Borderlands 2

What It Needs To Be A Success

by exterminat

©2011 Nicholas Laborde

If you didn’t hear, Borderlands 2 was sort of revealed by Gearbox Software leader Randy Pitchford in a conversation; if that’s not good enough for you, they filed a trademark on the name ‘Borderworlds‘ a while back. It may be unconfirmed, but a sequel is definitely on its way.

While this is all good and exciting, this immediately brings to mind what they’ll do next.

Details are nonexistent at this point, but this is what I want Gearbox to present to us on our second looting-spree of Pandora (if that’s even the setting this time).

Improved Writing, Story and Pacing

An aspect of the original title that garnered much attention and praise was the sharp, witty writing and humorous storyline.

Ultimately, though, Borderlands fell through on its strength in later parts of the title. A highlight of boss fights was the freeze-frame moment where a boss was named, usually accompanied by a humorous caption.

Disappointingly, most of the enemies you encounter throughout the bulk of the game that have these moments lack a caption, or a real introduction for that matter.

I want a caption that will literally make me laugh out loud, with an egotistical introductory cinematic. We all hate bosses that parade around, even more so if they go off on a tangent making fun of you. Letting all bosses have a certain “standard” of this would give players more encouragement to win and cooperate for victory.

Not only do the boss encounters need tweaks here and there, but the writing in general needs an overhaul.

Borderlands starts off on an epic note for the first few hours, and then completely drops to a dull repetition for the next nearly two dozen hours; at the very last hour of gameplay, the story completely hikes and then just ends disappointingly. (Seriously, The Vault was in no way what we were led to believe, and not in a good way!)

We need pacing in Borderlands 2, because although the original title was fun, I couldn’t stand to sit through a sequel that does the same exact thing. Gearbox can do much better than what we’ve seen.

Customization

 

A topic Borderlands altogether avoided was that of customization. Sure, you could change your player’s color… but that was it.

In the sequel, we want to be able to customize ourselves! It’s very self-explanatory but it needs to be done if Borderlands 2 sets its sights on something bigger than four players.

Not only am I discussing character customization, but weapon tweaking as well. Wouldn’t that be fantastic?

We’ve all found an amazing weapon before, just to find out it has crappy iron sights or a slow firing mode.

Maybe do something ridiculous like letting Marcus‘s brother (or something like that) come in, but specializing in upgrades for weapons and character equipment? Get a crappy gun, go upgrade it at the shop!

That would further diversify the weapon variety, and truly make the experience the players’ own. Besides; we all want to show off to our friends in coop!

More Intuitive Cooperative Play

The most appealing aspect of Borderlands was easily its take on cooperative play. I can be quoted saying that the title does coop “right” and few games could match the standard it set.

Experience was perfectly shared, and the game was bare enough on narrative to actually allow players to have fun and go crazy (versus bogging them down with a deep story).

What the cooperative feature actually lacked, though, was interaction with your teammates; in a cynical sense, the other players were dropped in and the magical numbers behind enemy difficulty and loot amount were raised. Nothing else denoted their presence. As far as Borderlands was concerned, there were just extra people shooting.

I want to interact with my partners, and actually have to depend on them; four one-man-armies running amok is not cooperative in any sense.

It seems like a no-brainer, but many coop games lack any type of interaction with your human brethren; Borderlands was one of them.

Put a bigger focus on the classes and their differences. Counting that the gang returns, why not make Roland able to throw ammo to partners, like in Brink?

Why not let Lilith grab hold of a teammate, and you walk hand-in-hand behind enemy lines, phased together?

We could even do something like allowing Bloodwing to grab an enemy and hold them in midair, leaving the poor soul an easy target for fellow teammates (because Mordecai‘s companion is useless enough as it is). Something else within the range of possibility? Giving money to partners. Seriously, we need to be able to do it.

