This weekend at the Borderlands 2 booth, we granted PAX East visitors chance to play with two brand-new characters for Borderlands 2 — Salvador the Gunzerker and Maya the Siren — in a new environment called the Caustic Caverns. The Gunzerker and Siren classes have made great strides compared to their counterparts from the original game. Players who choose to play as Salvador will be able to use his Gunzerking ability to run into a crowd with two guns blazing. If you played the first game, you may recognize this as an evolution of Brick’s Berserking skill. Meanwhile, Maya’s new Siren skill Phaselock isolates an enemy inside a phase bubble for a short time. Once you’ve Phaselocked a target, your primary choice is whether to focus your fire on the helpless foe before it breaks free or mop up any other threats nearby. Decisions, decisions!

Borderlands has a strong history of co-op gameplay and that’s still a core promise of this game. At PAX, we watched as Siren players Phaselocked an enemy, leaving an opening for the Gunzerker buddy to run up, dual-wielding, and take out the target just in the nick of time. I’m also happy to talk about our new setting for this demo, the Caustic Caverns. From the beginning of the project, we’ve wanted to explore a wider variety of unique environments and locales on the planet of Pandora. As different and cool as the Caustic Caverns are, they’re just a small taste of the diverse environments to be explored in Borderlands 2.

We’ve overhauled our user interface, too. The new inventory screen allows for easier comparisons between gear and offers a more streamlined layout in general, and an additional benefit of the change is a more natural layout for split-screen players – no more manual “pan-n-scan”. And by popular demand, there’s now a minimap on screen!

This is Borderlands, so you know we’re aiming to include lots and lots of guns. What’s new about Borderlands 2 weapons, though, is that they’re much more supportive of any given play style. Hate long reload times? Try a Tediore gun. Prefer sturdy, burst-fire weapons? Pick up a Dahl-branded weapon. We’ve made sure that each weapon manufacturer brings something unique and interesting to the table. Finding the perfect combination of gear for each situation is all part of the fun (especially as the Gunzerker!)

Borderlands 2 releases on PS3 this September 18th and is now available for pre-order at your local retailers – keep checking the Gearbox Software Twitter, 2K Twitter, and Borderlands 2 Facebook for more information regarding the game!