If you think of Borderlands, perhaps the first thing that comes to mind is its iconic visuals. Of course, it has other beloved elements such as its seemingly endless amount of gun variations, irreverent humor, and chaotic nature. It popularized the looter shooter genre, and its hand-drawn comic book style (often mistaken as cel-shaded) made it stand out from the crowd.

The original Borderlands was set to feature the much grittier, washed-out visuals common in late 2000s FPS titles – a couple that spring to mind are Gears of War and the Modern Warfare series. However, Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick recently revealed that Borderlands was delayed just two months ahead of its release date, and it was going to cost another $50M.

The original Borderlands was delayed to overhaul the art style

Zelnick lays out the proposition put to him by the “head of the division” at the time – the original Borderlands team decided that they had “screwed up” and that the art style was “not appropriate” and not “differentiated” enough from the rest of the market. The team wanted to remake the game, something that was going to cost $50 million and another year of development time.

“I dug in. I don’t give knee-jerk answers. I dug in and did my homework, and in the end of it, I supported the decision. And that title became Borderlands. Had we not done that, Borderlands wouldn’t have been a hit. And that was a non-obvious decision, and I can pretty much assure you, no one else in the business would have done it – cause it was insane.”

Strauss Zelnick, CEO of Take-Two Interactive

It was a major decision to make at the time – Zelnick suspects most other video game publishers would have simply said: “the game is done, put out the game, move on to the next thing, I’m not spending 50 million bucks to remake the god damn thing in another art style and I have no evidence that it wouldn’t work either”.

Based on this, we can see that the Take-Two boss has a lot of trust in the game devs and creatives. “Be the most creative, be the most innovative, be the most efficient,” he adds, which seems to have become a motto of his.

Zelnick has been in the news a lot lately, practically as the face of GTA 6. Take-Two owns both Gearbox Software and Rockstar Games. He says Rockstar has had “unlimited” resources to create the game, which must be a nice change from back in the Borderlands 1 days, a time when Zelnick admits Take-Two had “very limited capital” before turning the company around.

About the Author

Jack Goodall

At PC Guide, Jack is mostly responsible for reporting on hardware deals. He also specializes in monitors, TVs, and headsets and can be found putting his findings together in a review or best-of guide.