Matthew Armstrong leaves Gearbox

Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel BL:TPS News
#62

Seriously ?

You guys are truly pessimistic.
We don’t even know who’s gonna take his place yet and already it’s: “it CAN’T work out”

LOTS of games/projects/groups/things were said to be over once someone left, yet a lot of them endured and even thrived.

Pink Floyd kept on making great music after Sid Barret left. (Even better music if you ask me)
I can hardly tell Scott from Johnston (AC/DC).
McDonalds took off once the McDonalds brothers sold their business to someone else.
Pretty sure JJ Abrams’ Star wars will be better than Lucas’ last 3.
Pretty sure Ford still sells trucks even though Henry is long dead
Some comic books characters have had over a dozen writers
Matt Groening left the Simpsons looooooong ago
…Ever heard of Pete Best ?

Sure, sometimes it doesn’t pan out, that happens…

But Mr Armstrong isn’t an actor we associate with a specific character, nor does he voice anyone.
When the writer for BL1 left, did everyone react like this ? Who was this Burch guy ? did anyone knew him ?

Anyway. it’s sad to see him go, but really folks,

“Borderlands is dead” … really ?

get a hold of yourself :stuck_out_tongue:

6 Likes
#63

Hardcore fans can never be pleased. Look at the new Star Wars Battlefront. The game hasn’t even been released yet and people are already bashing it, and we literally know nothing about what’s going to be in the game. One of the key points is the fact that there are no space battles.

Someone in another forum on another site had a perfect analogy for this. It’s called Nostalgia Goggles. Strap those things on too tightly, and you can’t see anything else.

2 Likes
#64

Everyone needs to stop flipping their ■■■■ over a couple of people looking for fresh new ideas. Chuck and the others are right at least wait until we see borderlands 3 before the “borderlands sis dead” comments start flying around.

4 Likes
#65

I never said it was dead. I said I was worried. Nothing wrong with being worried.

#66

I was more referring to fuz.

#67

And I was refering more to this:

Must protect myself!

Arms self in preperation of green-giant ninjas.

1 Like
#68

Well, I was refering to those who said BL was dead, or something of the sort.

It’s totally rational to be WORRIED, but to fly off the handle like “that’s it! it’s over! BL is dead! nothing good can ever come out of it now!” …isn’t. :smile:

1 Like
#69

I hear ya.

#70

I think it’s just a trolling post, tbh.

#71

First off, I would like to state that it is okay to be concerned because you care about the health of this franchise. No need to steer pessimism, but let us fact check for a moment…

Over the past 12 months, Gearbox has:

  1. Released 3 major titles (TPS, Homeworld Remastered, and Tales from the Borderlands)

  2. Revealed their plans for their upcoming title, Battleborn (and have been very clear about their hopes for it to replace Borderlands as an in-house name)

  3. Seen a few keystone members if the Borderlands series (including its founding father, Matt Armstrong) exit their doors

  4. Put up with some pretty real criticism from those lovely outspoken individuals about TPS and Gearbox (some of those individuals who have platforms in their own individual communities)

  5. Saw its most recent publisher shut down after spending several months working on a highly requested patch

As a person who has been a fan of this series for some time, I can understand how a bit of a “shake-down” can help out in times like these.

As for the details on Matt’s departure from Gearbox, we might never know all the facts. But leaving the creative development of my favorite franchise up to someone else does feel a bit like handing one of my children over to a stranger, you know?

See? Concerned.

1 Like
#72

all though it sad that he is left it could be a blessing in disguised new blood and could be good times coming to gearbox and wish mat all the luck in the future

2 Likes
#73

Let’s go over your list here.

  1. Gearbox never “releases” titles; they are a studio, not a publisher (2K releases things, not Gearbox). And of the three things you listed, two were mainly created by other studios and one is merely a HD remaster. Gearbox has mainly been working on Battleborn (and Claptastic Voyage) recently.

  2. Battleborn is intended to supplement Borderlands, not replace it. Their recent attempts on making games based on other people’s IPs (Duke Nukem Forever, Aliens) have been failures, so this is probably a smart move.

  3. Accurate.

  4. Much of the criticism was at least partly deserved. Not having all bosses respawn in TPS was an amazingly boneheaded move, and the type of people who would care about such were the series’ biggest fans (as opposed to general reviewers and casual players, who will mostly play through the game once on Normal mode and then quit). General reviewers actually gave TPS decent reviews overall.

  5. 2K Australia is a studio, not a publisher (2K corporate is a publisher; 2K Australia was/is a studio they owned). And they were doing it merely as a work-for-hire. Basically, 2K corporate simply didn’t have any more work for them to do, and I’m sure the high cost of doing business in Australia and the isolation from 2K corporate and other studios (time zone difference, distance of airplane flights) were also factors. Many people were amazed that 2K Australia wasn’t shut down years ago.

3 Likes
#74

There are still plenty of good games that don’t require you to be online. My current timesink is Dragon Age: Inquisition. That needs to be played on the new gen (or PC). Shadow of Mordor–same. I could go on, but I won’t. Suffice it to say that the new gen is far from online-only. And let’s keep it that way with our dollar (pound/yen/whatever) votes.

I agree with you on the size of downloads. I get 20 mbps from Roadrunner. That 2.5 MBytes/sec, max. I used to think that was so fast, but with downloads in the dozens of GB, it’s barely acceptable.

#75

I think this will actually be a good thing. I did not really care for the direction they were going with TPS. It was a good game, played a lot, but it just did not hold. BL needs some fresh ideas. I can’t wait to see what they do for BL3 with new talent. Hopefully they go back to being a bit more dark and less over the top explosion noise dick butt pop culture. They created a great universe that can be expanded on without the need for fart jokes. Some fart jokes, but not many.

#76

Thanks for correcting my terminology.

I do stand behind the belief that GBX hopes that the Battleborn series eclipses (and surpasses) the Borderlands series. The Battleborn documentaries are full of RP outright saying he would like Battleborn to be what GBX is known for, rather than Borderlands.

#77

Yes there is. Unfortunately, I like FPS type games and to get a decent FPS shooter that has great offline content (campaign) is getting extremely difficult. I bought FC4, for example, partly because it had a co-op campaign mode. I did not read about it properly though and it is only on-line (no split screen). I probably would not have bought it if I had realized, as it is very similar to FC3.

You never know, having great campaign’s may make a return but I am not holding my breath.

#78

Wut…

#79

It does seem like the fun curve is end game loaded. Mid 40s was a dull patch for Nisha. Enemies where a level above but often dropped gear that 1 or 2 levels up while i’m killing them with a lvl 26 shotty as it was still the best killer i had. lvl70 is better.

#80

Well good luck to him, battleborn is competing with Overwatch (made by Blizzard, no less), and Gigantic, which is my own preference.
Borderlands is actually unique and basically has no direct competitor, and already has a massive and devoted fanbase (foaming at the mouth for a proper sequel).

1 Like
#81

Wut do you mean “wut”? Games, particularly shooters, that used to give you a choice of local offline play and online campaigns are increasingly migrating into exclusive online territory. Does my other post make more sense to you now?