Gearbox: Focus of Borderlands 2 team is to create "something worthy of the original"

Gearbox concept designer Scott Kester has said when the team started designing the world and story elements for Borderlands 2, it wanted to invent more for the game while staying true to the original, which was an "interesting line to tow" for the developers.

Speaking in an interview with Gamasutra, Kester said the focus with Borderlands 2 was to create "something worthy of the original."

"It's kind of a tough situation, because you want to invent, and you want to make these things new," he said. "But if you don't stay true to what you were, people might cry foul. But you also don't want to get into... a thing I say a lot is that I'm imitating myself, like, 'is this what I would've done?' It's not about that.

"I think Borderlands is -- and will always be -- more about what feels best for the game, and what is the gut reactions to those things. But we really wanted to give somebody something worthy of the original.

"We were very fond of the first game, and we really want to make a true sequel, and make it worth people's time to check it out, and not just re-skin the last game and play the same character, shooting the same things, in the same environment."

This included adding larger, and more deserve locations that feel alive, and like "an immersive, cohesive adventure" instead of just adding "a s**t load of assets" and trying to fit them all together.

"The physical size is larger than the last game," said Kester. "The one thing that we're really trying to do, though, that we're priding ourselves on, is that there's so much more diversity inside of that, and there's so much more life. When you're talking about enemies, you're talking about guns, environments.

"I feel like we've created more art already for this game than we did for the entirety of the last game, at this point in development. We've got a monumental amount of new stuff in the game, and that is really impressive to me. And we're really trying."

Borderlands 2 is slated fore release during 2012 on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.