Borderlands 2 to have six to ten times more dialog than the original

The original Borderlands didn't really have the deepest story. Though it had some cool characters and dialog, it really wasn't weaved into the narrative all that well, leaving the plot a little dry. With Borderlands 2, Gearbox is looking to expand the narrative dramatically. We recently had a chance to chat with Borderlands 2's lead artist Jeramy Cooke, and lead writer Anthony Burch, to find out what's going to be different this time around.

Above: Meet the new vault hunters

When we asked Burch how important the narrative was in Borderlands 2, he told us that it's a "huge, huge, huge focus. I haven’t even done the math from how much more dialog there is from the first game to the second, but there’s at least, what, six times more? Ten times more?"

He explained that this was based on player feedback from the first game. Fans applauded the multiplayer, he explained, but felt that the singleplayer was somewhat empty. "There were characters, and there were cool moments, but it wasn’t quite conveyed through dialog or the world itself. A lot of it was coming from the text you read before and after missions," he said. "So we’ve done a whole lot of work to integrate what you’re doing with the missions into the story, and to have a lot of new characters talk to you, and to have a lot of new characters return.”

While some new characters will be introduced, familiar faces will show up as well. The original vault hunters are all back (though this time they're NPCs), and, of course, the Claptrap returns. That's Claptrap singular, though - the rest wiped out, the only remaining Claptrap thinks that he's actually the main character of the story. He believes that that the players are his sidekicks in this tale.

Above: The Borderlands 2 trailer is one of the best of the year so far

Oh, and dubstep. "The trailer did promise 96.5 more wubwub, the original game had zero wubwub, and that trailer was at like... 95%?" Cooke laughed. "All we have to do is put one or two seconds of wubwub in and we already have infinitely more, percentage-wise," joked Burch. "We already did all that work to get Claptrap dancing, I'd be surprised if it wasn't in the game somewhere."