I don't know the final count in Borderlands 2, but I think it was 4x to 5x the possible permutations in Borderlands 1. The Guinness Book of World Records awarded Borderlands 1 the World Record for Most Guns in a Video Game with a count of 17,750,000.

Magic.

We are always terrified of failure and driven to please people so these things work together to motivate a lot of effort. We believe that Borderlands 2 is the best game we've ever made. The consensus so far is that it is a vast upgrade in quality over the already amazing Borderlands 1.

Collision complexity is a thing that we battle throughout development. There are still a few little things to get caught on - please report specifics (with screenshots, if you can) in our forums.

I think there's a relationship in that Borderlands has been on everyone's mind. We felt it to be cool to give Borderlands 1 away to PSN Plus subscribers as Borderlands 2 launched, so we approved the move between Sony and 2k Games (our publishing partner).

This is a good topic to debate on our forums at www.gearboxsoftware.com.

Dubstep was used, in part, sarcastically. It was sort of a meta way of simultaneously making fun of a trend we felt emerging in video game trailers while using the trend to great effect for the creation of joy puke.

See above.

At our Community Day here in Dallas I hinted that I have always wanted to ride on one of those sand skiffs from Return of the Jedi. I shouldn't have hinted anything, but since that's already out there...

Matt Armstrong imagined a foundation that perfectly supported the design of the game. It has been a team effort, but it's a designed universe where a game about killing things and taking their stuff can have heroes who are heroic for doing just that. It required an invented universe as Earth as we know it cannot…

T.K. has a small presence in Borderlands 2. Since we finished, we have some plans for him to have a role moving forward. We love T.K.

Yes.

Anthony is part of the Gearbox team here in Texas. He has a lot of influence on whatever he cares to influence.

See above.

We found the balance between familiarity and invention. The words you chose in your question tell us we really must have succeeded.

Inspiration comes from all over. There's also revelation involved too.

Not a glitch. Look at that thread about Russian compatibility above and then consider compatibility with other territories that have different expectations about gore. We've found our fun and feedback in other inventive ways and have an on-going thread on the table about how to adjust this system moving forward. …

Roughly, I'd say there are a crap load of easter eggs. A metric crap load, though.

Maybe.

We learned a LOT of lessons. The Moxxi DLC was fun for us, but we started developing it at the same time we started Zombie Island and we weren't quite sure yet where the interest was going to be. We learned quickly! Borderlands 2 DLC is being designed with much more understanding about what Borderlands is and…