Borderlands Still Coming in 2009

There are some games that garner at lot of publicity at some point and then slip into stealth mode, only to emerge just before the publisher announces the release date. Borderlands seems to be such a game, with little being said by 2K since a pretty impressive video was show at the Leipzig Games Convention last year.

The company stated that the game was “on the radar” for 2009 and that the platforms for development were still the PlayStation 3, the Xbox 360 and the PC. More information regarding Borderlands will apparently arrive shortly.

The game initially gained prominence on the basis of Gearbox' announcement that it would feature more than 50,000 unique weapons that players could find and use. Whether this will be true or not (remember the impressive number of endings Fallout 3 was set to have?), it says something about the scale of Borderlands and about the ambitions of the developers.

The game is set on an alien world where the human population is being threatened both from the inside, by gangs and lack of order, and from the outside, by monsters and aliens. The title is a cross between a first person shooter and a role playing game, allowing the players to choose characters that have abilities and carry various pieces of equipment, but also offering varied combat, which takes place on foot and by using vehicles and is twitch-based.

Gearbox has revealed that the maps of the game would be randomly created and that there would be no loading screens in the game proper. It sure sounds like a complex title and like a lot of time will be needed to complete development. Still, Borderlands should be released in 2009, the first Gearbox made game since Brother in Arms: Hell's Highway.