goes elsewhere” rather than the gun (and crosshair) bobbing around. And yeah, even damage is affected by skill — since we all know bullets check their user’s skill before they decide how much to hurt, obviously.
But ultimately, one could still play Fallout 3 like an FPS, in exactly the same way as Deus Ex. DX augmented your accuracy, damage, and reload time based on your skill in a given weapon category, just like FO3, and aiming for the head might not have the desired effect if your skill is too low, just like FO3. Yet somehow, DX gets branded as an FPS with RPG mechanics, but FO3 gets branded as “FPS-like targeting reticule built awkwardly on top of dice-rolls and statistics”. Huh?
Obviously, this refers to non-VATS combat. But even VATS was subject to some FPS mechanics. My bullet has to actually make it to the target, for one. VATS sometimes indicates (via reduced hit percentages) when you’re likely to hit an obstacle rather than the target, often going so far as to say you’ve got no chance to hit. But sometimes it doesn’t notice at all, and just gives you a high percentage, like the cap of 95% to hit (close range / high skill) — yet if you actually try to fire, you discover your chances were more like 0%, since every shot just hits the wall you’re hiding behind.
Yeah, it’s a problem with VATS, but it also demonstrates that it’s not just saying “obstacle reduces chance to hit” and then letting you get a good roll and make a technically impossible shot, it’s saying “chance to hit is calculated based on obstacles” and then letting you watch your bullet actually hit an obstacle, whether it noticed that obstacle and factored it into the percentage or not.
If anything, the FPS aspects of FO3 detract from the RPG side, rather than vice versa. I can watch my character expend an entire bar of action points firing into a wall because the RPG and FPS sides had differing opinions about whether said wall was in the way — yet despite my supposed lack of points for performing actions, I can just revert to FPS mode and shoot everything anyway. Sure, VATS makes FO3 somewhat easy, but plain old FPS mode makes it even easier (for FPS gamers), since you can ignore the game’s attempts at budgeting your shots and just fire as much as you want.
Anyway, I applaud and look forward to an attempt to add RPG mechanics to a more traditional style of FPS, especially since that particular mixture has become somewhat more rare these days. I just think that the concept is hardly new, and that existing attempts have been closer than they appear, or are given credit for.
29/07/2009 at 15:22 CMaster says:
@Wisq – I always found trying to play FO3 like an FPS frustrating. THere’s an arbitarty limit (less than the draw distance) on how far away you can shoot people from that constantly blew my stealth without getting the kill. There’s countless times I found mysyself trying to fight, but getting bogged down in dodgy movement or more frequently, finding my bullets inexplicably not actually reaching the enemies.
Note that I still had a lot of fun, and smashing through hordes of feral ghouls with a shotgun was still satisfying enough – but whenver combat mattered and was up close, I found myself using VATS as I didn’t trust the game to give me a fighting chance as a normal FPS.
29/07/2009 at 16:03 suibhne says:
The other problem with playing FO3 in FPS mode is that VATS is far more effective at the same skill level, even if you have good FPS skills. There are a few apparent factors in this, not least the fact that enemy attacks do a tiny percentage of full damage to you when VATS is activated. It’s basically a big cheat-mode, which is sad because I otherwise found it implemented pretty well.
Yes, I know you can fix some of this with mods.
I’ve followed Borderlands for over a year, maybe a lot longer, but I was feeling pretty iffy about it. This preview has seriously increased my interest level. It does seem odd that loot collection is so clunky in a game that’s (almost) all about loot collection, but I imagine I’d get used to that and I hope Gearbox will fix it anyway.
29/07/2009 at 17:37 Marcin says:
Yeah, the vehicles question was for future reference, when you’re rubbing elbows with the dev hobnobs at some posh RPS shindig or some such. Because you know, you have those a lot.
I actually wouldn’t have minded losing a gun due to death. Makes it a bit more rogue-like, giving you a bit of a pause before you charge blindly in to an unknown situation. Ah well.
Is there ANY penalty for dying?
29/07/2009 at 19:49 Wisq says:
Re: limited fire distance… yeah, I noticed that too, but only with the sniper rifle. Actually, the sniper rifle probably wins the “most sought-after weapon for least actual usefulness” prize, since it’s nerfed in FPS mode by the shooting distance limit, and the VATS accuracy doesn’t take the scope into account. Ultimately, I found that by the time I had a reliable stash of .308 ammo for it, I was just using the hunting rifle / Ol’ Painless / Lincoln’s Repeater for all my long-distance shots anyway, and using the Sneak skill to shorten my definition of “long distance”.
