It looks like the earlier rumors were right on the money, as Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel!, a full-length PC/PS3/X360 Borderlands interquel set between the first and second title and developed by 2k Australia, has been officially announced today. First, here’s the full press release:
2K and Gearbox Software Announce Borderlands®: The Pre-Sequelâ„¢
Blast off to Pandora’s moon for gravity-bending gunfights and experience the never-before-told story about the rise of Handsome Jack
Join the conversation on Twitter using the hashtag #ThePreSequel
NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Apr. 9, 2014– 2K and Gearbox Software announced today that Borderlands®: The Pre-Sequelâ„¢, an all-new standalone Borderlands game set in-between the award-winning Borderlands and Borderlands 2, is currently in co-development by Gearbox Software and 2K Australia. Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel will be available worldwide in fall 2014 on the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft, PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system, and Windows PC.
(Borderlands is one of 2K’s premiere franchises, and Borderlands 2 is the highest-selling title in the history of our company,) said Christoph Hartmann, president of 2K. (Fans are clamoring for an all-new, triple-A Borderlands experience, and we will deliver just that with Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel.)
Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel launches players to Pandora’s moon to experience wild, gravity-bending gunfights in zero-atmosphere environments using an array of all-new weaponry. For the very first time, fans play on the other side as four new playable characters contributing to the rise of the Hyperion Corporation. Fighting alongside Handsome Jack, players witness his transformation into the megalomaniacal tyrant that fans loved to hate in Borderlands 2.
(Since Gearbox Software first created the Borderlands franchise, we never dreamed of this much love and support from gamers,) added Randy Pitchford, president of Gearbox Software. (We are grateful that the incredible talent at 2K Australia has been able to jump in with Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel to help it live up to the high standards that Borderlands fans have come to expect.)
(Gearbox has entrusted 2K Australia with the co-development of their award-winning franchise and we are committed to delivering an all-new shoot ‘˜n’ loot experience that fans will love,) concluded Tony Lawrence, general manager of 2K Australia. (Fans will see for themselves at PAX East that there’s nothing quite like moon jumping in a low-gravity gunfight, completely freezing a moon bandit with one of the new Cryo weapons, and then shattering him into little pieces that float off into space. It’s pretty epic.)
Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel is coming to the PAX East fan convention in Boston this weekend. Located at booth #962, attendees can get a first look at the game in action, grab PAX East-exclusive Borderlands swag, and participate in a sweepstakes to win even more real-life loot.
Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel will be available in fall 2014 for Xbox 360, PS3, and Windows PC. Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel is not yet rated by the ESRB. For more information, please visit the official Borderlands web site, follow @borderlands on twitter, become a fan of Borderlands on Facebook, and subscribe to the new Borderlands channel on YouTube.
Then let’s move to the actual press coverage, starting from this Polygon article-style interview with Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford based on a talk he gave to the press. Technically, none of the info in it is exclusive, but it’s by far the most comprehensive article I’ve found, so I’ll start from here:
“The last quarterly report that Take-Two talked to the shareholders about, they announced that Borderlands 2 has become the best selling game in 2K Games history, which is pretty awesome,” he said. “I’m really pleased with that, obviously. It’s a challenge for us, though, because my studio has dedicated a lot of its attentions toward building new IP and towards creating technology for the future, which, in spite of the unparalleled support we gave to Borderlands 2 and the amount of DLC and other additional content we added to Borderlands 2, we still have not really met the demand that there has been from our fans. And to be fair, as well, within Gearbox, we really love Borderlands, so there’s a lot of us that keep wanting to do things with it, want to spend more time in the space.
“So we were very fortunate after BioShock Infinite shipped that the 2K Australia team was available, and so these guys have been able to jump in 100 percent to make sure that we could bring more content to Borderlands fans, and that’s what’s becomes Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel.”
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Does this new game, then, represent a handing off of the franchise to 2K Australia?
“Borderlands is obviously a Gearbox created brand, but I think if … it’s really tough, right?” he said. “It’s a huge success, so there’s a lot of expectation. If we only kept making the things that already proved successful, Borderlands itself wouldn’t exist. We would just keep making Brothers in Arms games forever. So, I’ve always been pretty quick to trust people that have passion and energy, and results vary. We did a deal with the Telltale guys to do a Tales from the Borderlands game and I’m really excited about that. This is like a core Borderlands game, you know the Tales guys might do their own type of thing. The 2K Australia guys are super experienced with shooters. They know the Unreal engine, which we license. They were able to learn our stuff really fast. They’ve done some great stuff in the BioShock universe and I think the results speak for themselves.
