Borderlands 2
 

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Taking stuff from wikipedia:

Five years have passed since the events of Borderlands, when the four vault hunters exposed the secrets of the Eridian Vault. A man called Handsome Jack has taken credit for the vault hunters' actions and claimed the wealth of the Vault, allowing him to take over the Hyperion Corporation and effectively gain dominion over Pandora. Promising to clean the lawless planet up, Handsome Jack embarks on a campaign to exterminate Pandora's existing colonist population and industrialize the planet. The main symbol of Handsome Jack's rule is a massive supply base built in the shape of an "H" on Pandora's moon. The base is always visible, and can deploy Hyperion forces to any point on Pandora.

Borderlands 2 begins with the player fighting to the death to win a priceless cache of loot in a gladiatorial tournament run by Handsome Jack for his personal amusement. The player succeeds and gains notoriety, but Handsome Jack sees this as a threat to his popularity with the people. At the tournament's end he denies the reward and leaves the player for dead in a tundra. The mysterious Guardian Angel from the first game then contacts the player and explains that Handsome Jack must be killed, directing the player to rescue the four original vault hunters from Hyperion's clutches to accomplish this.

Like the first game, there are four playable characters in the game, though the characters are all new. The first new character is Salvador, nicknamed "Gunzerker" who resembles Brick from the first game in abilities, but also can dual-wield any combination of guns. The second character is a siren named Maya, similar to Lilith from the first game, but has a different ability to Lilith called Phaselock. The other two characters are a soldier-like character called Axton, who relies on turrets (like Roland from the first game) and an assassin-like character called Zero, whose ability creates a duplicate of himself and becomes invisible for a short time, where he can unleash a critical hit on an enemy with his sword. Not much is known about them at this time apart from their names and looks. Non-playable characters Guardian Angel and Claptrap return to aid the player during quests. The four characters from the first game, Roland, Lilith, Brick, and Mordecai, all return in the form of non-player characters that the new characters will encounter on Pandora or in various missions.


Borderlands 2 builds upon the gameplay elements introduced in its predecessor. It is a first-person shooter that includes character-building elements found in role-playing games, leading Gearbox to call the game a "role-playing shooter". At the start of the game, players select one of four new characters, each with a unique special skill and with proficiencies with certain weapons. From then on, players take on quests assigned through non-player characters or from bounty boards, each typically rewarding the player with experience points, money, and sometimes a reward item. Players earn experience by killing foes and completing in-game challenges (such as getting a certain number of kills using a specific type of weapon). As they gain levels from experience growth, players can then allocate skill points into a skill tree that features three distinct specializations of the base character.

Returning gameplay features from the first game will include the unique, cartoon-esque cel-shading graphic style, 3-branch skill trees, class-mods, and four-player online cooperative modes. New features include a more expansive and customizable weapons system, reworked four-seat drift-able vehicles and vehicle physics elements, and dynamic quest systems. For example, taking too much time to save a friend in a quest may result in their death and the failure of the quest, which will affect the story as the player progresses. Technically, the game world will be all connected, rather than loadable levels for each region, allowing accurate viewing of the entire world from a given point rather than the first game's premade "Skybox".

In addition, the AI system has been reworked for the game. Non-enemies will populate the game world more often and will travel around different locations depending on the time. Enemy AI will encourage teamwork, such as flanking, as well as taking cover when wounded, though lower level enemies like Psychos will still embrace the mentality of, "Wow that's a gun! I want my face in front of it," according to Gearbox VP Steve Gibson. Shooting enemies will stun or cripple them depending on where they are shot. For a change, enemies will be intelligent enough to climb and traverse difficult terrain to pursue the player. Enemies will also be able to interact with each other. For example, certain enemies can heal their teammates, boost their shields for defense, or use them as shields to protect themselves.

I gave up on the 360 version fairly soon and I forget why. I think I might have been low on Goozex points.

But then Requiem and I played a little bit more when it was on sale on Steam last winter and fell back in love with it.



It's out September 18th. Whose getting it and on which platform? I'm pretty sure I'm going to stick to 360 this time.

Ya we need to finish the first some time. Other games came out and I got busy with those and school, but I do want to finish it.

The first one was sweet.. I never beat the second harder playthrough, which I should do before this one..

Liking the new Zero character.. Prolly gonna play as him the first time..

Didn't really get too far on the first one, but it was quite fun so I might give this a try.

Good to see that the game world will be more lively with more NPCs.
Pandora was so barren, and the story was so disconnected and vague I rarely had an idea of what my motivations for playing were.