And yeah, VATS mode is pretty cheap as-is, and the damage reduction just makes it worse. I’ve actually heard of people using the MIRV with fewer than the requisite eight ammo, just because it sits there going “click, click, click” and not using any AP, but still makes you near-invincible for the duration.
Had they removed the bullet distance limit and removed VATS altogether, then you would’ve had an FPS with RPG stuff. Had they removed the ability to fire in FPS mode and left it all to VATS, you’d have had an RPG with an FP perspective. Having both does make the game somewhat easy, but it also offers more choice to players as to whether they want slower RPG gameplay, faster FPS gameplay, or a mixture of both. I don’t really see it as taking an RPG and slapping a crosshair on it, though.
29/07/2009 at 20:10 Quests says:
Nice.
There’s no talking.
There’s no morality
There’s not even reason to think and ponder.
Then can’t i just stare at TV?
29/07/2009 at 21:05 Dominic White says:
Regarding Fallout 3 and the FPS/RPG divide, there’s a great all-in-one mod called Fallout: Wanderer’s Edition (aka FWE) that basically reworks all the gameplay to make it feel more like STALKER with a few extra RPG elements. VATS is still there, but it’s no longer overpowered (it’s great for making called shots, but don’t do it while under heavy fire or you WILL die), and it’s just one of several uses of your Action Points, including sprinting, tackling and bullet time.
Of course, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. It also includes all the weapons from Fallouts 1/2 as well, seeded into loot lists, about fifty kinds of new drugs (some with spectacular side-effects) and way more, but that’s for you to find out.
Weirdly, it makes it feel both more like an FPS and an RPG at the same time.
29/07/2009 at 21:10 UK_John says:
A repetitive open world shooter again. The bastard child of Far Cry 2 and Fuel. Mark my words. It’ll still get scores in the 90′s because all highly hyped games from major publisher’s get 90′s both Far Cry 2 and Fuel got some90′s scores. But both games had a big open worlds that we practically empty meaning repetitive gameplay. I see nothing in the above preview that dissuades me from my beliefs. If the game had had the procedural quests as well as weapons as was originally planned, it might have worked. But as is, it’s a game for the consoler’s – cel shaded, shallow and mindless. Just what the console kid’s love…..
29/07/2009 at 21:10 jalf says:
Yeah, I wanted to try it out a few days ago…. Then I saw the installation instructions. No mod is worth that amount of grief. Sheesh… Let me know when someone figures out a way to install it that doesn’t require me to first install 14 other mods, each with their own byzantine installation instructions and prerequisites.
29/07/2009 at 21:13 Dominic White says:
@Jalf – what instructions? It requires CALIBR and CRAFT to be installed (each a single ESP file that you drop in place), and then you just drop FWE in there – it’s a single-ESP mod as of the last few versions.
You might have been trying to run the older version, which was a horribly complex mish-mash of modules.
29/07/2009 at 21:20 neems says:
Fallout 3 just doesn’t feel like an FPS to me… I know it’s in first person perspective, and you shoot things, but somehow it just doesn’t. For me FO3 is an RPG with an FPS veneer. Stalker (for example) is a shooter with (light) RPG elements.
The comments regarding the control for Bioshock ring a bell (although I disagree with the linear stick thing. It’s an analogue stick, surely the amount you move the stick varies your movement speed?). I suck using a controller to aim in shooters, but tbh I think it works better than kb/m as far as movement / looking around goes (or at least feels more natural). I actually played through Bioshock using a 360 controller; I couldn’t aim for shit, but it just felt right somehow. That goes double for Dead Space of course (except the asteroid bit, had to switch to mouse for that).
This post, I will be mostly… writing in parentheses.
29/07/2009 at 21:21 Dominic White says:
Ah, although you may have a point if you don’t have Fallout Mod Manager and Script Extender, which are pretty much required for running ANY FO3 mod, but.. yeah, if you want to run any mod, you’ll want those.
29/07/2009 at 23:11 Quests says:
UK_John
absolutely agree. It seems that production costs force some makers to dumb down their games to appeal the bigger masses.
As far as i know, this kind of reasoning doesn’t work on PC.
29/07/2009 at 23:24 RC-1290'Dreadnought' says:
I think that halfway through the game, I want to take apart my weapons and combine the best parts. Same for the vehicles. That would be cool.
29/07/2009 at 23:48 Gutter says:
Seeing as everyone is talking about Fallout 3 mods, here is a question : is it possible to mod the game to have a kind of “I Am Legend” feeling/storyline to it? The idea is that you spend the day fortifying your hideout and the night defending it.
Seeing as NPCs are idiotically useless anyway, why not just remove them and make a game about the last human?
29/07/2009 at 23:54 Railick says:
This sounds like it should have pretty low system specs, but I could be wrong. Have then already been released and if so what are they? Can’t access any of the game’s websites here at work ^_^
30/07/2009 at 00:01 argh says:
I’ve learned not to read too much into the hype from game journalists, even from RPS. The game seems to be banking on the art style since that is all you hear first when someone mentions the game. And the weapon combinations is a gimmick.
The gameplay I gurantee you will be as shallow as Farcry 2 and that was hyped to death. Such is the era of console gaming.
30/07/2009 at 00:23 Dominic White says:
I really don’t get this growing wave of ‘Don’t listen to these RPS hacks – what do they know about REAL games?’ rhetoric that’s going about. I’ve seen them accused of shilling, selling out, being in the pockets of big publishers, small publishers, indie developers, guys they’ve linked to, etc. etc.
If you’re so convinced that your opinions about games are right, and the Hivemind are wrong, then start your own blog and start preaching.
30/07/2009 at 00:25 Railick says:
This looks like Diablo 2 with guns, which excites me a great deal. Or rather it looks like Doom with a bit of Diablo 2 mixed in. Shallow gameplay isn’t exactly an issue if the game is fun to play, that is the key. Trying to make a game over complex for no reason or just to please a few gamers is a waste of time. The weapon combos may be a gimmick but it sounds like a good one. It will be a great deal of fun finding all sorts of new weapons through-out the game. On the wikipedia page they said they found a gun that locks on to an enemy and then 3 seconds later the enemy just explodes :P That sounds fantastic lol.
30/07/2009 at 00:25 Railick says:
This looks like Diablo 2 with guns, which excites me a great deal. Or rather it looks like Doom with a bit of Diablo 2 mixed in. Shallow gameplay isn’t exactly an issue if the game is fun to play, that is the key. Trying to make a game over complex for no reason or just to please a few gamers is a waste of time. The weapon combos may be a gimmick but it sounds like a good one. It will be a great deal of fun finding all sorts of new weapons through-out the game. On the wikipedia page they said they found a gun that locks on to an enemy and then 3 seconds later the enemy just explodes :P That sounds fantastic lol.
30/07/2009 at 00:51 Wisq says:
Re: Fallout: Wanderer’s Edition, yeah, I already use the drugs mod (Better Living Through Chems / BLTC) and the sprint mod, for example. They’re two of the cornerstones to my character who wears only a trenchcoat + cowboy hat + sunglasses, and wields only a katana (and ‘nades if needed). It suitably bumps the difficulty back up, and avoids most of the VATS ugliness via FPS hackery-and-slashery. (There’s a lot of situations I simply wouldn’t have been able to win without taking a big dose of morphine + aspirin + ibuprofin and sprinting at the enemies in a blurry haze.)
FO3 actually seems to have one of the most organised and comprehensive modding effort I’ve ever seen, thanks to the Nexus. Granted, getting them to all work together isn’t always easy — my only published mod so far is one that gets four other mods playing nicely together (“BBBMH”).
30/07/2009 at 17:54 I hate MMOs says:
Sounds like World of Warcraft with guns. No thanks.
30/07/2009 at 17:56 Serondal says:
@I hate MMOS = World of Warcraft HAS Guns . . . you lose.
01/08/2009 at 16:45 Shnyker says:
@I Hate MMOs: Yes also, its not an MMO, and it is more shooty than most games can dream of being. You lose AND fail.
03/08/2009 at 09:51 pignoli says:
@ Neems: So, having gone back and started Bioshock again this weekend, in order to actually finish it (and I’m enjoying it much more this time for some reason. I think I’ve got down exactly what bothers me about the mouse control: There is no attempt to undo the ‘look-fudging’ necessary to get it to work with a thumb-stick, so the game basically wants you to use the mouse like a giant thumb-stick. Whenever you try and spin your view round to look at something, the game makes it feel like you should let go of of the mouse and let it snap back to the centre of the pad. Proper mouselook (which is very easy to implement, remember Quake, 2K?) gives you 1:1 mouse to on-screen movement.
04/08/2009 at 13:56 FinDude says:
Profile lines are always great in graphics!
10/10/2009 at 23:30 Phil says:
is the loot system just a first to grtab it or is there any sort of fair balance for it?