You'll travel through Borderlands as one of four characters. Each one has a general class (tank, soldier, etc.) and three unique skill trees. While some of the skill trees will provide familiar skills and attribute boosts, others are a bit more unexpected. Take the soldier, for example. The main skill tree will allow players to become proficient with assault rifles, able to use more damaging ammo types (fire, electric, explosive, etc.), and grant them the ability to create automatic turrets. The medic skill tree, on the other hand, will change that offensive turret into a healing turret. Players standing near it will get healed, and it has a chance to revive players when they fall in combat. The medic soldier can also load healing bullets into their various guns, and the healing power will parallel the firearm power. So a submachine gun will spray constant health from short range, a shotgun will deliver a larger health blast, and a sniper rifle shot from up on the hillside can replenish most of your health in one critical shot. The tactical possibilities here are substantial, especially if you are taking advantage of the two, three, or four player cooperative mode (two-player spiltscreen mode will be included).

We didn't get to see too much tactical depth during the gameplay, but we did get a great taste for how Borderlands looks as a shooter. The heads-up display showed a compass in the bottom-center of the screen, while the right corner showed ammo levels. The bottom left corner shows your health and shield levels, and the health and shield levels of your companions are displayed in the top left corner. Our demoer played as a tank character, a class specializing in dealing and taking massive amounts of damage. Wielding a six-chambered combat shotgun, he blasted through a pack of skags with seemingly little trouble. Groups of enemies, like loot drops, are procedurally generated, so you never know quite what you're going to get. You could get a timid pack of pup skags with a few adults escorting them. Or you could run afoul of a fierce pack of adults with a spitter thrown in for good measure. The pack we saw was headed up by a "Badass Fire Skag." Yes, that is what it is actually called. Each word in the creature's name is descriptive, and "badass" is the Borderlands version of "elite" ("We wanted to call them what they are." - Gearbox).