While gamers are generally over the whole “PC Master race” mentality when it comes to gaming, the differences between platforms, when catered to specifically. Heck, some PC games look so stunning when enough time happens to have been spent on them, that their supermodel looks make a console version of the same game look like Sarah Jessica Parker in comparison.
And according to Gearbox boss Randy Pitchford, the PC version of Borderlands 2 is going to look stunning indeed.
Talking to RPS at Develop, Pitchford explained how the game had a “custom version” developed to take advantage of Nvidia cards, making the world of Pandora look that much better on a Nvidia GTX 80 specifically.
“Mostly cosmetic but still rad to look at nonetheless,” Pitchford said. “And [playing the demo] I started looking at other things. I hadn’t looked at the full day/night cycle shading in that corner of that environment yet, so I was watching the moon turn.
I actually created the physics for the way the planet works, and the planet has this elliptical orbit around its star. The habitable side of the planet actually faces against the star, so you don’t actually see the sun, ever. Meanwhile the moon has this sort of geo-synchronous position in the sky, so it’s always in the same spot in the sky.
The moon has a crazy fast rotation, it takes about 20 minutes for it to spin. One side of the moon is a furnace, like a nuclear furnace, where it’s reacting and it’s super-hot, and it splashes a lot of extra light onto the planet.
On the other side it’s very cold and dark, and so when the moon spins, when the hot reactive side warms up the atmosphere and it gets hot, it feels lighter outside.
When you get the cold side it’s not dark, because you’re getting the ambient light from the nearby star, but it gets dim, with a sort of cold feeling, and you can also see these beautiful auroras in the sky. From that particular position I hadn’t actually looked at the light cycle from the moon spinning, and I was checking that out, so that’s what I was doing down there.
For those PC gamers out there who aren’t running a rig that could classify itself as Borg technology however, fret not, as Pitchford said that “everyone gets different value out of things,” in the game.
“It doesn’t matter, the core loop is so good,” he said. “I like running and looking at rocks for twenty minutes because everything’s hand painted and I like looking at the brushwork, and the little details of thing.”
Now, while I love Borderlands for the quirky gameplay and addictive loot ‘n shoot ideas present, I’m kinda jealous at the fact that PC Gamers will get the exact same experience, but only better looking.
Not massively jealous, mind you. Just a teeny bit, a smidge if you will. Also, I hope you guys have a 10 hour install period coupled with mandatory patch downloads weighing tons of gigs, nyah!
Last Updated: July 18, 2012
