Meet "Handsome Jack," the evil mastermind you'll be taking on in the upcoming Borderlands 2.
See! His army of robots!
Hear! His swagger and confidence!
Know! That you're totally going to stuff it all down his pie-hole.
Pride goeth, and all that. See you soon, Handsome Jack.
Civilian casualties are rare in video games. Every real-life war results in a terrible loss of innocent life; collateral damage is a grim reality of battle. Yet most war video games play out across perfectly crafted arenas in which each "team" is clearly marked and civilians are nowhere to be found.
Spec Ops: The Line dared to be different in a lot of ways, but one of the most remarkable was that it didn't shy away from depicting civilian death. Perhaps even more remarkably, the game's most potentially provocative scenes felt appropriate and purposeful.
Spec Ops: The Line spoilers follow.
Spec Ops tells the story of three soldiers who head into the now-destroyed city of Dubai searching for a renegade Army colonel and his lost brigade. What follows is a descent into hell, as their minds and morals are severely tested and, eventually, broken completely. It's a fascinating meditation on the role of the player in a war game, and is the rare video game that is is noteworthy for its flaws as for its strengths. For a full rundown, read my review of the game.
In one particularly intense scene towards the end of the game (seen in the video below), protagonist Captain Walker and his teammate Adams are looking for their third squad-mate Lugo. Things have completely fallen apart, and all three men are about to snap. Each team member is injured, they're at each others' throats, and their nightmarish situation has no good ending in sight.
Adams and Walker come upon Lugo being lynched by a mob of furious civilian survivors. Walker quickly shoots the rope to knock Lugo down, and players are tasked with resuscitating him. In another game, Lugo would come wheezing back to life at the last minute, but not this one—Lugo's dead, and now the mob is closing in on Walker and Adams.
Players are put into an impossible situation with no way out, and fear and stress take over. You can't walk through the crowd, or they'll push you back. They're throwing rocks, which are pushing you closer and closer to death. The reticle on your rifle appears on screen. It seems like there's only one way out.
Once you open fire, the civilians immediately flee. This is one of the "lines" referred to in the game's title. And yet in war, surely this line gets crossed all the time. A person is threatening you. It's difficult to tell if they're an enemy soldier or a civilian. What do you do?
I spoke with Spec Ops: The Line lead writer Walt Williams on the phone last week. We discussed that scene, as well as his approach to the game's other potentially controversial content.
"We wanted it to be a very chaotic kind of situation," Williams said, "much like it would be in real life. There is a way out of it [without shooting the civilians]. You can scare them off. Shooting in the air. Bu I believe most people do probably end up shooting them, whether they need to or not.
"I know in focus testing there were quite a few people who shot them and didn't mean to or thought that it was the only way to get out of that situation. But also it was designed for you to think that. We wanted for you to feel very pressured and not know what to do. 'We have to shoot them. They're getting violent, what do we do?' Because that's exactly what a soldier in that situation would be thinking. Getting the character in that same mindset was very key for a lot of that game. And it seems like we pulled it off, and thank god, because that one was one of the trickiest ones."
Williams acknowledged how easy it is to get this kind of thing wrong. "You slip up once, and it taints the whole thing," he said. "We went over this thing with a fine-toothed comb innumerable times, making sure that there was nothing int he game that was just there to shock. Like, we wanted all of the - we had a strict rule from the beginning - there can be no civilians in the scene unless they're is an absolute, real reason - there had to be an organic and narrative reason to have them in the scene. We didn't want to just have civilians constantly running around the line of fire, because then we would be 'The game where you can kill civilians all the time.'
I asked Williams if there were any other things that needed to be taken out. He said that some of the environmental brutality was removed because it felt excessive, as well as a scene that had a civilian with a booby trap bomb strapped to his chest. "It was basically, 'Do you kill these innocent people or these innocent people? It felt too much like it was turning Konrad and the 33rd into the Joker, or a comic book villain. Where they were giving you this very contrived kind of situation. And while we did have something like that similar later, with the two men hanging from the street sign, with that choice, it was always much more about the meta aspect of the game, where Walker has a choice of A or B, but the real choice the player has is: Are you going to do what the game tells you to do or are you going to try to do something else? And that was why that particular choice stayed in, because it was directly involved with what we were tying to do with the overarching theme of the story, which is gamer vs. game."
I was struck by the fact that I didn't find the civilian-shooting scene objectionable. Troubling? Yes. But that was the point; it felt necessary in a way that the similar "No Russian" sequence in 2009's Modern Warfare 2 did not.
