Tweaking the original Borderlands 2 to make a VR-friendly game

Gearbox’s Brian Burleson has dived into what the team changed around in the newly announced PlayStation VR version of Borderlands 2 in a post on the PlayStation Blog, 

VR development comes with a handful of considerations that developers have to keep in mind, like tackling locomotion differences and avoiding any major motion sickness triggers, so Burleson's blog offers game devs a look at some of the changes the Gearbox team had to make when bringing this particular FPS to virtual reality.

Burleson, a producer at the studio, explains that the biggest gameplay change between Borderlands 2 and Borderlands 2 VR comes in the form of a new bullet-time mode that gives VR users the ability to face off against in-game baddies in slow-motion, essentially giving them more control over motion tracking-controlled elements of the game like dodging incoming bullets and aiming with the PlayStation Move controller.

Some character-specific skills have changed as well, either to better blend that new bullet-time mode into the rest of the game or to address abilities that have less utility now that this version of Borderlands 2 forgoes the cooperative multiplayer element.

Driving in-game vehicles has also been reworked to better fit with VR. The typically third-person view used while driving have been swapped out for a first-person perspective while looking around with the PlayStation headset is now how players aim a vehicle’s equipped artillery. Burleson dives a bit deeper into some of the VR-conscious changes the team had to make in the full write-up on the PlayStation Blog.