Michael John Mamaril sadly passed away last month at the age of just 22. Being a big Borderlands fan, Michael's friend Carlo thought a nice way to remember him would be to have the game somehow pay tribute. Borderlands developers Gearbox did this and then some.

The game's loud-mouthed robot assistant, Claptrap, has recorded a short eulogy for Michael, which while a little strange to hear is still a touching gesture.

A more public showing is the fact Michael will be included in the game as an NPC.

You can hear the eulogy below.

Gearbox to honor late fan as an NPC in Borderlands 2 [Destructoid]

What would you like to see in a Borderlands 2 Collector's Edition? A box that opens up like a Crimson Lance chest? A psycho mask? Fake skaggy poo? A life-size rakk hive?

That last one might be a little tough, but Gearbox Software is taking suggestions for what premiums Borderlands diehards would like to see in a collector's edition when Borderlands 2 releases in 2012. They've opened an official thread on the Gearbox forums, so go in there and sound off. It's a studio that's very well known for its fan service, so maybe your idea will fly.

As someone who pumped at least 60 hours into that game, let me weigh in with my preferences. Realistically, they need to give a code for a truly balls-out in game weapon, as that's been one of the franchise's creative calling cards. Unrealistically, I want a See-n-Say Claptrap. Pull the string, and a Claptrap spins in the center, coming to rest on one of the game's many catchphrases, or Claptrap saying "The Skag goes ... 'Hlarglrbrfrgh.'"

Borderlands Collectors Edition Suggestions [Gearbox]

By now, you've probably seen the leaked footage of the most recent Borderlands 2 demo, and read our own Michael McWhertor's impressions of the game from Gamescom. Last weekend at PAX, I caught up with Gearbox's art director Jeramy Cooke to chat with him about the new characters, guns, and art tech in Borderlands 2, as well as why PC players will be getting a much more customized version this time around.

For starters, there will be an entirely new cast of characters in Borderlands 2, but Roland, Lilith, Mordecai, and the rest of the gang from Borderlands will still make the occasional appearance. "We decided to bring back all the original playable characters as NPCs in the new game," Cooke told me, "because everyone is so connected to them. I keep doing interviews where people tell me, 'Oh, I played the game for 300 hours.' These people spend so much time with these characters, but then, they don't really know who they are. This game is five years after the vault was opened, and we wanted to show what's happened since then."

The new demo has the player raiding an enemy compound to free Roland, the soldier from the first game; one would imagine this means that afterwards, Roland will be around for players to interact with, theoretically getting to know him beyond "This is the guy with the healing bullets."

"We're also trying to put a lot more variety into the actual zones themselves," Cooke continued. "There was a lot of repetition of the same brown rocks last time, and we said, 'We're not doing this again.' We want people to see the whole rest of Pandora. We had made a map a long time ago for Borderlands one, and it had grasslands, it had volcanic areas, it had icy areas, and we just never really got to build them all. So for Borderlands 2 I said, 'We are going to go see the rest of Pandora.'"

One of Borderlands's most distinctive aspects was its huge and varied arsenal. It's not a huge surprise that there will be even more weapons in the sequel. "There are a lot more guns this time," Cooke told me, "like, several orders of magnitude more. Our core gun system that we had last time we revamped the base code system for that to make it more efficient so that we could add more parts. So, in the past game we might've only had like five or six parts for a gun, now there can be more like twelve, fourteen parts in a gun. We paramaterized the scope views as well—before, it was all static art, so you might've only seen one of six scopes, but now you're going to see eighty-seven bazillion scopes, because they're all paramaterized. Guns dropped by bosses are going to have much more personality."

Cooke said that the various gun manufacturers would be much more distinctive, as well. Bandits' guns would be all about ammo, while other manufacturers would focus on rate-of-fire, ammunition type, and more. (And of course, the hilarious exploding disposable Tediore gun from the demo.)

The team has also been hard at work updating the game's art style. "I think I've helped evolve the art style for Borderlands 2", Cooke said. "We've added a lot more shader work. We've always seen ourselves as concept-art style instead of cartoony or anime or any of those things, because we do a lot more rendering. If you look at some of the ice, it's not just a 2D texture with lots of lines in it, it has pretty complex shader stuff, depending on how something catches the light." He went on to describe how when light catches various objects in the world, they each react differently—in essence, he and his team at Gearbox are building a world of living concept art.

I mentioned to Cooke how often, I find that I prefer a game's promotional concept-art to the way the game eventually looks. "That was how we made the switch. We were like, 'We're doing this high-realism thing, but the game has this crazy zany fun aspect to it, and it doesn't make any sense.' And we had all this awesome concept-art and we looked at it and said, 'Why don't we make it look like this? This is so cool.'"

"[Changing the art style for Borderlands] helped us find our voice, it helped us realize what kind of game we were making. There was a connection between the art and the game design, and suddenly they started riffing off of each other, and we ended up with crazy midgets strapped to shields… we realized that yeah, we're badass, but we like to have fun, too.'"

One of the chief criticisms of Borderlands was the repetitive enemies and somewhat simplistic AI—most enemies would simply charge at the character headlong, and combat frequently became an exercise in backpedaling and blasting. The AI was fairly easy to exploit in the first game, and Cooke says the team has addressed that, as well. "We saw people in the first game exploiting the AI," he said, "hiding around a building, getting the AI stuck and stuff like that, so now AI can completely navigate where players can navigate. They can jump from rooftop to rooftop, climb ladders, they can kick barrels down stairs... they have a much better sense of what's going on in the world. There's a whole new layer of communication, there's a whole new layer of states—we have wounded states, all these awesome buff states where guys hulk out. The AI is totally new from the original game."

"The other big area is user interface," Cooke continued. "We had a ton of fans who played the game on PC, but they honestly got a port of the console game. We heard a lot of fans say, 'Hey, you didn't really take care of us here.' So, we completely ripped out the UI - there's a completely new UI for PC, it's mouse-driven, supports drag-and-drop, all of the things that you would expect in a PC title. It'll be a lot more fun for people."

The first Borderlands managed to go from "oddity" to "obsession" to "dark horse GOTY candidate" - it was a flawed title that still managed to create an enjoyable experience simply by way of its strong mechanics and unique look. Listening to Cooke talk about the sequel gave me the impression that the dev team has listened hard to player feedback and is methodically addressing their concerns one by one. Very promising, to be sure.

An intrepid tipster has sent in a video s/he shot of the latest demo of Gearbox's upcoming shooter Borderlands 2, and so of course we thought we'd share it with all of you.

Unlike the last leaked footage we ran, this video is taken not from a possible pants-cam—it's clearly in-bag. Though it wasn't shot at PAX, it's basically the same demo (as well as the one that McWhertor checked out at Gamescom), so if you weren't able to make it to the show (or didn't want to wait in the ginormous line), now you can watch a slightly janky version of it at home.

At PAX, the presenter was sure to point out that everything seen in the long view seen at 5:45 was fully explorable, which… yeah. Cool.

Enjoy, and do stick around to the end.

You get a Borderlands 2! You get a Borderlands 2! This is Randy Pitchford and other top people from Gearbox Software giving away a copy of Borderlands 2 to every one of the 900 people who showed up at their community panel at PAX. Everyone got a card that includes a redemption code for the game (redeemable when the game launches.)

Randy then made everyone take an oath, which you need to see and hear to believe. It was a madhouse. (Good thing I had my camera!)

Technically, they said that Borderlands 2 publisher 2K Games was giving the games away, but it was clear that this was a gift inspired by Gearbox, one that went over pretty well. The codes are valid in the U.S. only, though Pitchford said he hopes to be able to accomodate non-U.S. attendees as well.

A new patch coming September 9 for the PC version of Borderlands will add Steamworks support and will begin to test some new systems development studio Gearbox Software wants to incorporate into Borderlands 2.

"This technology, dubbed B-Test for this patch, is about increasing the relationship between you and us, " Gearbox president Randy Pitchford said as he announced the patch at a Gearbox panel at PAX. The new tech will send data back to Gearbox, letting them know "which guns suck", which areas aren't being visited and other info that, presumably, Gearbox can tweak.

"This will allow us to make better games," he said.

It wasn't clear if this tech would allow Gearbox would be able to use that data to update the first Borderlands will influence the second, or will actually allow Gearbox to track Borderlands 2 play habits and keep that game in a constant state of improvement even after it has launched.

The addition of Steamworks support, Pitchford said, will help people not lose their saves, which people will be able to save in the cloud.

[UPDATE: I spoke to Pitchford after the panel and he clarified that the B-test may be used to test a two-way connection between players of that game and Gearbox, the intent is to test that tech so that we'll see it actually work and affect change and interaction post-launch in and around Borderlands 2. Pitchford emphasized to me that it would be a two-way connection but doesn't want to divulge more details or over-promise.]

You thought you saw all there was to see of Borderlands 2 at Gamescom last week? These two fresh shots direct from PAX will show you how very slightly wrong you were.

Man, that's an empty looking gallery. I almost added a picture of a friendly kitten, just because those two new shots looked lonely. That would be silly though. A fluffy kitten wouldn't survive for a minute on the surface of Pandora.

Poor kitties.

We've seen brief glimpses of Borderlands 2 in action, but have we seen it as shot through a camera stuffed in a bag... or maybe someone's pants? I don't think so!

Here's our look at the game as viewed through a lens tucked away somewhere developers didn't think to look while presenting their game at Gamescom last week.

Ed's Note: Yeah, probably just a bag, but pants cams are so much funnier.