Williams said that the team worked to avoid the clumsiness of "No Russian," and that the easiest way around that was to make the civilian killing integral to the story they were trying to tell. "The thing that got me the most [about "No Russian"]," Williams said, "was that you could opt out of playing it. And that struck me as saying, 'We wanted to do something that would cause controversy, but it's actually not necessary to the game, which is why you don't have to play it.'
"We went out of our way to make sure that everything that could be controversial was absolutely necessary, that it grew organically out of the events before, and that it was directly connected to the story. That if you had taken it out, the story would be completely different."
As are some of the other video game discounts on Amazon's Gold Box today. Check it out! [Amazon]
Today Gearbox announced that they're officially done with work on Borderlands 2. The full game is in certification, so that leaves Gearbox's hands free to work on the first downloadable content, introducing a new character class: the Mechromancer you see above (note: they're just sketches for now).
This mech-friendly character will be available roughly 60-90 days after the game releases. If you pre-order Borderlands 2, you'll be part of the Borderlands 2 Premiere Club, giving you access to her for free.
Free Pre-order Character Mechromancer In Full Production As BL2 Heads To Certification [Gearboxity]
In designing one of Borderlands 2's characters, Ellie, Gearbox wanted to build "an independent female character who looked the exact opposite of how most females tend to be represented in games".
Why? Because they didn't want players to "cast her in a light where the player is encouraged to pity, laugh at, or mock her because she doesn't look like Jessica Rabbit."
Good idea. Nobody makes jokes about fat people.
Meet Borderlands 2′s Ellie: The "opposite of how most females tend to be represented in games" [PC Gamer]
Oh, Tiny Tina. We're practically like sisters. You're tiny, I'm tiny. You're named Tina, I'm named Tina. You were born in a ravaged Pandora, surviving on your own and getting your kicks out of exploding bandits and I... oh that's where the similarities stop.
Meet a newly-revealed NPC that will send you on a quest to co-host the most awesome, explodey tea party there ever was. Be sure to hit my impressions for the full details, like who the special guest star is that voices Tiny Tina.
She's got quite the personality. Take a look at the video above to get a glimpse of it, and be warned that it's only a fraction of the ridiculously dark yet oddly quirky character you'll meet when the game releases on September 18.
After draining the life out of Borderlands 1, every single downloadable content and all, I've always had a sneaking suspicion that Gearbox would steal my heart with its sequel. But I don't think even I was prepared to be blown away by how much they've outdone themselves in the several demonstrations I've played so far.
Gearbox Software, the minds behind Borderlands, swung by New York on Wednesday to show off a brand new questline complete with a brand new character in Borderlands 2. But that's not all I want to talk to you about. I discovered a lot more about Borderlands 2, so let's jump right in.
I hadn't gotten my hands on the game since playing as Maya a few months back, and I knew my time to experiment with a new character was overdue.
It's tough to decide between the four playable characters in Borderlands 2. Though, for me, any character with a semblance of magical abilities is the no-brainer, each character has its own appeal. The Gunzerker is a mean dual-wielder. Axton is the best defensive character, with many turret tricks up his commando sleeves. But Zero? Zero was the next in a line of skilled killers that I had to try.
Zero is an assassin, which means he's a nimble melee fighter as well as a sharpshooter. When Randy Pitchford was guiding me through my demo, explaining the various customization options in Zero's three separate skill trees, I didn't have to hear more once he summarized the "Dash" ability. Zero launches a decoy of himself, goes invisible, and can dash towards enemies for really cool-looking ninja sword slices. Level that tree up enough and you can chain those attacks together. Done. Sold. I crushed so many enemies combining my trusty fire-damaging pistol, corrosive sniper, teleporting grenades and swift sword slashes. Between the four playable characters, there are a ton of other amazing abilities you can unlock that prove to be a pivotal turning point for your character's fighting style. Like, to name one, nuclear explosions. Yep, nuclear explosions.
The Dash sounds powerful, right? Well it's even more powerful than you might guess. If you're skilled enough, you can pull off dashes into the air to knock down flying Buzzards, piloted by bandits. They're tough machines to beat, so being able to aim that dash at it is a useful technique. It's also incredibly gratifying to pull of an acrobatic move that feels like you're pushing the limits of the skill.
This new demo took me into Sanctuary, where revolutionary fighters who are against the central villain—Handsome Jack—are holed up together. I wandered around the hub station for a bit, pressing X on random dwellers to see what they had to say to me. They all sounded terrified, or devoid of hope. It was the first time I felt anything close to a morbid setting in such a silly game like Borderlands, but it was an interesting touch.
