Gearbox is certainly giving gamers value for money with the much anticipated sequel to their cel-shaded FPS, Borderlands. In a genre known for its stingy single player campaigns as developers focus on multiplayer, it is heartening to hear what Steve Gibson, Gearbox’s VP of Marketing, had to say about Borderlands 2‘s 58-hour campaign:
“What we like to think about it is, Borderlands is a hobby. Some guide guys just did a playthrough of Borderlands 2 and they reported back to us that it takes 58 hours to play through the campaign – and that’s just one playthrough with one character. So the depth with which people can get into that… Yeah we look at it as a hobby, and that isn’t even counting the new Badass Points system and how that’ll affect every character you do. We want it to feel like you get more for your money, we’re happy for people to pay their money once and feel that they get ongoing value.”
The Badass system Gibson refers to Achievement-esque tokens that the player will receive for performing certain tasks or feats. These can then be cashed in to improve character stats across the board, so if you start the game with a new character class, your Badass ranking will carry over.
Considering the original game took 30-40 hours to complete depending on how many side-quests you chose to do, it looks as if Gearbox has cooked us up quite the psycho stormbrew. The company has announced that the game has been sent for certification, which means it is fully finished, locked, and loaded. The team is now hard at work on post-launch content, including the new playable character, The Mecromancer. The new female cyborg character DLC will be released 60 to 90 days after the game launches, and will be free to members of the Borderlands Premiere Club i.e. those who place a pre-order of the game.
[Source: GamerZines, Gearboxity]
