What You Didn't Know About Borderlands

Game development often lasts for years. In that stretch of time, studios have their fair share of ups and downs. From humorous game bugs to stress-relieving antics, Game Informer peers behind the curtain of game development. In this entry of Tidbits, developer Gearbox Software shares secrets behind the development of Borderlands.

•  There were about 64,000 check-ins to make Borderlands.

• Mikey Neumann (creative director) did the motion capture acting for the intro featuring Lilith strutting and blowing a kiss.

•  The dog paw around Brick's neck was his dog growing up. Her name was Priscilla. You can see him as a child with her in the intro cinema to the game!

•  Crazy Earl, ClapTrap, Scooter and all of the enemy battle dialogue is voiced by Gearbox employees.

•  The player character Lilith went through seven full revisions until the art director was satisfied with the final version. 

•  ClapTrap was actually the last character added to Borderlands.

•  Gearbox uses a proprietary automated build system that runs multiple platform builds nightly in addition to specific builds that are manually triggered by developers. The final shipping build of the Xbox game was number 5,700.

•  There was a suggestion to feature midgets attached to cables that other bandits could toss at you.

•  A full body explosion will spawn 1 liver, 1-2 kidneys, 1-3 limbs, skull chunks, lots of blood, and other random body parts that have a chance to stick to walls.

•  23 babies were born to Gearbox developers during the course of this game – three of them to a single designer and his wife.

•  The Borderlands Official Strategy Guide is the longest strat guide Bradygames had ever written for a single game.

•  We had a bug once that Lilith’s voice sounded ‘too sexual’ in the international versions, we let it slide.

•  The actress that played VoG appeared in an episode of Las Vegas on NBC.

•  “Turtles all the way down” is a reference to infinite regression popularized by Stephen Hawking.

For other Tidbits entries, click the desired game name: DJ Hero, Scribblenauts, LEGO Indiana Jones 2, Prototype, Fallout 3, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2, Ghostbusters, Star Wars The Clone Wars: Republic Heroes, Overlord II, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Red Faction: Guerrilla