Handsome Jack is, after all, kind of a dick, as Pitchford told me. As the leader of the Hyperion Corporation, Jack has pulled a few nasty moves and oppressed the people of Pandora, but always with a smile. Propaganda posters of him are spread throughout the planet, featuring him posing with open arms as if ready for an embrace.
But Jack's handsome face and easy going demeanor only disguise his villain side for so long. [Not a major spoiler, but don't read if you prefer to keep the game's opening a surprise] After players found and opened the vault that seemed to only be a legend in the first Borderlands, Handsome Jack dedicates himself to finding the others. And one powerful one in particular. He "enlists" in the help of all vault hunters across Pandora. He wants to "hire" you to help him find it. If my exaggerated use of quotation marks hasn't tipped you off, I'll just come out with it: Jack is actually leading you into a trap, and players will find out just how evil he can be when they answer the call. [Ok, feel free to read again.]
The questline I followed for this new level took me outside the safe zone and into the half rock, half ice part of the planet infested by bugs, mech, bandits and straight lunatics. Borderlands enemies have always been interesting. The bugs are colorful and aggressive. There are ridiculous-looking midget bandits that are prepared for kamikaze tactics. Big goons are incredibly powerful. Mechs are dangerous, and sometimes even fly overhead, increasing the depth of the battlefield. And you're often fighting a lot of these things at once.
But the most important thing to take away from my recent Borderlands 2 experience is that these new enemies are advanced versions of your favorites from the first game. There are even crazier bandits and powerful goons. But it's not just their violent and odd nature that makes them crazy. Some of these enemies, both bugs and bandits included, will morph mid-battle. Shoot the bucket/helmet off of a Goliath and he becomes Raging Goliath, which exposes his shrunken head that dangles at the end of a thread of flesh as well as causes him to attack his own brothers. Bugs will enter a larva right in front of you, and if you don't burst it in time, it will evolve into a more powerful adult. Some enemies evolve to even achieve badass status, which in Borderlands language basically means a stronger, more elite enemy.
The most elite of enemies will even have a few stages of advancement. I encountered an incredibly powerful Loot Goon Goliath, who I am told is a rare sighting. I decided to piss him off a little. I shot at him a few times and watched him grow progressively more aggressive, slashing and stomping on the guys I was supposed to kill.
"Hey," I thought, "this is really cool." And it is. I'm facing new enemies before I can even turn the corner to a different camp. But if you aren't careful, these severely pissed off guys will turn their attention to you.
Morphing enemies like these also make for an interesting strategy, too. I often shot the buckets off of the Goliaths to have them pick at the other enemies, leaving a pretty pissed off and (granted) pretty powerful Goliath to deal with. The variety of enemy types gives you a variety of available tactics. The Nomad Torturers, for instance, have midgets strapped to their shields. Shoot of the ropes on the midgets and they'll attack their slavers for vengeance. There are just oh so many possibilities, and it makes every battle incredibly exciting. I couldn't get enough, and I wanted to see what other crazy evolving concoctions Gearbox came up with.
When I finally rid Pandora of the bandits and bugs crawling on its earth (you know, until the next spawn cycle, anyway) I traveled on my way to the diamond on the minimap. The diamond led me to Tiny Tina. As the self-proclaimed official Tiny Tina (my Twitter bio says so!), I was delighted.
Even more delightful is just how ridiculous this 13-year-old girl is. She has quite the...vocabulary.
First, some backstory. If you've ever watched Hey Ash, Whatcha Playin'?, you'll know of Anthony and Ashley Burch. And you might know that Anthony Burch is the lead writer on Borderlands 2. Tiny Tina is not only modeled after his sister's quirky personality, but she's even voiced by her. So you get the silliness of HAWP's female lead in the tough persona of a 13-year-old who grew up on a battered Pandora. And she wants one thing of you: the perfect tea party.
You'll gather badonkadonks for her bunny pals, as well as a few other stuffed toys—erm, excuse me, guests—as well as optional bonus items like crumpets. Once I tended to her party needs, after fending off those flying Buzzard-copters and a slew of other bandits and hissing bugs, the tea party essentially turned into a mini horde mode party, where bandits spilled into Tiny Tina's cave to thwart our partying desires. What party poopers.
If Borderlands fans' favorite NPC was Scooter—to pick one of the many charming individuals you meet on Pandora—then Tiny Tina has to be the next favorite. She has a dominant personality with many, many choice lines. Tiny Tina has the energy of a sugar rush, but the dark soul of a drug fiend. She's oddly upbeat and devious all at once. She's downright hilarious.
