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Gearbox has officially lifted the curtain on the follow-up to Borderlands, but only by an inch. So far, all we have to go on is the Game Informer cover image below, and while it makes for a nice piece of art, it sheds very little light on what might be coming from this highly anticipated sequel.
7. Expand the characters
If the original four characters are going to return, we’d really appreciate it if they were actually made a part of the story. They all had their own little plotlines, but those began and ended in the game’s instruction manual, never fully finding their way onto Pandora. Instead, they were mere shells, used to experience the story and nothing more.
Considering Borderlands is handled by the same folks that breathed life into Sergeant Baker and his squad in Brothers in Arms, we think they can do better.
That doesn’t mean the game needs to be bogged down with cinematics, either. Include more ways for players to interact with the world, and give the characters more to do besides grunting when shot or spouting catchphrases during combat. We wanted to love Brick, Lilith, Mordecai and Roland, but we were never given a reason. Give us that reason, Gearbox, because we’d rather fall in love with our characters than with dancing robots. Well, sure, we love the dancing robots, too, but there’s room in our hearts for both.
6. Armor, helmets, and other keen gear
Shields are cool, grenade mods are neat, and guns are awesome. Seriously, we love them all. Finding unique weapons, shields, and grenades scattered around Pandora was one of the reasons we put hundreds of hours into exploring the planet, but we really wish there was even more to find. We want to get new boots, new helmets, new armor, and new gloves for our characters. And we want to see the different equipment on our characters, so we can show them off to our friends when we play co-op.
But it shouldn’t stop there. If Borderlands was “Diablo with guns”, make Borderlands 2 “Diablo II with guns.” We want to craft new weapons, collect set items, and really have an incentive to explore every nook and cranny of the world. We like to loot, and the only thing better than more loot is more types of loot.
5. More Enemy Types
We’ll admit, the first time we opened a refrigerator and a Loot Midget jumped out, we nearly soiled ourselves. That’s something we’re comfortable coming out and saying. But as we got further in the story, it became clear that the large, frightening world of Pandora could have used some additional denizens. Fighting the same Bandit and Skag enemies grew old, especially when the later levels just had us shooting at stronger, bigger versions of the same opponents.
Some additional foes were added from time to time, but it felt like Gearbox kept going back to the same few enemies instead of hitting us with additional varieties. With the sequel, we want all of the bad guys we killed before to return, but they should be joined by a wealth of new blood.
