What does that mean, though? To answer that, Gearbox demonstrated a sequence from near the beginning of the game. The player character, having been stranded and left for dead in an Arctic tundra by villain of the piece "Handsome Jack," is out for revenge, and the first step in that process is to find a friend whom they know has been captured nearby -- a friend who turns out to be Roland, one of the four playable characters from the original game.

Story takes on a significantly more important role in Borderlands 2. Lead writer Anthony Burch sat down and worked with every department and had regular meetings with the game's creative director in order to ensure that story and game work together in perfect harmony. Burch is under no illusions as to what really makes Borderlands tick, though.

"The gameplay's leading the story, absolutely," he says. "We don't want to force the story down the player's throat, but we want them to feel like what they're doing is important."

To this end, Burch says, the player characters are asked for help by the original game's protagonists. As badass as they were by the end of the original game, it seems that in the intervening five years prior to the start of the sequel they may have let themselves go a bit, and seem to get themselves into scrapes just often enough for the new ensemble cast to come in and kick ass in their own way.

"The story's actually designed in an episodic manner like a TV show," Burch says. "We don't want people to play for six hours and not be sure what they achieved in the story. We have smaller stories, each with their own three-act structure, to give a better sense of progression through the plot."