Borderlands 2 Message Board older than one year ago

I appreciate a winding narrative arc that twists and turns and writhes and eventually chokes down its own tail in an Ouroboros-like fashion as much as anyone, but every once in a while, direct is best. On those occasions, I want to get right to the point. No muss. No fuss. I guess what I’m saying is, sometimes I just want to shoot a bunch of dudes in a place called the “Badass Crater of Badassitude.” And hey, what do know? That’s exactly what Borderlands 2‘s “Torgue’s Campaign of Carnage” DLC is about. Score one for me. I should idly muse about the fickle whims of my desires more often.

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Campaign of Carnage offers new areas for players to explore, three new achievements, a new currency and plenty of new missions for players level 15 or higher, with enemies scaled to your level.

#borderlands The arena-style DLC that releases on November 20th features Mr. Torgue, one of the weapons manufacturers in Borderlands 2. Our own Patricia Hernandez previewed the add-on, and noted that he pretty much looks and sounds like professional wrestler Randy Savage. More »

#borderlands2 What do you do when you visit the Badass Crater of Badassitude? You try to become the number one badass. Duh. The Badass Crater and your number one title await you in a new DLC campaign for Borderlands 2. More »

Just as the Trophies foretold, the next expansion for Borderlands 2 is indeed called "Mr. Torgue's Campaign of Carnage" - big surprise there. Mr. Torgue's Campaign of Carnage will cost 800 MS Points ($10) a la carte when it launches on November 20; if you signed up for the Season Pass, this DLC is included in the up front cost.

We were invited to check out the new DLC for about an hour last week. Any Borderlands player worth his weight in Slag will sense an odd familiarity at the heart of Mr. Torgue's Campaign of Carnage almost immediately. While it is a story-driven narrative full of fetch quests and one loud sassy mouth in your earpiece, these instances are tied together with arena battles reminiscent of the many hours I spent in Moxxi's Underdome.

That's the sense of familiarity, perhaps not the ideal thing to read considering how abrasive the Underdome DLC was in the first Borderlands; however, Gearbox shows a much more learned execution in the early moments of Torgue's Campaign of Carnage. The big thing is I never felt like any of my time was wasted, perhaps my single biggest complaint about the Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot DLC.

I wasn't able to explore that much of the DLC's plot, nor would I want to spoil it for those anxious to pony up at the bar and slam down another tall glass of DLC. But what I took away was Gearbox's dedication to making Mr. Torgue a memorable character, a loud and manly dude whose quips were on par with the dry, threatening sounds of Handsome Jack.

Mr. Torgue is much more irreverent and fun, and often enjoys breaking down the third wall to engage in some meta humor with the player. He's more likeable than Jack, but then again he wasn't billed as the bad guy almost immediately. There are places to go and things to see and Mr. Torgue plays the role of sidekick quite well, bringing levity to every situation.

And all of my progress wasn't for naught. A big problem with Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot is how none of your progress transcends that DLC prison - once in the arena, you don't get experience points and level up. Mr. Torgue's Campaign of Carnage chooses to sidestep that rule and doesn't force you into a series of claustrophobic arenas - it mixes things up by sending you to completely new areas in-between the arena battles.

Patch 1.2.2
Fixed an issue involving progress on some area-specific challenges
being incorrectly associated with the wrong challenge. As a result,
progress on some area-specific challenges made following the 1.2.0
update may be shifted to another challenge.

See just how badass Borderlands 2's most explosive weapons manufacturer can be.

#borderlands Gearbox, or rather Borderlands 2's DLC character Gaige, today announced the next chunk of campaign DLC. More »

Patch 1.2.1
Fixed an issue causing bank slots to be capped at 14 instead of 16.
Fixed a crash when loading a character that had the "Mighty Morphin" mission active in the "Collect 4 samples" state.

#borderlands I've been a fan of the PC version of Borderlands 2, even though it hasn't been without some issues. More »

#borderlands A potential game-save erasing bug affecting Xbox 360 players of Borderlands 2 has officially been patched today, according to developer Gearbox. More »

The Xbox 360 version of Borderlands 2 was updated today to "prevent data loss" from an exploit caused by a third-party program.

The exploit reportedly could wipe progress or delete characters entirely. At the time, publisher 2K Games and developer Gearbox Software provided a workaround to avoid the exploit.

The Gearbox Software update log noted today: "Added security to prevent data loss tied to malicious violations of the Xbox Live Code of Conduct through an unsupported third-party program."

And that should be that. Happy vault hunting!

With a new Borderlands game comes a new season of web shorts featuring Claptrap, the series' roguish, deeply insane automaton. In this opening episode, Claptrap gives us the lowdown on making Borderlands 2.

We're frantically playing as many games as we can so we can finalize our list of Game of the Year nominations.

It’s come to the point where I’m getting excited about any opportunity to see more of the characters of the delightfully silly Borderlands franchise. And apparently Gearbox is heeding my call, because they’re bringing back the Claptrap webseries, which, if you’re like me and haven’t even watched season one yet, you can watch all of right here. Gearbox says that the first episode of season two will premiere on their Facebook page early next week. -Tina Amini

The Art of Borderlands 2 is, as you might expect, a hardcover art book that celebrates the look and design of Gearbox's latest gun-grabbing first-person shooter. It's available for preorder right now from Amazon.com, for a discounted price of $25.00, down from the usual cost of $40.00.

If you can't get enough of Pandora and its combat-prone inhabitants, this should help. The book features over 200 pages of concept and production art, along with insight and commentary from the developers on how it all got put together.

