The hype surrounding Borderlands 2 is building at a rate of knots. The original game was a bit of a sleeper hit, gaining fans over time. This means the sequel should be an outright hit from day one. The attention the game is getting in the build up to release suggests as much.
Borderlands 2 is shaping up to be quite the game, just how much so is made clear by two different people involved in the making of it.
Talking about the size of the game to IncGamers, Gearbox co-founder Brian Martel said:
“The whole thing is about double what we did before; then there’s a whole bunch of side missions and replayability features that we’ve added. To give some perspective: most people said that they finished the story of the first game in roughly the 20 hour range, but now we’re finding that it takes something in the 50 hour mark to do everything. And that’s if you really rush. Most people will find this to be a 60 to 70 hour game, if they complete everything in a single playthrough. It’s a big game and probably the biggest and best that we’ve ever made.”
Talking about the budget of the game to Digital Spy, Gearbox president Randy Pitchford said:
“Effectively [the budget is] like triple or quadruple, because in Borderlands 1 we had a lot of invention. We had to figure these things out … with Borderlands 2 all of the effort is spent towards value that the customer sees, not towards fishing around in the dark and making things that don’t work that we have to throw away in order to make new things. Effectively it’s way more than double. It’s actually double budget, effectively it’s way more.”
So, much, much longer with a bigger budget. That sounds good to me. I suspect Borderlands 2 won’t be for casual gamers who want to dip in and out though. This is more like a traditional RPG which only gives back as much as the player puts in.
