Take-Two invested considerable time and money to give Borderlands the distinctive style we’ve come to expect today.

It’s hard to imagine Borderlands without its distinctive line art and voluptuous female characters, but when the game was first unveiled nearly two decades ago, it was much grayer and gloomier – exactly what you’d expect from a shooter released in the late 2000s. In a recent interview with podcaster David Senra, Strauss Zelnick, CEO of publisher Take-Two, said the game’s final release underwent a major overhaul, costing $50 million and an additional year of development time.

“We hadn’t turned the company around yet. We had limited capital and were developing a game that was about to be released in two months. In other words, it was finished. I mean, we had spent a lot of money. The head of the division came into my office and said, ‘Look, we just don’t think this is good enough. We think we screwed up. The art style is inappropriate and not differentiated. We want to remake the game,'” Zelnick said.

Although this was a costly risk for Take-Two, Zelnick said he researched the matter and ultimately supported the decision, though he noted that no one else in the industry would have done the same. It’s hard to say what factors Zelnick considered when he said the delay cost $50 million. This is particularly surprising, given that the budget for Borderlands 2 was approximately $35 million, according to Randy Pitchford’s estimate at the time.

We’re curious to see what the original Borderlands visual style would have looked like in a full game. We’ve never been opposed to beige-toned classics like Quake or Gears of War. However, the development team was probably correct in thinking that the style would have ruined the game. Early testers said the game bore a strong resemblance to id Software’s Rage or Fallout 3.

Now that we can look back and see the dominance of muddy-brown shooters, Rage and even Fallout 3 seem a bit outdated and bland. Whether we love or hate Borderlands, one thing is certain: it has a completely unique style.

Source: PCGamer