Tiny Tina led me on a fairly short questline that exposed a lot of the new qualities of Borderlands 2. Gearbox's sequel is still the same gun-crazy, personality-crazy game I came to love three years ago. The addition of extra atmospheres, extra gun manufacturers, new playable characters with even more diverse and intricate skill sets, incredibly advanced enemies, and an all new character to laugh with while she sends you on odd journeys builds on and even surpasses what made the first game so successful. September 18 just can't come soon enough.
Knives are dangerous, there's no doubt about it. If a person with a knife gets close enough to you, he can really mess your stuff up.
And yet in the world of video games, knives have become a bit too deadly. They're far more deadly than guns—in everything from Call of Duty to the recently released Spec Ops: The Line, guys can take three, maybe four rounds from an AK-47 and keep right on truckin'. But if you hit them once with a knife, they're down forever.
In a far-reaching, fantastic essay over at Grantland, critic, novelist and one of the new writers on the upcoming Gears of War: Judgment Tom Bissell has weighed in on Spec Ops: The Line and video game violence in general.
Among his many musings about the game (which he liked, in a conflicted sort of way, for many of the same reasons I did) is this gem:
The game is filled to its gunwales with shooter ridiculousness. The most terrifying enemy in the game, for instance, is a guy with a knife. He runs at you, with his knife, across a battlefield whistling with small-arms fire. Your squad mates will alert you to the knife guy's presence, which is never not hilarious. Everyone's got automatic weapons and the dude with a knife is the single most terrifying enemy onscreen.
Har har. Bissell goes on to point out that he understands why this is necessary from a design perspective—knives (and in his specific line of work, Chainsaw-bayonets) must be more deadly than guns for balancing purposes. But he's right that this kind of balancing stands in stark, often humorous contrast to any semblance of gritty realism. As he puts it, "the appearance of Terrifying Knife Guy bursts any fragile bubble of contemplation."
(I enjoy "Terrifying Knife Guy" as an archetype, though I also enjoy that the official term for the Spec Ops character is "Edged Weapon Expert". Ha.)
The farther I get from Spec Ops, the more I wonder: one of the things Spec Ops does so smartly is subvert video game norms (endless waves of enemies, mindless ultraviolence, genocidal body count) in the service of making a broader statement about war. But will a war game ever be able to do something similar without relying on the subversion of game genre conventions? In other words: Can a war video game speak honestly and truthfully about war without relying on clever self-reference, or will Terrifying Knife Guy always be there to bring things back to Video Gameville?
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Shooter [Grantland]
The newest trailer for Borderlands 2 emphasizes the first-person, role-playing game's sillier side. But even while sporting a South African-bred song that later moved on to The Lion King licensing, the action-packed trailer manages to showcase just how exciting combat can be in Gearbox's upcoming sequel.
This is partially due to some fancy assassin moves courtesy of Zero, or Maya's awesome Siren abilities. Or maybe it's the many gun manufacturer's crazy weapon concoctions. Either way, it's reflective of the dual personality Borderlands is all about: crazy fun, and crazy silly. And I can't wait for more on September 18.
Be sure to check back tomorrow for some new impressions by yours truly.
For a time, Borderlands' makers considered developing and releasing an official mod toolkit, but realized that its community had hacked the game apart and already accomplished much of what a software development kit would deliver. So SDK plans were shelved as redundant and unnecessary.
"The best thing we could do for the community was get to work on Borderlands 2. Imagine if we'd spend a year working on an SDK for BL2," Pitchford told the Rezzed PC and Indie games expo at Brighton, England, this weekend.
That doesn't mean Gearbox Software is going to build one for Borderlands 2—I guess because the modding community will find it can pull apart the files on the PC version the same way they did with original Borderlands three years ago.
On the subject of things Gearbox isn't gonna develop but, hey, knock yourself out if you want to try, Pitchford called on the Rezzed audience to badger Sony into commissioning a PS Vita version of Borderlands. ""One of the things I wish Sony would do is get behind Borderlands, because I'd love to see a Vita version of the game," he said, according to Eurogamer. However, "We're too busy to develop it ourselves. But I know there are a lot of talented developers who could take our code, our source and our content and perhaps create something like that."
The remarks were enough to incite a campaign on the Vita's subreddit to agitate for Sony to do just that, which is intriguing. Unless I am mistaken, Gearbox owns Borderlands. If it can't develop a Vita version of the game but wants to see one out there, conceivably it could find and license a studio to do so itself.
No Borderlands 2 SDK in the works, modding still encouraged [VG247]