![]() ![]() In 2012, Borderlands 2 was released and received nearly universal praise as well as several award nominations for its visual design, performances, and overall gameplay. ![]() That was Borderlands from the very beginning.” Given that these two things aren't mutually exclusive, if we marry them together, there's a real opportunity there to pave new ground. “These two elements were just sitting there. “The thing that compels us towards that growth and that discovery and that choice in typical RPGs, that sort of long-range loop, it's not mutually exclusive with all the short term, visceral, base-level joy we get from the right kind of moving and shooting in a shooter,” Pitchford said in an interview with Glixel. Gearbox’s experience with shooters, coupled with Gearbox co-founder Randy Pitchford’s love of RPGs, led the studio down the same path as Hellgate, and towards the creation of a new genre. And, whereas Flagship struggled with creating compelling gunplay, Gearbox had the art pretty damn well nailed down. Unlike Flagship, Borderlands was developed by Gearbox Software, a studio known for its work in, you guessed it, shooters. We were introduced to four “Vault Hunters”-Lilith, Brick, Mordecai, and Roland-as well as the Borderlands series, which now rests as perhaps the most iconic of all looter-shooters. In 2009, Cage the Elephant’s’ “Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked” accompanied us as we first set foot on Pandora, a dusty planet riddled with treasure-hunters seeking advanced alien technology and riches beyond their wildest imaginations. Lucky for us, the restructuring and subsequent “birth” of the looter-shooters as we know it today was merely a few months away. While Bandai Namco Games continued to provide support to players until February 2009, it was clear the ideas behind Hellgate needed serious work before they would achieve any mainstream popularity. In 2008, just one year after Hellgate’s release, Flagship shut down due to bankruptcy. Overall, the game was met with extremely mixed reviews when it came out, with outlets citing the game’s bugs, repetition, gunplay, and high price-tag ($10 monthly or $150 for life) as some major problems in an otherwise interesting game. Whereas Flagship thoroughly understood how to implement melee combat into the game-hence the majority of the six classes utilizing it-the ranged classes quite simply failed to deliver the punchy, kinetic gunplay we’d come to expect from shooters. ![]() However, despite Hellgate nailing the whole “looter” part of the looter-shooter genre, the “shooter” portion left much to be desired, perhaps due to the developer’s lack of experience with shooters. Just like in RPGs-one of the two genres fundamental to this hybrid-the focus of these games is character progression, though whereas having a skill tree or level system is not necessarily required in a looter-shooter, equipment that continuously bolsters your character is.īoth of these qualities would go on to become hallmarks of looter-shooters and provide the sub-genre with a longevity matched only by MMOs, or massive multiplayer online games. In addition, looter-shooters have a tendency to strive for longevity, with the randomness of its loot drops and on-going content provided via expansions, season passes, and more, keeping players engaged. Looter-shooters, also referred to simply as “shlooters,” is a sub-genre of video games defined by its inclusion of procedurally generated weapons and equipment, fast-paced gunplay, and the grind to get said procedurally generated weapons in order to have the absolute best fast-paced gunplay. And in that sense, I cannot help but be reminded of one of the newest and most successful genres in video games: the looter-shooter. Success is not random, but rather a grind, with the hope that the end result leaves you better. It is created through equal parts innovation and imitation, through careful observation and meticulous work. Success is born out of trial and error-out of blood, sweat, and tears. It’s not spontaneous or unfounded, and it’s not a matter of sheer luck. ![]()
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