The book is set for a publication date of November 5, so there's plenty of time to grab this one and get it wrapped and under the tree for your local gun nut before the holidays.

Gearbox celebrates Halloween by releasing new Halloween Skins for Borderlands 2.

Gearbox is spooking things up today by releasing special SHIFT codes for Borderlands 2. The codes will unlock Halloween-themed character customization skins, including the above buzzy little number for Maya.

The giveaway kicks offs at 11AM ET (8AM Pacific, 3PM British) on Gearbox's Twitter and Borderlands' Facebook pages. For extra fun, dress up like the skin you win when you go Halloween-ing tonight. Even though people won't get it, you'll definitely look super cool*.

*Joystiq offers no guarantee of your cosmetic coolness

#borderlands There's a nasty bug going around among Xbox 360 players of Borderlands 2. The bug travels like a virus, and erases players' save game data. More »

While PS3 and PC owners can sleep soundly at night knowing that their Borderlands 2 characters are safe from the nefarious plots of evil men, Xbox 360 owners are not afforded such a luxury.

"Users have begun violating the Xbox Live Code of Conduct by using an external application to maliciously disrupt the experience and sabotage characters of legitimate Borderlands 2 players on Xbox 360," Gearbox Studios community manager Chris Faylor said in a post on the developer's official forums.

While Gearbox and its "partners" work to resolve the Xbox-specific issue, it recommends avoiding public games with unknown players for the time being. Additionally, players should always Save & Quit before returning to the dashboard or powering down their Xbox, and if you find yourself kicked back to the main menu after death, select "Continue" immediately.

What destruction is actually involved in the exploit's sabotage is uncertain - anecdotal accounts on the forum report everything from wiped character progress to entirely deleted characters. We've reached out to Gearbox for clarification and will update with any new information we receive.

Update: Gearbox has informed us that a patch to exterminate the exploit has been submitted to Microsoft for approval and will be released "as soon as possible."

[Thanks, Justin!]

Borderlands 2 Update 1.1.3
- Added a toggle for whether textures should fade or pop in when a higher-resolution version loads. High-end computers can disable this to avoid seeing lower-resolution textures streaming in.
- Added the ability to reset all challenge progress for a character once they've completed 85% of all non-DLC, non-area-specific challenge levels. This will keep the player's current challenge bonuses and rank, but reset all challenge progress to 0 and allow challenges to be re-completed for additional ranks and bonuses. Resetting is available on the "challenges" screen of the status menu and will display as a tooltip at the bottom of the screen if the player has met the criteria.
- Fixed a bug where profile files set to "read only" were not being saved.
- Fixed a performance issue in Captain Scarlett and her Pirate's Booty content with PhysX set to Medium or High.

In the "Hit List" from the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences, the video game industry's top talents describe their current gaming addictions, their most anticipated releases and more. This week: Gearbox Software President Randy Pitchford. A note from the AIAS:Randy Pitchford is co-founder, owner and President of Gearbox Software. Randy served as Executive Producer and in creative and development capacities in the creation of Gearbox Software's award winning, best-selling original franchises Brothers in Arms and Borderlands. Under Randy's leadership, Gearbox Software has also developed a string of hits with sequels, expansions, and original games for many of the industry's most credible franchises and in 2010 acquired Duke Nukem to add to its stable of properties. Before the launch of Borderlands 2 on September 18, 2012, Gearbox Software games have sold over 30 million units earning more than $1 billion in gross revenues.

What many do not know is that prior to game development, Randy was a professional magician. In his forthcoming 2013 D.I.C.E. Summit session titled "Video Games Are Magic," Randy will explore how the lessons of magical performance apply to our industry. Along the way, he'll demonstrate and expose specific techniques, methods and ideas from magic that illustrate how the art of illusion has a lot in common with the art of interactive entertainment and leave his audience with tools that are useful and applicable from the executive level to the design level of our craft.

#borderlands Many of us here at Kotaku are fans of Borderlands 2's first downloadable content, Captain Scarlett and Her Pirate's Booty. The sand skiff is great, the new loot is poppin, and the bosses are super challenging. More »

#borderlands An advertisement in the official Borderlands 2 strategy guide says that the popular shooter series will come to iPhone and iPad by the end of October. More »

There's an interesting easter egg in the new Borderlands 2 DLC, Captain Scarlett and Her Pirate's Booty. The iconic Big Daddy (AKA Mr. Bubbles) from the BioShock series makes an appearance at some point in the add-on adventure and - well, we don't want to ruin it for you. In the interest of spoilers, we've embedded the video showing off the Pandora version of everyone's favorite child social worker past the break.

#borderlands Considering that the point of Borderlands 2 is to use the biggest possible gun on the biggest possible dude, it sure is a chatty game. Even the guns talk! It's basically a comedy; a machine-gun barrage of riffs, references, and cheeky toilet-humor. The jokes are pretty good, generally speaking, even though they have a tendency to rely on LOLspeak and juuust barely dated internet humor. More »

#borderlands All of Borderlands 2's environmental music is pretty great. It's fitting, subtle enough to set the mood but powerful enough for your ears to perk up and notice. More »

The first piece of story DLC for Borderlands 2 is finally here, but does it live up to the high standard set down by the main game?

#borderlands Like I mentioned yesterday, I felt like I was in a rut for a little while with my Borderlands 2 arsenal. But suddenly, upon starting the first, pirate-themed DLC, I wound up with an embarrassment of great weaponry. When it rains, it pours (bullets). More »

Which is the best way to play? We're discussing that and disappointment with the Gunzerker class on today's video game talk show.