Borderlands Preview

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Written by BuckGB on September 2nd, 2009

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I've heard the comparisons to not only Hellgate, but to its inspiration as well: Diablo. Frankly, Hellgate borrowed a bit too much from Blizzard's classic clickfest: in the scope of post-apocalyptic London, having randomly generated urban and sewer levels didn't make sense. Putting a right turn instead of a left in order to get to the exit is a huge amount of work for the programmers and designers in a fully 3D game, but it doesn't always pay off so well when you sit down and play it. That system is difficult to make work in a shooter environment, much less a huge outdoor setting like Pandora involves, so I think it's perfectly fine for the level designs to be fixed while the monsters, loot, and fights all turn out differently every time.

There's a definite prevailing visual theme of a sci-fi-style Road Warrior on a dusty, mysterious planet, but you won't be seeing randomly-generated levels constructed out of the same five or six different "tilesets". No, the planet Pandora is a hand-crafted world that you'll be able to somewhat explore freely - higher level enemies will block your path to the tougher areas, mostly by way of shooting you in the face - and the randomness comes in with the enemy types, their strengths and weaknesses, and with the loot you receive.

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