There’s still a week until the thing goes on sale, but seems Gearbox/2K are confident enough in their impending shooty-bang-bang/looty-grab-grab game that they’ve already confirmed its first DLC.
You’ll never guess what it’s about. I mean, it’s not like it could be zombies – that undead horse has already had a brutal flogging everywhere else.
It’s zombies.
2K Games announced today that the first piece of downloadable content for Borderlands™, The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned, is planned for release later this year for all available platforms for $9.99. The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned is in development at Gearbox Software and is the first in a series of downloadable expansions that will enhance the Borderlands mayhem in fun and exciting ways.
Tasked with keeping the workers of Jakobs Cove alive, Dr. Ned (who is not related to Dr. Zed from Fyrestone) does his job a little too well, creating zombies and other abominations that now run rampant in this region. Players will have to work alongside Dr. Ned as they embark on a quest to cure the inhabitants of Jakobs Cove in this full-fledged expansion filled with new enemies, new quests and rare loot drops.
So there you go. While I’m pretty zombied out of late, I am curious to see how Borderlands does its deadheads. Slow-moving enemies wouldn’t be much of a threat to the player, while the game (based on the Arid Badlands stretch I’m allowed to talk about) opts for reinforcements-spawn-from-nowhere enemies rather than massed on-screen hordes. So this does suggest it’ll be Borderlands trying something a little different to its norm. As it should, given this add-on is asking quite the pretty penny.
Addendum – zombie stuff seemed a lot less wearyingly omnipresent when it at least didn’t always include the word ‘zombie’ in its title. It’s a shame that even this last vestige of subtlety has been lost of late.
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so you bought the game. awesome. they released dlc that took the game to new and different areas, adding new enemies, locations, weapons.
you just want a good deal on those.
I’m not sure the GOTY package is what I’d call a “good deal on those,” but it’s a way of getting them that doesn’t involve having to deal with GfWL so I decided it was the best of limited options. I wish they’d done a “Knights of the Nine” style compilation pack instead.
I’m somewhat skeptical of the “DLC at launch” thing – but a colleague explained that it might not just be total rip-off land.
This is his theory:
The game has to be done when it goes gold which is a good bit of time before release. You’re not going to get your screeds of bug reports in from the live players till the game has been launched, so you’ve got a bunch of programmers sitting around twiddling thumbs.
From what I hear typical games company protocol at that point is to give them a holiday after they’ve been crunching themselves with 80 hour weeks for the previous 6 months but it’s possible that in saner work environments that’s not what happens and instead they spend the time finishing off the stuff they had to cut to get it to ship. So you’re paying for the extra bits they did after the game got “finished” for release.
I quite like the theory but still get the “hmm” feeling when they have DLC right at launch.
Let's not forget, if what Ely– (sorry, forgot your name, poster near the very beginning of thread) is true, THEY HAVE TO HAVE DLC PLANNED AT LAUNCH OF THE VANILLA GAME IF THEY WANT TO DO DLC AT ALL.
This is MICROSOFT'S FAULT. God damned platform runners and publishers.
True on the XBox, but for the PC they could have just included the extra content or offered it for free. That said, personally I’m not against paid DLC for the PC provided the game has a good amount of content and tells a complete story, and it’s looking like Borderlands is likely to satisfy those conditions. So I don’t really see this as a problem, I’ll be getting what I paid for and if I don’t want to pay for more then I just won’t.
I blame horse armour for PC gamer’s general hatred for DLC
I think this particular DLC package is just to help the game compete with Left4Dead 2 releasing shortly after. Granted Borderlands and L4D2 have only the most basic of similarities but they still sit on the same shelf at Best Buy.
I find it hard to believe it’s not going to cost them more sales than it gains them. It’s a bad PR move, regardless of how one feels personally about paid DLC, to announce paid expansion content before your game even hits the shelves.
I’m not so sure about that, Vinraith. In fact, I’d wager that the number of people who take issue with this sort of thing – or any of gaming’s current bugbears, like DRM, L4D2, etc. – is negligible.
True, these hot button issues with gamers are usually only hot button issues with a vocal minority. Which doesn’t necessarily mean the complaint isn’t valid, but then it doesn’t necessarily mean that it is, either.
The way I see it, if Borderlands has even close to the amount of content it’s supposed to have, I’m pretty OK with having to pay for more so long as the storyline(s) in the basic game are complete. If the DLC isn’t worth it I just won’t buy it. Simple as that.
