I first heard about Gearbox's Borderlands well over a year ago when I picked up an American magazine during a trip to The States. Its promise of hugely customizable guns and characters was very promising, but that promise has taken a turn for the crazy.
According to Gearbox's Randy Pitchford, Borderlands contains more guns than the total amount of firearms contained within every Xbox 360 and PS3 game added together. Of course, this is procedurally generated content, but this game's boast of 650,000 guns is still worth bragging:
"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."
Although the guns are generated by the game's software, Pitchford claims that they "look like humans crafted them," making them indistinguishable from artist-created weaponry. Gearbox also won't be showing these weapons off prior to launch, wanting the players to discover the vast arsenal for themselves.
The content generation system will also produce new missions, environments and enemies. It's certainly promising a lot, but time will tell if it can live up to its technological promise.
Jim Sterling serves as reviews editor for Destructoid.com, head of the Podtoid podcast, and produces a number of news stories, original features, one-of-a-kind videos. With his passionate argumentative style, controversial opinions, harsh delivery, and dedication to brutal honesty Sterling is a name that you can't help but recognize.
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Contest:
8:38 AM on 10.15.2008
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http://www.destructoid.com/blogs/trunxkam45/borderlands-e3-10-minute-walkthrough-95947.phtml
How long ago was this game talked about anyway?
Regardless, it's nice to get another update on a game I'm looking forward to. Mainly for the 4 player co-op.
i'm usually happy with 10-15 weapons...seems like overkill to me.
Who the HELL needs 650,000 weapons? Will anyone live to see/use them all? I would have been excited for 50 weapons at least then we could remember what weapons we like...etc
Generated levels and missions sounds good though.