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AusGamers: Guys, welcome back to AusGamers, you are here once again with Stephen Farrelly. I am at GamesCom and I’m here with Scott Kester, who is the Concept Designer -- Concept Artist I should say -- on Borderlands 2. Which is probably a really good place to start with, because obviously a long time ago when this game [The original Borderlands] was first announced it had a pretty ordinary visual style and then this happened [gestures at Poster], which is fantastic.

And I noticed in the [Borderlands 2] demo we just saw that the comic-book kind of style is even more amplified. So this is probably a bit of a throwaway question -- but as a concept artist, are you super-happy to see that your actual sketches are alive?

Scott Kester: Yeah, it was a gamble when we did the switchover, but the thing that’s really great about this game is that this [gestures at poster] looks almost identical to the art that we’re creating. We’re drawing on top of the actual textures and everything and it’s... we’ve been really happy with the reception. We were a little worried that people weren’t going to take to it as they did, but we wanted to separate ourselves from the pack. So we’ve been very fortunate that people took to it as they did.



AusGamers: So what for you guys -- in terms of creating the world and creating... because that looked a lot more, I guess lived-in and a little bit more populated; a little more lively than the first game. Which I will totally say was one of my biggest gripes was that you have this great system; you had this great kind of co-op and everything was cool, but I just felt like it was a bit desolate.

Scott: Yeah, that’s something that we’re really looking at this time around and it’s been one of our biggest points into this game is variety and life inside of the world. There’s a lot more zones that you’re in, in this. There’s the arctic tundra; there’s the more green Scottish Highlands; there’s classic desert in there, because it is Borderlands and we still want it to have that classic feeling.

There are other areas that we’re not talking about, but one of the real big points that we’re trying to do though is not just the amount of environments, but the density inside of them -- the life inside of them. Trying to make them feel lived in; trying to make them feel more active. There’s more things to interact with and the way that the enemies inhabit the world -- there’s sort of a place for them, they’re not just kind of haphazardly placed as much.

And just trying to create more of a living world as opposed to just... stuff; just terrain to traverse and shoot on. So that’s a really big point that we’re going for in this one.

AusGamers: So in terms of that, in terms of variety, how far do you guys go and how much do you get reined in by everybody going “no, that’s just too far out”? Although, I did see a moon shooting at the player earlier, so I guess a lot of your concepts can pretty much just happen.

Scott: Yeah, that’s one of the great things with Borderlands, It’s very free. Because working on this game if somebody throws out an idea that’s kind of ridiculous: “no, no don’t just discount that”. We usually try to start over-the-top and rein it back if we need to, rather than gradually build. And Borderlands -- the first game -- was a little eccentric; it was a little wild. We’re really trying to sort of keep that intensity, but keep ratcheting it up so those “did that just happen?” events happen.

Does that big guy with a shield really have a midget strapped to it? Like those sort of things that I think some people would shy away from that, we sort of gravitate towards that and accept that. There’s a lot of personality in the game and you see a lot of the designers and the writers and the artists kind of come to life and do things that maybe wouldn’t be as acceptable in other games, but we love it.



AusGamers: Well Steve [Gibson, Gearbox VP of Marketing] was saying in the demo, that basically, for the second game, the Lead Designer and the Lead Writer were just locked into a room together to try and create a systemic world that works off all of the concepts that they both came up with. For you guys, working peripherally around that sort of thing, what’s the process there? Are you just kind of... are they just sort of saying “can you just draw something really cool and we’ll just put it in the game?” or... I mean, who thinks of putting a midget on a shield?

Scott: Well that one I’ve got to give a shout: we have a designer Ruben Cabrera, he’s kind of the inventor of the midgets in the last game -- the big arms/little arms guys. He really wanted to do that sort of thing.

One thing that’s really great about working on this game is: I think some people view game design as everyone’s separate. There’s level design over there, there’s game design; we really work together. We’re constantly -- from a conceptual side to the artists themselves that are creating the assets inside of the game -- we all feed off of each other and we all take those ideas. And I think what starts to happen is you start getting this, like... well it becomes a little more interesting because it’s not just one person dictating.