It's also good to hear that more than 2 people can ride in a car at once.
It was a relatively minor nuisance, but it still had a tendency to bog down the gameplay waiting for the players in the other car to find their way around.

I just hope the environments and enemies are more varied than the first game - those two aspects of the game didn't really change at all until the final act.

Getting this on 360.

This game will be awesome. I'm most certainly getting this when it comes out. I've got the first one on the 360 beat it on both playthrough. Love taking on cramexrex probably the most toughest enemy in the game.

A couple of new details got revealed during PAX East.

Character customization got expanded to also include customizable heads for characters while the number of ways to unlock items was also expanded to include rewards for clearing missions and challenges.

A new character class was also announced called the Mechromancer but won't be ready in time for the game's release and instead will be added later as a post-launch release DLC. Those who pre-order the $150 edition of the game get her for free.

http://www.screwattack.com/news/bord...ther-new-class

I pre-ordered at Amazon a long time ago, but on top the the $10 credit is the Premiere Club.

http://www.borderlands2.com/preorder...emiereclub.jpg

http://www.borderlands2.com/preorder...d_includes.jpg

Apparently it's going to come packed in a replica of an in-game loot box.

Sounds hot. I may just spring for that, then...

Gamestop got the same thing going. But instead of a $10 credit, they're throwing in Creature Slaughter Dome.

http://www.gamestop.com/gs/images/bo...SD_bonusLG.jpg

Well, we'll have to see how high gas prices go. Might end up going to amazon.

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I'm pretty pumped about this game..

I am too. This might be that only game I'll actually purchase for the rest of the year. Everything else will be Goozexed

DIBS

That's fine, I think I'm going ninja

http://www.xbox360achievements.org/i...Chest_Full.jpg

Hey RoXer and G, thoughts on this? Definate buy?

Hell I'd buy that. I'd like to see the actual thing before I pass judgement.

Like, is it gonna be the size of a footlocker, or slightly bigger than your average shipping box?

Judging by that, I'd say that everything shown comes inside the loot box. It'll likely be around the size of a rock band bundle box, I'd guess.

I'm just starting on the original. I'm liking it so far.

Same

RP, you're playing as Lillith aren't you?

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No.

The rogue

Borderlands 2: On Skill Trees, Psychotic Children, and the Joys of Being a Ninja

Gearbox gives us a couple of hours with its upcoming shooter/RPG sequel, and we give you this preview. Fair trade, no?

By Alex Navarro | July 13, 2012

The magic of 2010's Borderlands was somewhat lost on me, I'm afraid. While I adored the aesthetic of Gearbox's ludicrous shooter/RPG hybrid, the lack of any meaningful story and my own aversion to games that trade heavily in "loot hoarding" (I refuse to use the more crass term for it) all but ensured that, with nothing else to excite me, I'd give up a short chunk of the way through. For me, it was like the difference between understanding something to be funny, and actually laughing at it. I could see why so many people, our own Jeff Gerstmann among them, could fall victim to Borderlands' beguiling charms. I was just immune.


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Characters can be customized with all sorts of new outfits and heads, many of which are hidden throughout the game.



So understand that when I say to you Borderlands 2 appears to be a massive improvement over Borderlands, I realize that the things that are important to me might not necessarily be the things that are important to you. What I have seen of Borderlands 2 thus far shows me a much more cartoonishly over-the-top game, a game that embraces the undercurrent of lunacy from the first game, and jabs a pitchfork into its ass to rile it up. It's bigger, louder, and more willfully nutty than last go around, which for those who just care about the loot and the character building might not care so much about. Don't worry, there's plenty to talk about there, too.

I'll admit that the first time I sat down to play some co-op Borderlands 2, I wasn't overly impressed. Having now seen it a second time, I now realize that this has got to be one of the most nightmarish games to show to the press. Quests and sidequests are so sprawling and deliberate in pace that anyone trying to show off multiple aspects of the game would be hard-pressed to do so in a timely fashion. In fact, just before letting the press have a go with it earlier this week, Gearbox head Randy Pitchford spent damn near 10 minutes just explaining the myriad things they wanted to cover, and the various developer cheats they were going to have to use to show us all those things. It was a long list.

I also think I just wasn't digging the classes as much at first. On my first play, I messed around with the Gunzerker and Siren, the two classes Gearbox has been showing for the last few months. They're fun, interesting classes (that dual-wielding mechanic the Gunzerker has is deeper than it first seems), but neither really clicked with me. Fast forward to this week, and I found myself with access to the Commando and Assassin classes. Now I'm all turned around on the subject.

