Borderlands 2 Interview

The Internet is home to another interesting (and lengthy) Borderlands 2 interview, and this time it comes to us via NowGamer, where they've chatted up Gearbox creative director Paul Hellquist and lead level designer Jason Reiss. Fleshing out the NPCs, "digging down" in the RPG department, renovating the loot design, and expanding the co-op offerings are all topics of interest:
Main characters aside, we understand that Gearbox has upped to NPC count in Borderlands 2. Was this a response to areas in the first game feeling under populated?

JR: Yeah, and in the first Borderlands you kind of got used to your characters and really loved the people that you ran in to, but we wanted to introduce some new NPCs for the player to interact with and to learn their back story.

I really think that in Borderland 2 we've brought in an array of character from different backgrounds and disciplines that are very interesting. I think players are really going to enjoy it when they run into some of the truly random guys we've brought into the world of Pandora.

PH: We've also improved the way NPCs interact, talk and animate, and we've really brought the game forward a big way in that department. Our towns and such are much more populated, with more people walking around, doing things and talking to you.

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Some people might hear about skills that make getting a Second Wind easier and assume that Borderlands 2 is easier than the first game. It'd be fair to say that the original Borderlands got insanely tough towards the latter DLC packs, but just how difficult is Borderlands 2 by comparison?

PH: We want the difficulty curve to be similar to Borderlands, because we want people to get through the game, experience our story, build their characters and explore a lot of the skills.

Where we do plan on increasing the challenge similar to the first game, but we want to make sure we nail it is in your second play through. So after you've finished the Borderlands 2 story, you can play through again in order to reach the level cap.

We've spoke about second play through a lot in design meetings and decided that this is where we really want to separate the men from the boys.

Players really have to dig down, understand the systems and have a maximised character with the best gear to survive a second play through. So that's where we'll crank up the challenge for all of our hardcore fans.