Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel Preview

EDGE has published a new preview for Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, the 2k Australia-developed title set on Pandora’s moon in the period between the two main game’s stories, and slated for a Fall 2014 release. Here’s a snippet:

It’s the story of Handsome Jack, the pantomime villain who dominated the spotlight in Borderlands 2. He’s a character whose puerile psychosis spirits into existence creatures such as Butt Stallion, a diamond pony too intriguing to not be introduced as a DLC character. Playing as Jack’s four trusted lieutenants, The Pre-Sequel identifies his humanity at the outset, he’s just a man who loves order then eliminates it.

This isn’t just a straight-up tale of a morality flip, and all of the characters have their own dark trajectories. We’ve already met another character at the end of his life: Wilhelm, the mostly metal boss who summoned flying help in Borderlands 2. As we see him here, Wilhelm is augmented, but still mainly flesh. His active skill, as an Enforcer, is to summon defensive or offensive drone assistance. And as he progresses along the levelling path, you’ll notice him leaving his species behind. Athena, meanwhile, is a character from the first game’s General Knoxx DLC, a Crimson Lance Assassin who shares some DNA with Zero. But her active skill couldn’t be more different from Zero’s cloak, providing the series’ first shield-based class. Think Titanfall: she combines the catch-and-fire-back Vortex Shield of the Titan with the double-jumping of a Pilot.

Those double-jumps are tied to the moon’s mini-economy of oxygen. Lawrence is keen to distance the resource from a pervasive fear of suffocation, however. (That wouldn’t be fun,) he says. (Fans wouldn’t thank us for that.) Instead, lootable oxygen can be used to fuel glides and double-jumping. Combined with low-G zones, this makes for some old-fashioned Quake-style ballets. The presence of oxygen in an area will also boost the burning effect of the new laser weapons, from the pew-pew beams of Tediore to Malwan’s solid proton-pack blasts.