10 Things You Didn't Know About Borderlands 2
2. The Shortest Quest Took The Longest To Develop
In games like Borderlands 2, there's a ton of work that goes into making quests fun and achievable. Think about all the variables that go into a quest; you might need to travel to another area, collect something specific, bring it back, and do pretty much anything else the devs can think of.
Making all of that work in a game can take a lot of time, but interestingly, the shortest quest in Borderlands 2 took the longest to code. There's a quest that can be completed in about 1-2 seconds. Really. The quest can be found in Thousand Cuts, and you get it from a guy called Face McShooty.
You just talk to this guy, and a quest pops up. Face McShooty wants you to... well, he wants you to shoot him in the face. You saw that coming, right? Anyways, if the player decides to take the quest, they shoot the guy in the face, complete the quest, and receive payment... from a dead man.
Head writer Anthony Burch described the problems with coding the event, and it's rather interesting. "That was one of the single most complicated quests in the entire game. In all seriousness, it's a super easy quest to complete, but there are so many exceptions to the regular rules of how quests work - just in terms of the way that was built - that it was a nightmare. They were working on that quest on and off for months."