Recently, Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford shared several news about "Borderlands 4", including a brand new map and the location of the hidden collection "Marcus Shakehead Doll", and also shared the behind-the-scenes story of the production. Let's take a look!
Behind the Scenes:
When we set out to create a huge, seamless world in Borderlands 4, we are not entirely clear about what we are going to face.We designed a huge world and promised to fill it up!
We also ambitiously add unprecedented movement and traversal abilities to the player character: second-stage jump, hook claw, sprint, gliding.This makes our seamless world design more challenging as players can and will get anywhere.
As the game begins to take shape, we are able to explore it and push the mobility to the limits, we are drawn to try to visit those amazing mountain tops and enjoy the beautiful scenery created by an incredible team of environmental designers and artists.
I challenged Andrew Reiner (some of you probably know he worked at Game Informer magazine for nearly 30 years) to get him to find out where he couldn’t reach and, well, get to them.The goal is to discover all the places we never expected players to visit and, well, visit them.
Reiner started working and took screenshots of these places.Of course, artists and designers make them look great and fly around them like ghosts in their tools.But in the game itself, limited by physics, gravity and physical walls, these places feel like virgin land.
So Graeme Timmons, creative director of Borderlands 4, has decided with some designers, other artists and engineers that we need to prepare something for players who have successfully arrived in these remote or unmanned areas.
We want something iconic.Place the same thing at each location so the player knows they found it.This item must be simple, recognizable, with some sense of collectable items and preferably has a real connection to our universe.
The idea came up… On the Elpis satellite, there was a guy who had a crate that he bought from his favorite local vendor.During the Cataclysm, this crate, still full of collectibles, was thrown toward Kairos.It shattered and scattered about 200 of these things everywhere.
These "things" are Marcus Bobbleheads.Inspired by Reiner’s interesting spots that are hidden or off the main line, we started placing these Marcus shaking-headed dolls and using them to tell small stories.Reiner has discovered more and more "unreachable" places...
The doll is placed on someone's desk in a building.Whoever owns the building and uses the table has long been gone and may even be dead.But the Marcus's head-shaking doll is there, waiting for the secret hunter who happened to discover it to claim it.
The doll is on a remote and beautiful mountain peak where someone set up an easel to depict incredible views.It is almost impossible to bring it back to the mountain without damaging it, so the painting is left here, next to it with a Marcus shaking-headed doll guarding it until the artist returns.