The possibilities really are endless; all they need is a little creativity and a willingness to be different. As time plays out, I have a feeling Gearbox will be keeping a keen eye on Brink.

87 Bazillion Guns…Seriously, Though, This Time

One of the biggest disappointments of Borderlands was the lack of real guns.

The ad campaigns happily boasted about having millions of guns.

Well, Gearbox, I hate to break it to you, but the same gun tweaked 800 different times does not count as 800 different weapons.

There was a decent amount and variety of the suckers, but what it ultimately came down to was a truckload of clones with slight damage and firing speed differences.

These are the people that ported Halo to PC and made the flamethrower work. These are the people that made the two expansions to Half-Life. These are the people that are successfully reviving Duke Nukem from the dead.

If they can manage to do all of that, they sure as hell can actually make new guns this time around. And another thing to add while we’re at it: Eridian weapons.

They sucked, to put it simply. Why praise and cherish these guns if they are never extremely powerful to begin with?

Instead of making them random loot in certain chests, why don’t you make “off the record” quests to go find them? Add special areas off the beaten path where riches lie, but a challenge awaits. That leads me to my next proposition…

Actual Exploration and Secrets

Another major letdown was the fact that Pandora simply had no incentives to go out and explore! The world is big enough as it is, but every location would be ventured to eventually if you did every quest.

That’s not exploration; that’s being linear.

Rarely were there places that quests didn’t already take you to begin with. There is plenty of room to add in random encounters, unmarked quests, and even the possibility of areas that can lead to massive profit in terms of loot.

Add in a nice little boss with his/her own freeze-frame moment and caption, and you’ve got yourself a successful side-mission system.

But in no way do I want it to be limited solely to that! Add entire camps, bases, even cities that you wouldn’t normally go to! Heck, even add a whole side story as yet another incentive to take a break from the overarching storyline.

And don’t stop there. Borderlands had a few good easter eggs, but we simply want more. A whole side mission system leaves the door wide open for plenty of easter eggs and hidden gems.

It wouldn’t take much, and would please everyone. Of course, it would further increase the coop and replay values of the title. It would also work hand in hand with my final suggestion…

Continued DLC Support

Few games have done DLC right. Fallout 3 is a prime example, but it wasn’t the only game providing top-notch extras.

One thing that Gearbox absolutely hit the nail on the head with was post-release downloadable content. Four pieces in total were released: Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot, The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned, The Secret Armory of General Knoxx, and Claptrap’s New Robot Revolution.

Each provided an interesting, unique take on the storyline and provided tenfold the amount of cooperative fun. Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot had us battling waves of enemies for our lives. Zombie Island had us figuring out what on Earth was happening on a remote island of Pandora.

Secret Armory was the first true “story based” DLC and showed exactly that the story could successfully be continued and tie in perfectly with the game.

Lastly, Robot Revolution was most agreeably the best out of them all. Claptraps were tired of being abused and pushed around, so our very own CL4P-TP decided to start a Revolution; the Robo-lution, to be precise.

What played out was a satire on nearly every story you’ve seen this generation, combined with some of the most hilarious writing yet.

Sadly, it tied up the end of Borderlands. Well, not really, because it made absolutely no sense (in a good way!) at the end and simply provided more laughs. (Then again, if Borderlands made any sense, I’d be worried.)

Gearbox needs to continue along this path and follow suit for the sequel, because if they do, it’ll be the DLC king. Not only will it encourage a large player base, but it will enforce that player base and make them never want to leave.

And Now, We Wait…

Borderlands definitely provided one of the most unique outings this generation, but ultimately fell into the ranks of the sleepers as many big name titles released alongside it.

That didn’t stop it from becoming one of my favorite games of all time. Gearbox is in the land of opportunity for Borderlands 2, and if they heed what was presented above, we’ll have a title that no one will pass up.

That is, as long as Duke doesn’t completely break the universe when he awakes from his fourteen year slumber.

©2011 Nicholas Laborde

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