These guys that are sitting and working on the story and they’re working on the design bit, they’re interfacing with us and we’re making decisions together. We’re taking those ideas and making them a reality, but we’re all making compromises on all sides to really try to create the best game -- the best Borderlands experience that we can can.

AusGamers: Now, again one of the other gripes I had with the first game was that the solo experience felt a little... empty I guess. And not everybody always has someone to play with -- and I quite like that you can still quest with your friends even after your friends have gone away and come back and yada, yada, yada -- but from a solo-playing perspective, has that been broached?

Scott: Yeah, that’s the thing. The co-operative nature is the thing that I think a lot of people have gravitated towards, but we’re really trying to cater to the single-player as well. This time around, the story itself is much more interwoven through the actual missions.

Some of the earlier missions -- just due to the limitations we had with the system -- were more of a “go from A to B fetch-quest “. Now this time, not only is there more variety in the way the missions work -- they can branch; they can take directions that we couldn’t have done before just from the limitations of what we had at the time.



And using that with just all of the variety inside the environments and the creatures, we’re really looking at that playthrough and making sure that after this amount of time, you’re in a new area; you’re fighting something new; you’re getting the new weapons, but also, you’re being delivered an experience that is... you know, we still don’t want to dominate the player -- we’re not forcing you to watch cut-scenes -- but we’re really trying to use that... as you see in the demo, there’s this trouble happening between the Bloodshot Bandits and the Hyperion.

Using a lot more of that in the game to make sure the storytelling is... it’s one of those things like “this is happening without you even being there”.

AusGamers: Emergent storytelling.

Scott: Yeah, so we’re really just trying to make the world feel alive and as a single player going through that, there’s a lot of twists and turns. And we’re trying to make events that are a little more epic, that sort of keep you guessing “what are they going to do next?”. And that’s a really big focus for us for sure.

AusGamers: I don’t know if you can speak on behalf of this, but have you guys looked at cross-platform play? I mean Steam being on the PS3 and the PC component. Portal 2 was a great example of that actually working. Everyone I ever ask this question to is like “You know, it’s something that we’d like to do, but just haven’t really thought about it”. And you guys are shooting for 2013, so surely that can happen right?

Scott: I haven’t heard that conversation a whole lot -- obviously that’s something that would be amazing...

AusGamers: You should start that conversation!

Scott: It would be amazing, without a doubt and it’s something that I think we’re definitely interested in doing. I mean, I can’t speak to the technical side of that, because that kind of goes outside of what I know.

AusGamers: You should draw it, so that they... and then they just have to build it right?

Scott: Yeah, well sometimes that’s how it works on this project [laughs] So we’d be obviously really interested in something like that, but I can’t comit to anything from that, I’m sorry. We are at least trying -- from the splitscreen perspective -- we’re at least now letting two people on splitscreen get online and play with other people. Granted that’s all on the same platform right now, but we’re trying to do as much as we can and to get as many people playing the game as easily as possible.



AusGamers: Now, unfortunately I’m about to run out of battery, so I’ll wrap this up pretty shortly -- I’ve done so many interviews today. But the moon that I mentioned before -- which everyone can read in my write-up -- will we be able to go there?

Scott: You never know what’s going to happen in the game. We’re trying to put these larger set-pieces in the game, to ask those questions to people. What twists and turns are going to happen? It’s something that as you play the game there’s a lot more situations of things like that happening, so we hope to just build a little intrigue about what would happen/what could happen. There’s a lot more of that this time around.

AusGamers: Alright sweet. Well, if you can’t go to the moon, can you please draw a spaceship for us to go to the moon, because that looked kind of cool.

Scott: [laughs] I can do that.

AusGamers: And I totally want to kick the arse of the person shooting rockets from the moon at...

Scott: That is the antagonist Handsome Jack, and you will love to hate him.

AusGamers: Alright, well we’ll leave it there. Thanks very much for your time Scott, the game looks fantastic. Cheers.

Scott: Thank you very much.