“So I’d love to for them to keep going, but we take each decision as it comes. It’s not like this moment in time where we go, ‘˜Hey we’re handing things, handing off a franchise.’ That’s not how we approach problems like that, but I do love the idea of these guys being in a position where, with a lot at stake they’re excited about it and being locked for even more Borderlands.”
Destructoid has a write-up:
The biggest change to come to Borderlands with the latest entry is the place all the action is happening on: the freaking moon! Yes, you’re finally able to explore the moon and it offers a few major new mechanics that may make playing the older Borderlands games challenging once you experience all the new features.
The major change is that you have an oxygen meter now. You need oxygen to breathe on the surface of the moon, but oxygen also doubles as the fuel for your jet pack. Yup, jet packs are a thing now. Jet packs allow you to double jump, soar even longer through the air on top of the lower gravity provided by the moon, and whenever you’re high enough you can even do a ground pound to either get down to the surface faster, or hurt some enemies.
Using your jet pack’s abilities does drain oxygen, and it’s definitely something you need to monitor as you play now. Oxygen is lootable, and the live demo we were shown had multiple points from which the player was able to refill oxygen so it doesn’t look like it will be too tedious of a thing to manage. Note that it’s only when you’re outside of a base or interior location that you have to worry about your oxygen intake. Otherwise the action inside a base is more akin to past Borderlands games — except, you know, there’s still lower gravity and you have a freaking jet pack.
PC Gamer:
Joining Claptrap, who’s now dubbed the Fragtrap, and whose abilities Gearbox won’t mention at other than to say he’ll have a low-slung camera POV, is Athena, an assassin who was once part of the ‘Crimson Lance’ (an elite private military company), and who was first introduced in The Secret Armory Of General Knoxx DLC. Her ‘Phalanx’ skill tree enables you to turn her into a tank thanks to her Aspis shield which also doubles as an oversized sci-fi discus. There there’s Wilhelm, the Enforcer, a Wolverine lookalike who was also the cybernetically-enhanced first boss of Borderlands 2, but here has yet to undergo his transformation. As you upgrade him so he’ll become more machine than man. Mwa hah, etc. Last up is Nisha, Handsome Jack’s squeeze, and as the Sheriff of Lynchwood represents the Lawbringer class, but who otherwise Gearbox also isn’t willing to discuss yet. Because marketing plans.
The Pre-Sequel tells the story of how Jack came to become the villain of Borderlands 2, with you helping his (initially well-meaning) rise to eventual super-villainy. In the demo Athena and Willhelm are trying to storm a Hyperion base in order to stop a giant death-ray that’s blasting lumps out of the moon.
The lack of atmosphere has a couple of gameplay implications: Firstly you need to keep your oxygen meter topped up by collecting O2 canisters, which drop in the same way as other loot. Not fun in itself, but you can also vent these to enable double jumps and to power jetpacks. This creates cool platforming opportunities one massive jump sees the characters land on a pillar of moon rock, below which lava from a laser strike flows and adds a pleasing verticality to the shootouts as enemies whizz around. You can also shoot out their helmets to rob them of air. As if being shot in the face wasn’t already inconvenience enough.
Eurogamer:
Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel was built using the existing Borderlands 2 engine, and will launch on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC only – there is no next-gen version, Pitchford confirmed. This, he said, was because most Borderlands players are still on these platforms, which have a huge user base.
But why not make it for PS4 and Xbox One as well as PC, PS3 and Xbox 360?
“It’s not free to build a game for next-gen,” Pitchford explained. “So when we decide where to spend our resources, we want to spend all of the attention we can on the game itself.
“If you try to image the set of Borderlands players who have already upgraded, that’s not 100 per cent. But if you try to image the set of Xbox One or PS4 owners who do not have an Xbox 360 or a PS3, the difference there is so close to nil you can’t make a business rationalisation around that.”
VG247:
How much of the game is set on the moon is unknown, 2K staying coy on the details of further locations other than to tell us to expect environmental diversity. Surprisingly, perhaps, even the small section we’re shown (roughly 40 minutes in length) features a visual variety of the likes not usually associated with the rock famous for hosting Neil Armstrong’s bootprint. The silvery-grey landscape is punctuated by lava-filled valleys which cast an orange-pink glow over the surrounding area, while moon bases (like the aforementioned communication facility) set an altogether more industrial, polluted tone.
Of the four new characters, we’re only made intimate with two and shown how to play as just one. Her name is Athena and 2K is describing her as the ‘˜tank’ class, her skills centred around grabbing the attentions of enemies, absorbing damage and healing herself. Athena first appeared in the original Borderlands’ The Secret Armory of General Knoxx DLC, so she’s sure to tug at the nostalgia strings of those players that have played through that particular dose of extra-curricular content.
