Meet Lothar Rendain, villain of Battleborn
Creating the villain behind Battleborn was never going to be easy for Gearbox Software, as he/she would forever be living in the shadows of the enigmatic Borderlands villains, especially the wondrously crackpot Handsome Jack.GameSpot just conducted an interview with Gearbox's Randy Varnell, creative director behind Battleborn. They dug up the lore behind the immortal Rendain, and got Varnell's view of how to script and craft a layered and compelling villain that players can latch onto wanting to defeat.
Creating the villain behind Battleborn was never going to be easy for Gearbox Software, as he/she would forever be living in the shadows of the enigmatic Borderlands villains, especially the wondrously crackpot Handsome Jack.
GameSpot just conducted an interview with Gearbox’s Randy Varnell, creative director behind Battleborn. They dug up the lore behind the immortal Rendain, and got Varnell’s view of how to script and craft a layered and compelling villain that players can latch onto wanting to defeat.
In the interview, Varnell discusses the difficulty of making a decent villain. According to him, Gearbox like to go past “mustache-twirling” (evil just to be evil) and create something more complex. They have to have motivations for their actions. He also says this is why Lothar Rendain and the Varelsi are important to the conflict, to avoid the problem of it being hard to “get [complexity] across in a fast-moving action game.”
The Varelsi as an alien race are all about consuming planets. There’s no war to them. Varnell pitches them “as close as we come to “pure evil” villains” because of the lack of interaction or communication. However, Rendain is dubbed a “thoughtful tyrant.” because he had to be convinced to turn back on his own universe and begin working with the Varelsi. Read the full interview here for all the lore and backstory.
In other villain news, Gearbox has recently released a video that showcases the above-described Lothar Rendain, the evil behind the struggles Battleborn’s huge roster of character will be facing. Check it out below:
