Battleborn Interview- gamescom Preview

So yea, it’s funny because the initial thing that we showed a while back, I think it’s just over a year ago at this point was basically a mode that had a bit more of the MOBA inspired elements to it, but the game is definitely not a MOBA like you say. Gearbox obviously has taken inspiration from a lot of different genres including MOBA’s, so we do have a competitive mode and within that there are several different modes as part of the game. One of them is more traditional and will be more familiar to shooter players, sort of like a capture and hold game. One of them is definitely inspired by MOBA’s ‘cause it has some A.I controlled minions and bases you have to defend. We also have another mode and that is sort of a hybrid between the two, but is more of a deathmatch with some A.I controlled minions which you have to take care of. There’s definitely a lot there.

Yes, absolutely. We’re definitely focused on trying to get both sides of the game, competitive and the story evenly split. Gearbox Software have always been known for creating really cool stories. Borderlands is filled with crazy scenarios and we’re actually pretty excited because the whole idea of the last star, and it being set at the end of the universe leaves a lot of room for us to be creative and make crazy characters. So we’re really excited about the story, as it’s going to be one of the things that sets the game apart. The competitive side is just as important, as once you finish the campaign you can master all the characters and check out all the progressions.

You can play as any of them. The way we’re telling the narrative is set up in a way where you’re not stuck being a particular character. They will have some specific voiceover, and depending on who’s talking to who or which group you’re in you’ll get banter from each member. You’re not locked into any particular character as part of the game.

Yes of course you’ll get some backstory. The way it’s structured, it’s not like something like Borderlands. It’s more chatter based, you’re getting a whole narrative told to you, but it’s getting told to you within each chapter. It’s sort of like watching your favourite TV show where there’ll be little bits of story told throughout each episode, but the whole series will have an overarching narrative.

Yeah, each character will have their own weapons. In some cases there’ll be options in the helix where you can change certain aspects of that weapon. So for example; Oscar Mike you can have lots of different scopes, which is very important for that sort of assault rifle, military shooter character. There are other characters where you won’t change anything about the weapons, but instead change how their abilities react, or change aspects of their abilities. So Wendy has a skill where she launches forward causing damage but you can change it so instead she’ll launch backwards but still damage the enemies. So it’s a choice between offensive and defensive for that particular ability. There are certain characters who have really cool mobility abilities where you can change how you augment it and alter the course of direction.

Yeah it’s sort of a rip off the idea of these really complex skill trees and having it taking a really long time to get through them. For us, we wanted players to experience each character’s skill progression in a quicker timeframe. There’s so many characters you can’t spend 40 hours on each one to see their progression. We wanted to create a very quick twitch-based system that is simple and accessible enough to learn. So what I’m doing is, I memorise, very quickly over a couple of matches, a loadout that I like and I’ll know based on what’s happening in the match, or maybe on the other team’s composition, which type of loadout that I’ll want, or which type of augment I want to use. I find it really interesting to watch people have that click and have to learn that, and they start choosing what they want really quickly.

It’s actually pretty complex. There’s going to be a little bit of priority from some of the Borderlands’ system, especially relating to things such as rarity. It’s cool because the way it works is you get these pieces of loot and they all have certain attributes. So they can make you faster or give you more defence. Then there’s the loadout slots where you can share your loot between all the characters. So you have these loadouts, and then as you go into a match you can select a certain one and then have those as options to fire during an actual match, furthering how you play during a game.

Yeah it will be.

Yeah we don’t have a date for it yet, but we’re really excited about getting it into people’s hands. We want to test, we want to test all the technical stuff, all the matches and we want to get a lot of feedback from people.

For sure, we do tons of testing and Gearbox is actually really great at that. They have a team who are constantly testing the game and there’s a constant stream of people coming in to test the game. We try to do daily tests and include our own feedback. It’s a constant balancing act where you’re trying to find the sweet spot of every character and also that they feel good to play. It’s tough, it takes a small army to get it right.

There’s definitely going to be other scenarios. In that particular mission you saw a mixture between almost an escort mission and also a couple of different bosses so you can definitely expect a wide variety of different scenarios, but we can’t reveal too much of it for now.

Yeah and that’s only about one half of a mission, so that particular mission will go even further than that.

Just that today we announced a release date of the 9th of February 2016 and it’ll be out for PS4, Xbox One and PC.