Interview with Gearbox's Randy Pitchford and Sam Winkler
Feature
Hooked Gamers: First of all, welcome back to Australia. I hope Melbourne has been treating you well.
Sam: Oh, my gosh. I've had a lot of great flat whites.
Randy: And Tim Tams - the Tim Tam Deluxe is amazing. I have gotten over the jet lag a little bit. I've been in the time zone for a while. I did Tokyo Game Show and then I stopped up in Cairns and went out to the Great Barrier Reef and did scuba diving for two days between Tokyo and PAX AUS. I never take vacations, so I had a little two day break. I got out on a boat and it was great.
Hooked Gamers: Awesome. All right. So I'll get to the nitty gritty of why we're here - Borderlands 4 and the upcoming features.
Hooked Gamers: Firstly, I want to ask you about C4SH (the new Vault Hunter). C4SH’s playstyle is centered on a high risk/high reward, luck-based system, with his Action Skills having a distinct "element of chance". How is the design team ensuring that this randomness feels compelling and unpredictable, rather than frustrating or unreliable?
Randy: Yeah, oh, see, that's the thing about randomness. I'm so excited right now. You know, we launched the game and it's just just been an incredible response. And it might be like, in terms of feedback about the game and the gameplay and the design and the story and the characters, I'm feeling like we're like people are liking it more than anything we've ever done.
And this is like as makers, it's really important because we only exist to try to create joint happiness. And so when the feedback loop is working like that, then like, and we're still working because we have so much stuff to come, including C4SH. And it just fuels us and fires us up and gets us pumped. And so, yeah, so C4SH is a lot of fun. You know, we didn't do extra vault hunters in Borderlands 3. The last time we did them was with the presequel. And it's kind of fun because when we do extra characters as bonuses, as add-ons, we can kind of take more risks than we feel we are willing to take with the main ones. And one of those risks with C4SH is to play with that randomness. With randomness, there is always that risk. And if you don't have the bad side of the roll, you can't feel as good about the good side of the roll. Fortunately, I think Borderlands players already kind of like that because it's built into how everything works in the game. So there's so many times when I've just been farming a boss and been looking for a very specific drop and I'm just getting the bad RNG - and it's like, this is ridiculous, it should have come up like three kills ago and I'm still not getting this drop. Like when the math is not favouring us, when the RNG gods punish us. But then when it does come, it's great, it's the best feeling in the world. So, you know, I don't know. It's a trade-off. and it is a bit of a risk especially with a vault hunter. We screwed around with that kind of thing a little bit with the Claptrap character in Borderlands the Presequel, which was, you know, the primary development team was actually here in Australia. What are your thoughts on that, Sam? Do you have anything to add to the risk reward nature of C4SH?
Sam: I mean, they don't let me touch the numbers for a good reason. But your point there that whole game is this heavy loot chase RNG. So, like our design team is very good at dialling that stuff in. We do a lot of stuff post-launch to buff and make sure that all the interactions are working. And so there's probably going to be some weird, fun interactions with C4SH's randomness abilities that we don't even know about yet until people play with it. So like that's the exciting part on our side too.
Randy: Yeah, we kind of do that on purpose. It makes it challenging as a developer, which is kind of stimulating and fun, but it also creates a little, you know, a little anxiety going into a launch.
Sam: And like, generally, the players who play additional characters are people who have already done a whole character runthrough of the game. And so they're a little bit more like “let's play with it”.
Hooked Gamers: So you mentioned about the interactions with other vault hunters, especially when you're playing co-op. How has C4SH’s abilities been designed with that in mind, and the combinations of the other characters that you play?
Randy: Yeah, it's a really great question because as you know, Borderlands is an awesome game to play alone, but we also support cooperative people play in a lot of different ways. From split screen on the couch to connecting with people, even on different platforms on the other side of the world over the internet. And that co-op gameplay is fun and compelling, particularly when you're doing an almost raid-style boss fight and you're running up against challenges that just feel like you know companions can help. And so we do tend to have skill design in all of our characters that accept and understand and benefit from interplay, but all Borderlands playable characters are a great solo. And that's key.