I don’t have hard numbers, obviously, so its hard to say. I’m probably representative of a particularly small minority, in that I doubt seriously that the game itself is lacking in content, and it sounds like the DLC is sufficiently beefy, but this rubs the “completist” streak in me the wrong way.
Knowing there will be paid DLC, probably a lot of it, tells me that if I buy and play the game now I won’t be seeing everything there is to see. I’ll have to play it again at least once, a year hence, once all the DLC’s come out. If I replay it before all the DLC’s come out, I’ll see more stuff, but still not all of it, which will necessitate a third play through.
Previously I was buying the game on the assumption that it would be worth one play, this puts me in a position where (to my somewhat demented completionist logic) it has to be worth at least two. That’s a higher bar, so I’ll wait for reviews, judge harsher than I would have, and probably wait for a sale in anticipation of the greater expense of collecting all this DLC content (or wait for a gold pack a year from now and avoid the issue altogether).
But like I said, I’m odd and probably only representative of myself. :)
only the tinfoil hat paranoid crowd will be displeased.
Its a great PR move. It shows the devs arent finished improving the game, and have clear ideas about what they want to add.
Could be worse, valve was telling everyone in interviews for left 4 dead that they were going to be adding all kinds of content and new levels and stuff. in the end look what we got.
So a developer is telling you that they are adding to your game, instead of making a new one that is going to basically have everything the first had + more. Sounds full of win, instead of a nice screw you.
Because really, did l4d do bad enough to not warrant some payed dlc, or even an expansion. Instead they made an all new game that makes your original purchase worthless.
Word of mouth will cause huge sales. So far anyone who has played the game is in love with it. read some reviews, or check out all the guys demoing it.
“only the tinfoil hat paranoid crowd will be displeased.”
You can call them whatever you want, there’s a lot of them (hell, there’s a lot of them just in this thread).
“Word of mouth will cause huge sales.”
Entirely possible, but that’s a separate variable entirely.
Its a great sign the game isn’t finished. I’ll pick up the complete bundle in a year.
Unless i get an excellent demo, a download i mean, not a goit in a booth giving me a 5 minute leading experience.
DLC’s are always too overpriced for what you get imo.
I haven’t yet bought any dlc cause I look at it and think… hmmm is it adding much to the game. Usually not really
So does that mean you ignore the free DLCs too? :P
I find myself more likely to buy a game, not less if I know theres paid dlc on the way. Given that Borderlands is already my kind of game, It’s good to know there’ll be more of it around the corner.
As with Fallout 3, by the time I finish the basic stuff the next batch should already be waiting making Borderlands just a bigger, more expensive game, and that’s alright by me
it takes atleast 2 play throughs to get to max level.
loot and world spawns are also random.
So everytime you play the game, it will be different from what you played before. The game is designed around playing with your friends and gathering more loot. which in this case, there is always going to be something better than what you currently own.
The game can be restarted at any time, at any level, and the world will automatically level it up with you. So you get a good match from beginning to end regardless.
Its not really about Playthroughs with this, its multiplayer madness with your friends that will keep you coming back again and again.
So you will never experience everything in this game because it will be different everytime, and you will be looking for other items that will improve you further.
I’ve never gotten through any game more than once with friends, so it’s going to have to be good for at least one MP and one SP play-through to be worth my while.
so umm, what games do you play online? cause apparently playing once means you are done.
I mean in the case of games that have an actual “end” of course. We played through Diablo 2, but just once. Once through Neverwinter Nights, once through Titan Quest etc. I’d be surprised if I could talk my friends into replaying this one, even though I know full well it’s designed for replayability. Hopefully I’ll like it os much I want to solo through it myself again, but I should probably wait for a demo to be sure.
well, this is an entirely different type of game from those. Its alot easier to play fps over and over.
True. I mean, it’s somewhat like Diablo in that it’s a randomized action RPG, but it’s also very much a shooter, and shooters tend to have longer lifespans with my usual gaming circle. We’ll just have to see.
I wonder what the PvP is like. Deathmatch/Team Deathmatch and all of their glorious incarnations are my main source of enjoyment in shooters.
Can you have 4 man teams against 4 man teams (like Guild Wars) or is it limited to that stupid looking candyass dueling crap.
“Hurr… I melee you. We watch numbers fly out of each other…whoever loses numbers faster loses…durrr….”
4 players total you can duel anywhere you want. or go to the arena for FFA.
Tanks a lot.
Will be waiting a couple of months on this one.
The Borderlands Chronicles: PART I
http://arewenewatthis.wordpress.com/2009/10/29/the-borderlands-chronicles-part-i-zeds-red-baby-or-skag-skirmish/