Gearbox Should Fire Their Marketing Department

I'm really looking forward to Borderlands, it was one of the few things at E3 I was really interested in but there didn't seem to be any footage of the presentation Gearbox gave. I guess to celebrate the announcement of the release date, October 20th, they put out a new trailer, and it'll also give me an opportunity to talk about it a bit.


I really hate the way the trailer was put together, though saying "role-playing shooter" is still not as bad as what the Crimecraft guys came up with a while back. The game itself is still looking very promising. To go into a little more detail, Borderlands is an open-world, post-apocalyptic FPS/RPG from Gearbox, the guys behind the Brothers in Arms series. The game can be played through alone or with up to three friends, who, if I understand correctly, can drop in and out at any time. You'll bomb around the planet in various vehicles, killing strange creatures, completing quests and collecting better. The hyperbolic "87 bazillion guns" refers to the fact that all the weapons in the game are procedurally generated, the game coming up with different stat combinations on the fly. There are different gun manufacturers in the game with their own unique styles, combined with the regular damage, accuracy, fire rate, etc. stats, as well as elemental damage. During a presentation last year, Gearbox frontman Randy Pitchford said that the number of weapons was more around half a million, which is still a staggering number, though many of those will probably amount to Lightning Sniper Rifle+1 and Lightning Sniper Rifle+2. The character advancement seems to be a typical Diablo-style affair, you pick one of four character types and level them up, picking different abilities from a skill tree as you progress.
Despite favorable reviews their last Brothers in Arms game, Hell's Highway, which I enjoyed myself, was not much of a success, so Borderlands could be Gearbox's make-or-break title. They seem be generating a lot of buzz, I hope it works out for them, I know I'll likely be picking it up.

-K.