STACK NZ May #73

GAMES FEATURE

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What do you get when Gearbox decides to introduce a new first-person-shooter IP with 25 badass heroes in a 5v5 fight to the death? If you were expecting a cheesy punchline, you can be assured Battleborn is no joke. RandyVarnell, creative director on the new title, offered some insight into what to expect from the studio's latest release. born to be wild

Where did the idea for the new IP originate? After Borderlands 2 , there were two big things we wanted to do next. First, make more characters, because we LOVE doing that! Second, find a way to bring the Gearbox “stuff” from Borderlands into a competitive multiplayer space. We also really wanted swords (really, melee in general). Multiplayer and melee aren’t quite a part of the Borderlands DNA, and some of our character ideas stretched beyond what we were currently doing in Borderlands. So, Battleborn was... born? We decided to embark on a new IP and create a game around those thoughts. Why was 25 heroes the soft spot? We love, love, love making characters. The core promise of Battleborn for us has always been crafting unique and cool characters who can blend together in a number of interesting teams. When developing the characters, we made an early choice to also invent five factions, to both help group up aesthetic and tone choices for players as well as to give our lore some teeth with philosophy and conflict. With game modes based on 5v5 multiplayer, the math speaks for itself: five factions and five player teams, with a “sweet spot” of 25 playable characters as a starting point. How important was it to implement a story mode in Battleborn ? Critical. We love team-games, but most of them focus solely on multiplayer. So, you end

up with a game that has a roster of awesome heroes, and the only thing you can do with them is punch other players on the internet. That excludes big groups of other players who either don’t like that kind of play, or don’t like it all the time. “I want to do more with my cool heroes!” So from the very beginning, we were dedicated to having a way to play Battleborn , through a narrative experience which helps establish this new cool setting we made, and gives players a chance to test themselves in different ways other than with PvP. Yes. Second only to the character play, Battleborn is a game about growth and accomplishment, whether you’re advancing characters, collecting gear, or completing achievements and challenges to earn titles. To maintain the integrity of that accomplishment, it’s important that we store and track that data online. This is especially important because the gear and credits you earn in a story episode is carried over to online play. If we didn’t authenticate that through an online account, we open up the ability for players to edit their local profile, giving themselves any item or advantage they wanted, regardless of what the game required for you to earn that. My favourite example of this is the Battleborn title “Pentastrike!”. You have to kill five enemy players within eight seconds to earn that title. Do you need to be connected to the net to play single player? Even local single player?

It’s very hard to do. If we made it easier for players to circumvent the challenge of earning that title, it loses its impact. That means it is a toothless reward. Ultimately, that begins to erode the integrity of the entire growth/reward loop of the game, which I believe is one of the most compelling things about Battleborn . Who is your demographic? This is an interesting and yet uncomfortable question for me to answer! We asked this question a lot in early Battleborn development, as we started blending genres together. At the end of the day, I always want to make a game that as many players as possible can enjoy. I also like making ‘new’ things, and not just rehashing ten-year-old ideas. Making something new always stretches the “demographic” question. Ultimately, I think Battleborn is for core gamers, maybe a bit mass market. It’s for people who like action games. It’s for people who like strong, fun characters. Battleborn is for shooter fans, but also for people who like to smash things with axes and swords. At its heart, Battleborn is a character action game, with strong offerings playing through challenging story episodes or against other players in our competitive modes. It’s a big game, with a lot of appeal to multiple player types. I hate to throw out the “something for everyone” phrase, but we did work very hard to offer substantial content for a wide group of players.

GAMES

MAY 2016

18

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