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View Full Version : Pitchford Discusses Borderlands' Massive Arsenal, Colonial Marines


modeps
10-15-2008, 04:21 AM
Borderlands (http://www.borderlandsthegame.com/) has weapons... a whole crap load of weapons (we're told 650,000+). 1Up has an interview (http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3170527) speaking with Randy Pitchford, president of Gearbox, where he discusses in some detail this seemingly unimaginable number.

"When you have a system that can procedurally generate this stuff, you just want to go nuts with it. The costs are totally different. All the development teams in the world added together can't physically craft what the software we've made is building for us. You can take all the guns in every game that's been launched on the PS3 and Xbox 360 -- add them all together, and Borderlands still has more guns. It's not fair, because we built the software that's making them for us. We're not actually making them. But it's really cool, because I haven't even seen them all. [Laughs] It's really neat."

In the same interview, Pitchford talked about their Aliens branded title, Colonial Marines:

"I think you'll see something this year. But I don't know when," divulged Pitchford, continuing, "We're crafting plans right now." The Brothers in Arms developer also cited Sega's cautious marketing strategy as the main reason for the information drought on Aliens, stating, "[Sega is] right, and it takes a lot of discipline to do what they're doing and not get out there and show off and brag about it."

Weapons are cool and all, I just hope Borderlands is worth playing... and I like me some Aliens.

lost
10-15-2008, 05:52 AM
Procedurally generated usually means boring in my opinion. However, that's one thing I'm almost certain Borderlands will not be.

Demo_Boy
10-15-2008, 08:01 AM
Too Human has way less procedurally generated weapons, and they still all feel pretty much the same.

Its the mechanics that diff the weapon, how many mechanics do your guns have? I think he listed off ~9 gun classes. So there you go, about the same for most games.

Still, I really want this game to rock.

Morpheus
10-15-2008, 08:16 AM
I'm really looking forward to Aliens: Colonial Marines. Coop marine vs. alien action, oh yeah!

Pretzel
10-15-2008, 04:33 PM
I'm looking forward to seeing how well this works. It was fun in Diablo to have every weapon have different qualities. Does this work well in an FPS, though? If the differences are too slight, you might not notice. If one stat overpowers the importance of another, or there's not enough mutually exclusive traits, then everyone will optimize towards the best and all have effectively the same weapon. I'm sure they're aware of this, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed.