When I say that Borderlands changed my life, it’s no exaggeration.

It was the way that the game rewarded each and every action that got me. Every enemy I gunned down, every chest I opened, brought a feeling of accomplishment and progression. So when I had the opportunity to join the team at Gearbox Software, I moved halfway across the country without any hesitation. Ever since, I’ve been seeing things that amaze me, things I know our fans will absolutely love. Things I haven’t been able to talk about, until today.

Because today, we’re blowing the lid off of Borderlands 2. We’ve got a new trailer, and if you haven’t already skimmed down and hit Play, let me tell you what you’re in for. You’re going to meet the four new playable characters. You’re going to catch a glimpse of the colorful new environments and areas you’ll be fighting through. You’re going to see what you’re up against, from new enemies like the multi-armed Bullymong and the robotic Loaders to the man with the plan to destroy you and everyone else on the planet, Handsome Jack. You’re going to see a fraction of the new weapons that await. Oh, and you’re going to learn when the release date is. That’s pretty important.
But, enough text. Let’s get this show on the road. Without further ado, Borderlands 2:

And that’s just the beginning. It barely scratches the surface of some of the underlying changes, especially when it comes to the way that characters grow and become more powerful throughout the game.

Each character has their own unique Action Skill at the root of their multi-tiered Skill Trees, and as you complete more quests and kill more enemies and gain the necessary experience to start working down those Skill Trees, you’ll come across skills that do more than just add passive stats and perks — they change the way that character plays.

Let’s talk about Salvador the Gunzerker, for example. When you trigger his Action Skill, he’s able to temporarily dual wield any weapons in the game. And if you just want to run and gun and blow everything up and cause as much chaos and destruction as possible, there’s a Skill Tree for that. Or if you want to make him more of a tactician and focus on nailing that one perfect shot for ridiculous damage and money, there’s a Skill Tree for that as well.

And the same goes for the other characters. Maya’s Skill Trees and the way they alter her Phaselock Action Skill likewise allow players customize the way she plays and the role she takes in battle, as do those of Axton and Zero.

As our Game Designer Jonathan Hemingway puts it, Borderlands 2 isn’t just about making a few big changes and improvements, it’s about making thousands of little ones as well. Everything is being tuned, refined, improved and reworked, and in the coming months we’ll be talking much more about, well, all of that.

We’ve heard your feedback, so now, for example, you can take your split-screen game online. From day one, Lead Designer Paul Hellquist and Writer Anthony Burch have been working side-by-side so that story has a stronger role. Art Director Jeramy Cooke and his team have been working to infuse the characters with more personality, the environments with more color, and the guns with far more badassitude than previously thought possible.

Oh, and one more thing. Pre-ordering puts you in the Borderlands 2 Premiere Club and nets you some pretty handy in-game bonuses, including a set of golden guns, that will help you get a leg-up on Handsome Jack when you’re first starting out. For more on the bonus items and the participating retailers, visit Borderlands2.com/preorder.

You’re going to need a lot of guns, and Handsome Jack isn’t going to hold anything back. Neither should you.

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The Alien films have always held enormous power over me, occupying the same sphere of significance that Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings do for many others. So it’s been with great interest and no small amount of hope that I’ve watched the development saga of Aliens: Colonial Marines. This Gearbox Software-developed first-person shooter promises to pick up where James Cameron’s 1986 classic Aliens left off — an irresistible premise for any diehard fan of the series. A recent trailer (watch it below) presented a convincing succession of sound and images, yet carried the sadface news of a new autumn 2012 release date. What’s an impatient Alien fan to do?

Well, I went to Randy Pitchford to get some answers. The gregarious CEO of Gearbox Software was all too happy to share new insights into the studio’s plans for Aliens: Colonial Marines, including multiplayer concepts, the control scheme, play style…and, perhaps most tantalizing, what he knows about the upcoming Ridley Scott-directed origin tale Prometheus.

Alien fans: Something tells me that 2012 is going to be a mighty fine year.

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I checked out Aliens: Colonial Marines when I popped over to the SEGA gamescom booth to say hi to a friend and, within minutes, it became one my highlights of the show. I’m not as familiar with the Aliens films as many – I remember seeing one of them on TV as a child and not sleeping well for a few days – but judging it purely as a shooter, it is looking very impressive.

The level shown was a beautifully lit labyrinth of corridors on-board a craft sent to investigate LV-426, 11 months after Ripley escaped in Aliens. The most memorable aspect for me was the animation of the Xenomorphs and my skin is crawling as I type just thinking about them. This added to the level design, which always leaves you feeling exposed as creatures pour from every angle and air vent, produces an unnerving shooter that piles on the tension.

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“It’s like shaking hands with Bigfoot or riding the Loch Ness monster,” said Gearbox Software CEO Randy Pitchford when talking about finally releasing Duke Nukem Forever. Look up the term ‘vaporware’ and Duke Nukem Forever will likely be used as an example, but it’s real and it’s coming to PlayStation 3 in just over a week. I caught up with Randy Pitchford to ask why you should always bet on Duke.

Duke is an all-American hero with the Stars and Stripes featuring heavily in the game’s art style. Characters like that haven’t always been so popular in Europe. Why is Duke an exception?

It’s because Duke is a caricature of all that – it’s silly! Duke Nukem takes place 12 years after Duke saved the world and he has leveraged that to live like a king. He’s walked on the moon, climbed Everest… he’s done it all. The only thing bothering him is that they were supposed to make a video game about him saving the world and it has taken 12 years for them to finish it. I think it’s that angle that makes it work internationally because we parody that image of America that exists in Duke’s world.

How do you meet the expectations and conventions of when the game was originally conceived and those surrounding its release, so many years later?

Because of the legendary development cycle of the game, it’s natural to imagine that we’ve just been sitting on parts of the game since 1997. That’s not true – it’s a modern game. The way you get a character like Duke is take all of the action heroes you can think of and then blend all of their most memorable traits and blend them together, and then exaggerate that even more. Basically, he is borne from the sum of all clichés.

If you look at the modern heroes currently being created for games and action movies, for some reason, they’re all taking themselves very seriously and trying to be more human. We [Gearbox] have done that too – just take a look at our Brothers in Arms games. We’re dealing with real human emotions and problems, but Duke doesn’t have any problems – he just goes around kicking ass.

What I’m getting at is that Duke started out as a cliché but now he stands out from the crowd, which is an odd thing to happen. I think that’s why he has become a meme despite there being no games about him for so long and Duke Nukem Forever leverages that. In some ways, games have come so far, especially when you look at what a machine like the PlayStation 3 is capable of, but there are still game experiences and mechanics that are kind of timeless, and we’re trying to hit a smart balance between that and modern sensibilities and technology.

How can you reassure our fans that the PS3 version of the game is going to be top-notch?

Gearbox has a lot of experience with the PlayStation 3 with Borderlands and Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway and the PS3 version of Duke Nukem Forever is something we’re really proud of. What I particularly like about it as a platform are the vibrancy of the colours you’re able to get, the great performance and just how open the PlayStation Network platform is.

Interestingly, most of the Duke games have found their way onto PlayStation consoles; in fact, there are more Duke games on PlayStation than on any other platform. Sony customers of this generation deserve to experience playing as Duke and I’m glad we’re able to do it so well.

How is that current generation you speak of going to ‘get’ Duke’s mythology know what he is all about?

The game is designed not to have any entry point so it doesn’t really matter if you’ve played the previous games or not. Anyway, everyone has heard of Duke if only from all of the memes I see going around like ‘Balls of Steel’, the ‘Ventrilo Harassment’ video and ‘Always Bet on Duke’, which is a funny joke because this game has been in development for so long that it’s the one thing you probably shouldn’t bet on, but now its here.

Duke Nukem Forever is surely one of the most talked about games, not least by you yourself, after such a lengthy press tour. Is there anything you haven’t revealed yet?

This game is massive and we’re only scratching the surface. I feel like we’ve put less out there than we did for Borderlands but such is the interest in the game that people are jumping on anything we announce and picking up the stories. Take the Penny Arcade Expo, where we announced that we were releasing Duke Nukem Forever, we didn’t tell anyone that we were going to be there or schedule any press, yet it became the number one trending topic on twitter worldwide.

You’ve told us before that some members of the original 3D Realms team have been working on the game; what’s going to be next for them?

Each person is their own individual but, as far as I’m concerned, Allen [Blum, 3D Realms Senior Level Designer] walks on water. He is Duke and he is one of the reasons I moved out to Texas in the mid-90s to join 3D Realms. I’m going to try and talk him into coming to E3. It has to be amazing to be in his shoes right now, to see the game finally coming out having been there for the whole ride. Then again, I can’t just single him out and I have to recognise the commitment that George Broussard, Scott Miller and others brought to the game. They’ve done so much for the industry – without Scott and George, we wouldn’t have had Wolfenstein and I don’t think the first-person genre would be as popular as it is today.

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Not so long ago, the whole of gaming faced a terrible evil – a threat so grave that few knew of its true scope, a threat so intense that even fewer were capable fighting back. The greatest video game hero – Duke Nukem, our King- was on the verge of being lost forever.

A world without Duke Nukem wasn’t something I even wanted to consider. I know that because of my history with Duke that I’m not objective about it, but I also know I’m not the only one. In the interests of full disclosure, long before Gearbox was founded, long before we developed our games for Half-Life, long before we created new brands including Brothers in Arms and Borderlands, it was working with Duke Nukem at 3D Realms (with Gearbox co-founder Brian Martel) that launched my professional career as a game maker.

That’s why, when bad things started to happen and the future of Duke Nukem Forever was hanging in the balance, Gearbox got involved. How could we let Duke die? The world needs Duke Nukem. Duke Nukem is the Ultimate Alien Ass Kicker. Duke Nukem is the World’s Greatest Hero. Duke Nukem is legendary and unimaginably fascinating. We believe in this. This is a game people have been waiting over a decade for and it’s a game we all deserve to play for ourselves.

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