Getting stuck in is very much Athena’s order of the day. To help her survive the inevitable onslaughts she can employ a Kinetic Aspis, a shield that charges itself full of energy by absorbing ordnance fired at her. Once powered up you can throw it at a foe, dealing significant damage before it boomerangs straight back to your arm. In practise, it works in a not too dissimilar fashion to the Vortex Shield available to Titanfall’s Titans.
This being Borderlands, the Kinetic Aspis (along with everything else) can be upgraded and modified through spending points across various skill trees. You can, for instance, advance the Aspis to a point where it ricochets off multiple enemies in a single throw allowing you take out small squads before receiving it back.
Rock, Paper, Shotgun:
1) It is for PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. That means no new engine, no graphical upgrades to speak of, no element whatsoever of being a next-gen Borderlands. The primarily reason for this, apparently, is that the majority of Borderlands’ fanbase is sitting pretty with a last-gen console. More copies of Borderlands 2 have been sold than have Xbones and PS4s combined. Anyway, consoles, whatever.
2) There are four new playable characters, all of which have appeared previously in Borderlands games, and all of which are a brand new class.
3) Most of it is set on the moon. The moon has low gravity and no oxygen. Also everyone gets jetpacks.
Point 3 is where most BTPS most seems to differ from Borderlands 2, and not just because the colour scheme switches to primarily grey-purple. There’s a new focus on verticality, at least presuming jetpack sections don’t turn out to be prescribed interludes like the exterior sections in Doom 3, as you’re shooting from on high, or/and at enemies on high, and with a new Ground Pound ability which allows you wreak massive damage by bottom-plunging onto landlocked foes. As with so many things in Borderlands, items and abilities can alter this so, for instance, it chucks out explosive damage as well, or you can shatter dudes who’ve been frozen by the new Cryo weapon types. Let’s just hope there are some exploding bum-related gags in there, eh?
Finally, AusGamers has both a preview and an interview that reveals that Bruce Spence is going to be involved. This might be the first time I’m interested in something Borderlands, then:
AusGamers: In the presentation, you mentioned that Gearbox has a bunch of rules, and 2K Australia don’t care about them. Could you elaborate on the rules you were talking about there?
Randy: I was speaking more hyperbolically there; there’s no actual rulebook [laughs]. We don’t have anything that resembles Leviticus. With respect to Borderlands, it’s totally fine for us to eat shellfish [laughs]. That said, one thing that’s a pretty distinct one that represents some information you’ve already got about the game is: since the first Borderlands game, I was one of the voices wishing for an ice gun. There’s always been an argument inside of Gearbox, a debate about whether or not an ice gun should exist. By ice gun, I mean I want to shoot bullets that freeze enemies into ice cubes, and then break those ice cubes up into little bits — pretty much exactly what 2K Australia developed with the cryo element effect.
The argument had many vectors. Some people were — rightfully and responsibly — concerned about the potential challenges to game balance and the effort to create the stuff. Some people argue about its logic and reason in the Universe, like ‘˜how do ice bullets work?’. If we can imagine incendiary bullets, those exist in the real world. We can imagine a bullet that has acid in it, even though the effect that we produce in game is really exaggerated, we can imagine it from a logic point of view.
It was harder for people to imagine the ice thing, but I think what cracked the nut for the 2K Australia guys is they’re in this Moon environment, and they’re dealing with technology, and the idea of cryo-stasis is a pretty natural concept in a science fiction construct that gets as extreme as a Moon-base presentation Borderlands game. So the idea of having cryogenic freezing became the vector to make that just logically sound, but almost obvious and natural.
All I know from my point of view though is, Hell yeah I got fuckin’ freeze guns now! [laughs]
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Randy: It’s the placeholder stuff that helped my team fall in love with the idea of ‘˜You know what? The people on the moon should be Australian!’ Of course, that makes perfect sense.
Tony: With some of the voices we’ve got, we’ve looked at someone like Bruce Spence, who you might recognise from Mad Max with the gyrocopter. Well, we’ve got him doing the gyrocopter scavenging in Borderlands Pre-sequel. So it’s wonderful that you guys can bring it up, that yeah Red Belly — Ned Kelly; red-bellied black snake — and you get all of those references. We’ve had fun putting that in the game; it’s been good.
AusGamers: Can you quantify, in percentage terms, the split between both studios, in terms of work and input?
Joel Eschler: I don’t know if we really want to put percentages on it, but we’re totally co-developing, and everyone’s talking every ten minutes between the studios when the timezones overlap. it’s a pretty organic relationship at the moment.
Randy: And there’s a couple of Gearbox guys that have been down to your studio.
Joel: Absolutely. We’re swapping people around all the time. In fact, we just went out to lunch with some Gearbox guys and other Aussies who are over here working. So we’re kind of transplanting people every couple of weeks.
