Borderlands 2 - Gold!

Borderlands 2 has gone Gold and is heading to certification, while the team shifts attention to DLC:

Today, we have some exciting new to share about Borderlands 2 -- the game is headed to certification!

This means that the game’s on-disc content has been locked down and will be thoroughly tested to ensure it is ready for release -– in other words, the game is finished and we cannot make any further changes to the game. As such, the team is now shifting their focus towards post-launch efforts, including the Mechromancer: the new character class that will be released as FREE downloadable content to members of the Borderlands 2 Premiere Club roughly 60 to 90 days after launch.

While we're on this game, IncGamers has an interview on bringing a story to this type of open-world action-game. Here's Gearbox’s chief creative officer Brian Martel:

IG: Tiny Tina as an example, there seems to be a focus with Borderlands 2 to make the characters much richer and more interesting. Why try to engage with the player through that element more than you did in the original game?

BM: That was one of the pieces of constructive criticism that we took from the first game, players wanted the world to feel more alive. We found that the best way to achieve that was to prevent the characters feeling like cardboard cut-outs that just stand there and deliver information to you.

In Borderlands 1 we had a system that would allow characters to feel more alive, but it was very rudimentary and nowhere near good enough to achieve the vision we wanted. So, before we shipped we cut it from the game. With the second game we came back to it and put a lot of effort into the animation system, the mission giving system and how the missions link into each other and with the bigger story.

I think that those bits make it a much more interesting experience, and if you’re playing in co-op it’s that bit better.