And so C4SH is no different. C4SH is going to be awesome if you're playing solo. But yeah, there are some things that C4SH has that will interact nicely - I don't want to spoil it, and also, I have to be honest. We are still in development on this thing. I've been making games for a long time and there have been times in the past where we've implemented a feature and it's in the game and I've talked about it, and then we've had to change something. And people have an expectation. It's kind of like, if you've ever seen a movie trailer that had a scene that didn't make the final cut. So I want to be very careful about getting too specific because we are literally working on it right now. But it's fun, it's cool.
And you know, it's one of the other things that we love about post launch content, especially with the success of Borderlands 4 and the love that people are having for it. It lets us make the stuff we're making with that in our heads too, with the feedback of the fans as part of our decision-making process.
Hooked Gamers: In the product road map there was mention of the Pearlescent rarity coming back. Could you elaborate on the design philosophy for reintroducing Pearlescent loot to ensure it feels rare and impactful.
Randy: Yeah. Pearlescence is something we've talked about for a long time. We kind of flirted with it in a sidestep when we did the, I think it was in the Krieg DLC for Borderlands III, when we had the Effervescent.
Sam: Oh, that was Fight for Lilith.
Randy: Oh that's right. Yeah, where we kind of played with what's beyond Pearlescent? We kind of introduced the Effervescent concept. And we didn't really go that far with trying to add rarities. As people know from the launch of Borderlands 4 - and we didn't talk about it until we launched - there are shiny weapons that are very, very rare. And pearlescent is another class of rarity - even more rare than legendary. They're different from Shinies in the sense that they're entirely new guns and they're entirely bespoke. But yeah, they're very, very, very rare. And not all players will ever see a Pearlescent. In fact, I expect just looking at the math, that most players won't. But players that are grinding a lot or working really hard at it, there will be a moment when one drops and then that's when you lose your freaking mind. You know when you've played 100 hours of the game and you've not seen a thing before and then you see it happening, you stop. Like you watch it in the streams and then the camera just freezes for a second and they're like “is that happening? Is that happening right now?”
Sam: These are guys that have been playing the game for half a decade, like 3,000 hours and they're like “I've never seen this. Holy crap”.
Randy: And it's exciting for us to bring that back. What's funny is I went to a PAX in the US before the game launched - I think it was PAX East. And what I was teasing was the Shinies. And what the community thought they were hearing, was me teasing pearlescence. And then Grant (Kao - Associate Creative Director) who was there with me on stage when I did that, he went home and started stewing on it and started the conversations for it.
(Jokingly) So the lesson there should actually be - get me on stage and let me run my mouth off because that'll make things happen that wouldn't have happened otherwise. Anyone who's playing our games that want more, should be encouraging me to run my mouth off because that's likely going to lead to more content.
Hooked Gamers: So the first free Seasonal Mini-Event, Horrors of Kairos, is coming up. What can players expect from the gameplay loop and the rewards and how will the success of this first event influence more in future?
Randy: I mean, we're always watching the results? You can see a lot of our work is not just adding more stuff, but reacting to feedback. And we love feedback and we're so grateful that there's people that are passionate about what we're doing, that they're willing to take the time to give feedback.
But the mini events are a fun thing because we get to play with not just the gameplay and there's the loop, which is super engaging and I think the foundation of why Borderlands is successful. But it also gives us a chance to play with the characters and story and mess around. I think we've called it bite size. It's a pretty big chunk, but it's not like we don't want to represent it as like one of our massive campaign DLCs, you know. But all of that is part of the joy.
Sam: With the Horrors or Kairos, it's like you said, it's that season, right? And so spooky vibes and we've got blood rain in some of these areas.
Randy: Blood rain. The rain is blood that
Sam: We have the technology..
