You can learn more about the DLC itself by checking out the video below. It contains gameplay, so watch what you want to without giving yourself any spoilers.
After that, read this mammoth interview we have with the main game’s creative director (and creator of Krieg) Paul Hellquist and DLC lead writer Anthony Burch. We talk about the philosophy of Borderlands, the gameplay balancing, and how Gearbox feels the game has evolved since launch.
Paul Hellquist: Well, looking back at the other three DLC packs was certainly a part of creating this wacky idea. We found that each one of those add-on stories had some sort of strong theme. Pirates, biker gangs, safaris. So when it came to DLC 4 we started throwing ideas on the board, and...
Anthony Burch: We had this whole - unrelated - idea... that it would be cool if at one point you met one of Handsome Jack’s nephews, and he ran a Hyperion base or something. And he treated that base like a Dungeons & Dragons module. The reason that was an appealing idea is because it would allow him to set traps on the fly, and do things in front of you - changing the game world and refocus what you were doing.
Paul Hellquist: And also to poke fun at some tabletop memes.
Anthony Burch: So when it came time to do the DLC we thought we’d go ahead with it... but in execution we were a bit underwhelmed with having to have robots as the main enemy again. We didn’t want to fight more robots, it’s not a strong premise. Somehow, we came to the idea of just going the whole hog and transforming the whole of Borderlands into a fantasy type context, keeping all the gameplay intact.
SPOnG: This seems bigger than past DLC packs. One of the side-quests involves you having to test Torgue with nerd questions to get him out of the stocks and be a part of Tiny Tina’s D&D-style game...
Anthony Burch: To prove he’s a real geek guy, yeah.
SPOnG: But there’s a real underlying message here, a light jab at the way geeks are very protective of their own nerdiness, right?
Anthony Burch: Yeah - it is, very specifically, a gender-swap of the arguments that happen on Reddit all the time. You know, if a girl posts a picture of herself holding a controller, people react negatively and say things like ‘Phony! Just because you’re hot and you take care of your body, that means you can’t possibly like games!’
So we thought - what if Lilith became ‘that’ person? The real geek, claiming that Torgue isn’t? Just to switch that up and say, ‘Hey, you’re kind of being a dick to people when you do that.’ I just think in general, it’s kind of a mean thing to do.
Paul Hellquist: [Imitating Torgue] “Discrimination, noooooo!” - That’s one of my favourite lines! [Laughs]
SPOnG: Going off on that, a lot of people could look at Borderlands and come to the conclusion that it’s just memes and pop references all the time...
Anthony Burch: I’ve heard the exact opposite of what you just said [laughs]. But go on!
Anthony Burch: Yeah. I would draw distinction between memes and references and something like that quest you were talking about - the ‘fake geek guy’. We have memes in there that are brief references to internet culture. But they’re small-time. The names of skills, or challenges... there’s a challenge for killing Nomads that’s called ‘U Nomad, Bro?’ That’s a meme. That’s just a simple, ‘We took this thing that I saw in Reddit and we put it in the game.’
Turns out people fucking hate that, so I’ll never do it again [laughs]. That’s an easy fix.
But we’ve also got a lot of actual references in there, from Breaking Bad to Shakespeare. Somehow, people are okay with that. They fucking hate the meme stuff, but they’re okay with the references.
Then on the other side, there are just very clear parallels to things that exist in real life. Like on the second DLC... I used to be a game reviewer, and we decided to throw in an entire quest which is just about how fucked up it is that people will get really angry at you for giving their game a low review score. It’s not even subtle critique! It’s just like... Torgue doesn’t like this reviewer because he gave this game - I think it was called ‘Dynamite Mercenaries 2’, but I’m really referring to Far Cry 2 because it’s my favourite game - a four out of ten. And he tries to have you kill the guy for it! I wouldn’t call that a meme - but it’s certainly not subtle!
To me though, that example was just like... fuck it, you don’t usually quests of that nature. It generally came from a place where you get a chance to put a bit of yourself into the game. As well as the fact that nobody’s ever made a quest in the game that’s about game reviewers. I thought we could be the first to do that. You know, we have these characters that run the gamut from really grim and serious like Roland was, to really wacky like Torgue. And I figure, if you have all these characters, then why not have fun with them and try to have them do different things?