Borderlands 2 Gameplay Video Leaked [Pagesportal, thanks Connor]

Earlier today thousands of Borderlands fans flocked to UStream for the chance to catch some gameplay footage of the popular game's upcoming sequel. They got a little — very little — but first they got a whole lot more.

Three days of no sleep and German spirits weigh heavily on Gearbox marketing and PR VP Steve Gibson and friends as they broadcast live from Gamescom this afternoon, talking about the various merits of Borderlands 2 via an extremely brief gameplay demonstration and a pre-written question and answer session. That should explain the Cosby impression, the occassional foul language, and the gleeful imaginary pony riding.

What it doesn't excuse is the sad flashes of gameplay that occured during the 30-minute presentation. You're seeing all the gameplay I saw in the video above.

Steve looked just as surprised as I was when the camera panned backed to him the first time, so I get the feeling he really wanted to show everyone more. Hell, he got the guys to act it out for us. That counts for something!

The throwaway guns of the original Borderlands, which numbered in the hundreds of bazillions, were nothing compared to the fire and forget disposability of the game's sequel. And Borderlands 2's "disposable razor-style" guns from fictional manufacturer Tediore, the Walmart of intergalactic gunmakers, already stand out as one of the game's better features.

Gearbox Software showed off an early version of Borderlands 2 at Gamescom, quickly getting to one of the better weapon innovations in the gun-centric role-playing shooter. Tediore brand guns, as demonstrated by Gearbox's Steve Gibson, are as disposable as clips. Rather than reload, players will simply toss the entire gun. They'll toss it like a grenade at enemies when the clip runs out. They'll do so because those guns behave like grenades, exploding when thrown.

Tediore guns explode whether they're emptied or not. They'll do more damage if players toss 'em with rounds still in the clip. And players will have a new, fully-loaded version of the same gun in their hand a moment after tossing out the old one. A replacement instantly teleports (or is instantly re-constructed) in place of the discarded one.

Guns-as-grenades may be one of the more appealing additions to Borderlands 2, but it's the game's improved user interface that is more welcome. Gearbox has thankfully added a mini-map to the game's HUD. It floats in the upper right corner of the screen, hopefully alleviating the frustration of navigating Borderlands' alien world.

Gearbox has also made other sundry UI improvements, with a cleaner, clearer menu screen that's easier to read and is redesigned with split-screen multiplayer in mind. And speaking of split-screen, players can take their split-screen co-op games online.

But our Borderlands 2 demonstration wasn't simply a PowerPoint presentation touting new UI tweaks. It was all gameplay.

It started in an arctic tundra area of Borderlands 2. We saw the world from the eyes of the Gunzerker, the dual-wielding dwarfish class. That Gunzerker's mission—"A Dam Fine Rescue"—tasked him with rescuing an unnamed friend and disposing of the W4R-D3N, which turned out to be a giant prison robot. Gibson explained that our Gunzerker was left for dead in this arctic wasteland by Handsome Jack and was now seeking his revenge.

In this frozen land, we saw the Gunzerker fight Bullymongs, four-armed monsters that threw rocks and ice at the player. Those attacks represent a portion of the AI improvements in Borderlands 2. Enemies now attack differently. They navigate terrain differently. They're smarter about taking cover. And they can be stunned, knocked down and suffer from injury in combat. Gearbox illustrated portions of those improved combat mechanics in another section, when we actually run into the aforementioned W4R-D3N.

We saw the Gunzerker fight the psycho bandits of the original Borderlands and new robotic enemies—that were launched from a nearby moon, by the way!—in a long series of gunfights. We saw the new Nomad Torturer enemy, a bad guy who uses a psycho midget bandit as a meat shield, resulting in a very amusing confrontation. We saw at least one character return from the first Borderlands—Roland, the Soldier. Lilith, Mordecai and Brick are all back for Borderlands 2 and part of the storyline, Gibson promised.

That's not all we saw. Gearbox showed new guns from new manufacturers, like Bandit-made weapons that look very DIY. Those guns are bolted together and creatively engineered, with some weapons capable of holding clips with ammo counts in the hundreds. They showed Vladof-made guns, described as "bullet hoses." These had a slow build up, then lead into a steady, mini-gun like stream of fire. (Like "Brap... brap... brap... brap brap brap brapbraprbrap brpbrpbrpbrpbrpbrpbrpbrpbrpbrp!!!")

We were promised new vehicles, trucks that power slide and transport up to four players, rides that more realistically interact with enemies. Skags don't simply burst into bloody paste when hit. And we were promised improved quests, missions that "feel more like adventures, rather than 'go here and fetch five items'" according to Gibson.

Gearbox promised all this and more, all wrapped around a very familiar looking Borderlands package of first-person shooting, tons of looting and the crude humor that endeared us to the original.

Borderlands 2 is coming to the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC at some point in 2012.