The most interesting part of Take-Two's press conference at this year's E3 was probably the gameplay session of Borderlands, the new mad-maxxy (I just made up this adjective) game by Gearbox Software. We've provided some screens and details for you.

The co-op gameplay session started off with two developers driving around in one of the many vehicles in the game gunning down enemies with a turret. Those vehicles might be very useful, because the game world of Borderlands will have a vast scope, also judging from the surroundings we have seen up to now. At the german Games Convention last year, the devs were presenting a region that very much looked like a desert. This time it looked far more like a mountainous and rocky region and the trailer even features a region with raging snowstorms; a world with so many geograpical differences has to be a pretty big world, we would suggest. It's also a very violent and gritty universe and therefore definitely meant for mature audiences.

This region is featured in the trailer to the game. We think that this might be where the game nears its end.

The developers soon begin to continue their way on foot and now descend into one of the many uridium mines scattered all over the planet Pandora, which are often used as hiding places of bandits. You can just descend deep into those mines while searching for loot (free exploration), but in this case the devs have got a quest in their log that they need to complete.

This is what the uridum mines look like. You can explore them freely (like dungeons) and search for loot

While they encounter their first enemies in the mines, we discover three things:

1. The game is really very mature and bloody.
2. Using a weapon or a skill regularly lets you boost your level with time (one of the devs increased his shotgun efficiency by using it a lot).
3. The loot you will find in the game focuses strongly on weaponry.

The weapon to the left was most probably designed with the parameters "long", "very long" and "longest".

The latter thing is the least surprising, because we already knew that Borderlands will be all about the guns. If we wouldn't have known, the official trailer would have told us. It features a woman telling us about the dangers of the world we are about to enter, and one of her sentences is: "You won't last long here. Not without help. Not without guns. A hell of a lot of guns." To be more precise: over half a million of them. As Gearbox's president Randy Pitchfork pointed out during the gameplay session, no developer on the world could honestly design so many weapons on its own, which is why they designed a software that creates the different weapons in the game for them. The most interesting weapon we saw during the presentation was a mixture of a rifle and a revolver shooting electrical munition. If you should happen to discover a green weapon during the game, it will likely shoot acid ammunition and therefore has a face-melting effect. We told you it's going to be bloody.

This woman is talking to us in the trailer. She says it's a dangerous world. Somehow we think she might be right.

You will be able to play characters from different classes. In this case we saw a soldier class character and a Mordecai, who was introduced as a character from the hunter class. One more thing about the co-op: You don't need to be on the same level to start a co-op game, high level players can help low level players to be successful in the game. The cooperative mode will be made available for two players off- and four players online.

This is the Mordecai, a hunter class character. We don't know how many classes there will be in the final game yet.

Judging from the gameplay session, Gearbox definitely have an interesting project in the works, which could feel like a mixture of a shooter, RPG and MMO with more weapons you can count once it's finished. One of the most interesting things will be if the many weapons will really turn out to make a difference or if you will not really want to keep switching them at all.

We will find out when Borderlands is set for release on XBox 360, PS3 and PC in 2009.