Randy: Which is an awesome way to use the weather system.Which is the first time we've ever done a dynamic weather system in a Borderlands world. But when you have a massive seamless world, it just felt natural.
Sam: And anytime I can do spooky stuff in a game, I'm super into it. And so we've got this like pumpkin head things that I will 100% only be wearing.
Randy: And there is some spooky stuff in this that leans into the creepy spooky, but there's also a lot of playfulness in it. I'm glad we have this opportunity because, you know, we also announced our big campaign DLC, which is coming with Ellie. And that is like full gnarly horror. You know what I mean? So it's fun with the Horrors of Kairos to be able to play with some playfulness with the enemies and with some of the characters and some of the things that go down - not just trying to make you piss your pants.
Hooked Gamers: Haha.. that does lead into my question about Mad Ellie and the Vault of the Damned (the upcoming DLC). It has more of a bloodier, darker tone. What was the creative inspiration behind shifting the tone a little bit from the more hilarious theme of Borderlands 4 base to the more spooky style?
Sam: Well, I mean, Borderlands 4 represented this tonal adjustment to some more grounded sort of storytelling. And so we delved in a little bit to some horror elements, especially in the Terminus Range area where we got to have a little bit more fun with some of the creepy spaces. And there were just a lot of people on the team who were eager for more of that. We’d previously done Guns, Love and Tentacles on Borderlands 3. That was one of my favourite DLCs. And I love cosmic horror - I love those vibes, I love some of the characters that are in that DLC. And so now that we've got this space game. We have this big, meaty chunk of Borderlands universe and we have all these things that we can now bring in, or sift back in. Ellie is one of my favourite characters.
Randy: And now Jamie (the voice actor who plays Ellie), Jamie is literally part of our team. We knew her as a great voice talent, and we discovered after working with her for years and years that she's a really great writer.
Sam: Super funny. One of the funniest people I know.
Randy: Funny, but smart. And gets how to connect that kind of surface entertainment with the depth of real shit. You know, forgive me, but like, I call it the real shit when it's like, oh, man, I, I'm actually learning something about me and about us as people because of storytelling. And Jamie can tap into that in a way that's really special. It's so awesome that she's on the team.
So Josh Jeffcoat, the creative director of this big campaign - he's been with Gearbox for over 20 years - when he first pitched me for this, I'm like, "Yeah, it's time". And the team because the team wants it to. Even though there's some really gnarly stuff, we can't help ourselves from being playful here and there. So sometimes when it’s at its gnarliest, and you're just feeling like that's when we'll get in there with something, it makes it hit so much harder with the laugh because especially when you're not expecting it. And the team is so good at that. And they wrote Crazy Earl into it, I voice Crazy Earl. So I've been in the booth doing stuff. It's super cool. I can't wait. This sounds really fun. We're working on it right now. Again. It's a lot of work.
Hooked Gamers: We're looking forward to it as well. I've been playing Amon and Isabella has been playing Harlowe. We've been getting through it slowly when we can.
Randy: This is beautiful. This is awesome. This is why we fight. You guys are literally why we do this.
Hooked Gamers: It's part of our family time together.
Randy: Same. That's what we do. My family too. Oh my gosh.
Sam: The first video game my wife ever played was Borderlands 2 and we played co-op
Randy: Oh, awesome. This is so great. I love this. This is beautiful. Wow. Thank you guys so much for coming.
Hooked Gamers: Thank you and Sam for taking the time to come back down to Australia.
Randy: Oh, I love it. You know, I came to the very first PAX AUS.
It was at this point in the interview that Randy and William reminisced about the original PAX AUS, housed at the Royal Melbourne Showgrounds in the middle of the Australian winter. And how all the exhibits were set up in separate (large) tents with the rain coming down outside, and having to travel between each tent. And compared that to how PAX AUS is now housed in the huge Convention Centre.
With that, the interview concluded with a few photo opportunities.
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