Borderlands 2 Has Only Three Cutscenes

Gearbox Software is hoping to make story an important part of Borderlands 2. They won't, however, do so at the expensive of gameplay. They're going to limit the number of cinematics in the game.

"The key, like you were saying, is not breaking flow," Gearbox's Anthony Burch told GI. "A big part of that is as few cutscenes as is humanly possible. Apart from our cool splash screens that last about five seconds, there’s maybe three cutscenes in the entire game – one at the very beginning, one at the very end, and one in the middle. I’m not certain on that number, but it’s very low."

Instead, the development team is hoping to integrate more story into the missions themselves.

"In the first Borderlands, most of the story happened in the text summaries you got at the beginning and ending of any mission. You had some missions where people talked to you a lot, especially in the DLC, but in Borderlands 2 we’re doing even more of that. There are a bunch of new NPCs and a bunch of old NPCs that you haven’t seen in this context. The things that you’re doing in Borderlands 2 are of such a larger scope and scale that it will feel even more interesting – like the stuff we showed at Gamescom of rescuing Roland while two opposing armies fight to get him out of your grips. In the first Borderlands you just never got that scale of narrative importance on missions."

For me, story was really the weakest part of the first Borderlands. The action was fun, the world look amazing, but the tasks all just felt a bit mundane. I was mostly just playing in order to get better loot; I was pretty uninvolved in the main quest. Here's hoping that they manage to make the sequel feel more epic.