GAX: Could you help elaborate the plot and settings of Borderlands? Is this an alternate Earth we’re in or a different planet altogether?

Randy: “Borderlands is set in the fictional sci-fi wasteland world of Pandora. Legend has it that there’s an alien treasure cache called the Vault that has untold amounts of treasure, and it’s hidden somewhere in the world. If this is the world of Indiana Jones and the characters you control are the treasure hunters, the Vault is definitely the Lost Ark. “

GAX: The game looks stunning. Is Borderlands using an in-house engine built from the ground-up? How long did it take to create it?

Randy: “Actually, we licensed the Unreal Engine 3 and we’ve done a lot of work with it. We’ve used a lot of different engines in our history of game developing. We write technology when we need to, and we license technology when it’s available. It’s not just Unreal 3 as well; there’s the Morphi animation system, Gamespy’s network integration technology, and baked Radiosity lighting. “

GAX: Is the focus mostly on-foot combat or vehicular? Or basically a blend of both?

“It’s all up to you. You can spend all your time on-foot or in the comfort of the vehicle. I think most players will resort to playing on-foot, because that’s where the core of the action shooter loop is. It’s also fun to drive around and be a road warrior too.”

GAX: Where did the change in art style originate?

Randy: “Brian Martel (executive VP of Gearbox Software) got together the artists and a programmer prototyped the “concept art style” look for a week. I told them that it sounded risky, but I gave them a couple of weeks for a demo. They brought me in the conference room when the time came and showed me what they got. I saw it, and it instantly grabbed me. It’s a totally new look; better than the one we had. Just from the first impression, we had to go for it. It’s too awesome, and no one’s ever done it before. Right after that, I immediately talked to our partners, 2K Games, and we said to them “Hey, we got something and we want to show it to you immediately.”

We flew to San Francisco to show them what we’ve done. It was pretty neat; all the top brass and marketing guys from 2K loved it. A lot of momentum started from there and we just built it.”

GAX: Borderlands, fun as it looks, is going to get the internet to draw comparisons with another guns-ablaze lootfest, Hellgate: London. What do you say to those upcoming comparisons?

Randy: “To be honest, I’m not a fan of Hellgate. I don’t see a lot of the similarities there. Hellgate is also PC only. A much better comparison is Fallout, except unlike Fallout, you can have your friends play with you. Fallout is also different where it started off as an RPG with a shooter vectored on top of it. We’re starting from a first-person shooter angle and layering an RPG template onto it. “

GAX: Which came first: the idea to demonstrate the engine, or the idea for a long-overdue Mad Max-style game?

Randy: “Ideas for all games, in my opinion, starts on all points, either by story, style, or design. Story is when you have an idea for a particular character or goal that you think is an interesting thing. Style is a particular look you want to show off. Design is when you have a particular genre or gameplay type you want to play with. You usually start with one point, then work your way around the other two.

Borderlands started from a design point of view. Our ambition is to take the accessible and visceral fun of a FPS and see if we can add something compelling for character growth, for exploration, for discovery, for achievement, and for accomplishments that we find in role-playing games.

Simply, we want to take a game like Halo, with its action loop, and lay it onto a game like Diablo, with its co-op gameplay and its loot-collecting, and the ability to get more powerful as you play. That was the ambition that started Borderlands. Later on, we developed the concept art style and proceeded on with its narrative to supports its goal. Now the story is all about searching for the Vault in Pandora, so the story matches the design of the game. The wasteland style also followed the design of the game.