14 DAY TRIAL // Borderlands 2 is an action-oriented game and the team working on it plans to make sure that there as few interruptions as possible to the flow of the game, going so far as to almost take cutscenes out of the game entirely.
Antony Burch, who is the writer working on Borderlands 2 at Gearbox, told Game Informer that, “The key is not breaking flow. A big part of that is as few cutscenes as is humanly possible.
“Apart from our cool splash screens that last about five seconds, there’s maybe three cutscenes in the entire game – one at the very beginning, one at the very end, and one in the middle. I’m not certain on that number, but it’s very low.”
The main reason to cut down on cutscene use is the emphasis that Gearbox puts on gameplay and on allowing the player to be an active part of all the cool moments that the game has to offer.
Burch added, “The story informs the gameplay and makes you feel like the things you’re doing in the gameplay are for a bigger reason. It’s never, ‘Hey, I’m going to grab you by the neck and make you watch this nine-minute cutscene about this character I really like, so deal with it’.”
The writers working on Borderlands 2 are making sure that the entire game world tells the story of the game with characters the main conduits when it comes to delivering narrative and background information.
Anthony Burch also announced that Gearbox is keen on mining the deep potential of the cast shown in the first Borderlands game and its downloadable content and those will all make appearances in the sequel.
The entire scale of the game is also much larger, giving writers more opportunities for big moments.
Borderlands 2 is currently set to arrive in late September on the PC, the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3.