It was really the Commando that did it for me, though the Assassin's pretty fantastic as well (more on him momentarily). But the Commando, with his wonderfully helpful turrets and outlandishly explosive upgrades, really won me over.

http://media.giantbomb.com/uploads/0..._v2_middle.jpg
Skill trees go deeper than ever before, and the upgrades have more impact.



Having only messed with Roland a bit in the first game, I'll just say that while his turret stuff was neat, Axton (the Commando) is a whole other deal entirely. We were shown characters at levels 25 and 35, so we got to go pretty deep into one of the individual skill trees for each character. For the Commando, it's all about how you build out your turrets. You'll of course start out with minor upgrades like ammo counts and cool down periods, but as you start going further in, you'll be able to do all sorts of wacky stuff. You can add grenade launchers, rocket blasters, and even stack a second turret on top of your main one, with all upgrades included. There's even an option to make your turret stick to any surface, including walls and ceilings. When you're trying to avoid getting swarmed by rabid creatures, this can come in handy.

The Assassin goes the other route, focusing on stealth and deception. But what's great about the Assassin is that it doesn't rigidly put you into one box or another. There are a variety of ways to Assassinate, after all, and depending on which skill tree you opt to go with. If you're a sniper who likes to pick enemies off from afar, then there's a whole line of upgrades just for that task. If you prefer things up close and personal, you can pump up his melee stats majorly, as well as his hologram/cloaking abilities. Yes, he projects a hologram of himself as a special ability, and while it's there, he stays cloaked for a few seconds, letting you dive in for the kill. Without giving away too many of the ways that ability can be improved, let's just say there's a fun way to turn that combo into an insane chain of attacks.

These customizations go a good bit deeper and are more immediately impactful than many of the first game's, but really, it wasn't necessarily any issue with the class customization of the first game that prevented me from really enjoying it. More, it was the sense of emptiness I got from the game's story. Loot, on its own, is not enough to attract me to a game. And while a "bazillion" more guns sounds promising enough, I needed something more interesting to rope me in.

Enter Borderlands 2's script, penned by Anthony Burch. I'm not going to say I've seen enough to definitively say whether Borderlands 2's story is good, exactly, but everything I've seen is damn funny. It's quirky, irreverent stuff that has a purposeful rhythm and pace to it, something that video game comedy often fails at. Nowhere is this clearer than with the new character introduced in this latest demo: Tiny Tina. You may have noticed that pig-tailed tween girl with the murderous glint in her eye in the latest trailer. That's Tina.

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Tiny Tina throws the worst tea parties... but maybe don't tell her that.



Tina's a survivor, a 13 year old girl who's spent a good chunk of her life living feral in the wastelands of Pandora. All that time alone has, perhaps unsurprisingly, left her a bit south of normal, mentally. She's an Adderall-addled manic pixie nightmare, who may or may not be using you to seek revenge against those who killed her parents. Oh, and she's voiced by Ashly Burch, who you may know from her and brother Anthony's web series, Hey Ash, What'cha Playin'. Accuse nepotism all you like, but Burch is perfect. She's hysterical, and gives Tina just the right mix of girly sweetness and unhinged lunacy.

Several hours with Borderlands never managed to sell me, and yet just a few hours with Borderlands 2 has piqued my curiosity anew. Yes, this is in many ways just more Borderlands, but it's a lot more of Borderlands, and with many of that first game's more underutilized aspects suddenly getting more attention. In short, Borderlands 2 looks like it's going to fix a lot of things I didn't like about Borderlands. Come September, we'll all find out for sure

Gearbox says it takes about 58 hours to beat the campaign with just 1 character in Borderlands 2 with the numbers coming from the people who made the official guide for the game.

http://www.egmnow.com/articles/news/...58-hours-long/

Yes. Nice to know somebody gives a flying fuck about the singleplayer campaign and not multiplayer.

If that number is true, it should take me into October just before Assassins' Creed 3.

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Actually none of the 4 protagonists return from the first game. The female character this time is Maya.

Which game do you think he was talking about?

I was talking about Borderlands, not B2.

I got curious since the release was getting close and wondered how big this ultimate loot chest was going to be.

http://www.justpushstart.com/wp-cont..._5_6_11646.jpg




2K released this a little while back, but this is how big the ultimate loot chest deal is gonna look like. I like it, I can put this to good use. It doesn't look like a cheap piece of cardboard.

Pre-ordered this. I know it sounds out of character, but...