With a playtime of over 50 hours, the announcement from Gearbox that Borderlands was getting a campaign expanding DLC so soon after release surprised me. MTV spoke with Paul Helquist, design director of DLC, with the hope of gaining a little more info on The Zombie Island of Doctor Ned out next Tuesday (24th) for 800 MS points or around £6 on PSN. The story goes that the good Doctor experimented with zombies while working for gun manufacturer Jakobs corporation. Things didn’t go quite according to plan so now we get to profit from all the loot! And it won’t be a 5 minute job either:
“We think of it about the same size as one of the smaller zones in the main game. It’s probably four to six hours of new gameplay with a lot of new regions, new monsters, that kind of thing. It’s probably about the size of the Arid Badlands [the starting zone] and one or two of the doglegs,” said Helquist.
Although the area is available via a teleporter as soon as we purchase the DLC, it’s not for the total newbie:
“As soon as you enter the download content, it detects what level you are and sets the area to about the same level of what you’re at. So whenever you buy the DLC, wherever your character happens to be, you can go into Jakobs Cove and you should be good to go.”
“I should mention that [level 10] is the minimum level. So if you started a level 1 character and jumped in, the monsters would be level 10. That’s because we wanted to be sure that players played the beginning of ‘Borderlands’ and really understood what ‘Borderlands’ is about, ’cause there’s no training in the download content.”
Our experience with Borderlands will be altered in a positive way too as the characteristics of the zombies differs from anything we’ve met in the main campaign. Since loot is the basis of the game, Gearbox have added something called a Loot Goon which is a “Frankenstein-like creature” with a treasure chest on it’s back no doubt full of goodies.
I may have deviated from my usual Borderlands dabbling thanks to Modern Warfare 2 but come next Tuesday, I know where my allegiances will lie!
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