I got the Borderlands 2 art book this weekend. Great stuff in it, and it really inspired me to try my hand at those archetypes. Also, these character designs might be used in a Hardboiled-related PDF...
- The Soldier was designed super-asymmetrically with a "duplicate" power (from the aforementioned PDF) in mind, such that the other duplicate would be a mirror image. Originally she had a shirt missing a sleeve under the vest, but I slipped while doing the skin pass and decided she looked much, much more badass just wearing the vest with an attached sleeve. Seriously, she's totally awesome! I imagine the vest is a Tediore product, but like any good soldier she favours Dahl rifles.
- The Bezerker. He's totally the Terminator. I think his shades are probably his class mod. I think he's probably a tank-focused Gunzerker, but he prefers slow and steady rampages with high-powered weapons like Jakobs rifles, Bandit shotguns and, of course, Torgue pistols.
- The Siren's design was an exploration of body types a little. The Sirens in Borderlands have pretty divergent appearances; Lilith is petite and kind of delicate looking, while Maya is tall, lithe and athletic. This Siren is an amazon; she's the tallest one in the party thus far, but she's not a beanstock; she's curvy, voluptuous even. (I was specifically thinking of Caro Emerald.) I'm thinking she's from some kind of nobility and has a secret agent sort of thing going, hence the heels and the intimidating and such, and she's probably content to stand her ground and nuke the enemy with her powers rather than running around and hiding behind boxes like other vault hunters. I picture her having some kind of perception-based power, maybe like a superpowered version of the Lab Rat's gaze; her tattoos go right up to her eye and have done something unnatural to it, hence her keeping her hair in the way. She probably sticks to light weapons that leave a hand free for casting her powers; Valdof pistols, for instance.
Right now /tg/ is working on a Borderlands RPG called GUNS GUNS GUNS. They've got alpha rules in development and are about 60% done with the system. Since sirens are so rare in the fluff, they have a class to replace her called the "Slag Harpy", basically a bandit that injects herself with Slag and gains temporary superpowers, but slowly goes insane.
I'll have to link you to it the next time it has a dedicated thread, it's pretty awesome.
/tg/ can work on whatever they want. Hardboiled's gunfight rules are so much fun I wrote a Borderlands RPG to match, because Hardboiled is too consequence-tastic for the party to always get in fights, and r3ven has put together an automated gun generator which stats out loot with the press of a button. I'd like to see them beat that.
But, yeah, I kept Sirens because there are still two of them out there, the "only six" thing could possibly be hearsay or legend, they are intractably linked to the Vaults so its plausible they have been drawn to Pandora, and Vault Hunters are already exceptional people anyway.
Also, I just read an alpha of Guns Guns Guns... it's less awesome than I expected, and also less GUNS than I expected. Pressure is on, I guess.