Who knew that an RPG could muster more useable weapons (specifically, guns) than a shooter game? Well, that’s the case with Borderlands. Not only does it have more guns than Halo 3, but it also has more weapons than Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, BioShock and Turok, combined. That’s a heck of a lot of firepower at a player’s disposal, no? Well, we’ll drop the details on how so many weapons have been made accessible, and what some of them can do.
How did Gearbox fit 500,000 guns into the game?
Well, they didn’t actually put 500,000 individually modeled guns in the game. What the developers did was create a matrix for possible combinations of parts, effects, reactions and modifications, and let the randomizer do the rest of the work. Basically, it was a matter of testing and tweaking certain weapons to ensure that a balance is brought to the gameplay. And using slick software technology to generate and populate the entire game world with different parts/weapons based on how important they are and how rare they are, works to stabilize how often players will come across wickedly powerful weapons. Still, even with a program randomly generating results out of certain parameters, the team still had to design a butt-load of triggers, barrels, handles, casings, ammo types, effects, palettes and everything else that comprises of a standard video game gun. This means that those 500,000 guns aren’t just simple toss-togethers, but are actually comprised of materials that players will have access to when customizing or modifying their own weapons within the game.
Revolvers, shotguns and rifles, oh my!
For anyone under the assumption that Borderlands is going to be one of those RPG-shooter games where the variations of weapons are attempered for the sake of a numerical value, well you’re wrong. One of the things that make this a unique RPG-shooter is that there are actually different kinds of gun classes in this game. Say you want to be a sniper, you can be a sniper. Always want to use a shotgun? That too, is also possible. Maybe you want to be a pistolier? Yep, that can be arranged. Maybe you only prefer assault weapons? Definitely possible. What’s better is that players who want to profess their skills to a particular weapon, they can do so for the entirety of the game by continually upgrading or modifying that class of weapon. Hands-down, that’s a pretty darn cool feature.
Bullets, bullets, and more bullets
Having a gun in Borderlands is about as important as the bullets that the gun fires. Unlike every other shooter game out there, or most RPGs out there, Borderlands prompts for using unconventional weapons in unconventional ways. Say you have six-barreled revolver, it doesn’t mean that it’s just going to fire standard bullets. It could fire electric darts. You might have an automatic weapon that shoots 3-round bursts of shotgun shells, or a shotgun that pellets enemies with arching rockets. The combinations are almost limitless. But you have to admit, there’s no game out there with more weapon/effect combinations than this one.
This concludes Day 1 news for Borderlands. You can be sure to stay tuned in Blend Games tomorrow for Day 2 news, which extensively covers the vehicles and vehicular combat in Borderlands. Drop by the Blend Games Forum to discuss Borderlands and other hot gaming topics, or visit the Official Borderlands Website for information and updates on the game.
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