A bunch of totally not cel-shaded Borderlands images

by Alexander Sliwinski on May 1st 2009 1:00AM

We really aren't going to get into a semantic discussion about Borderlands' new art style, so feel free to call it cel-shaded or illustrative, it's all marketing-speak bullet-points to us at this stage. Thing is, the game looks totally different than it did back in the day.

We're just curious to see what Borderlands looks like in action now, and we'll hopefully have that chance at E3, commencing in just a little over a month. Check out the gallery below for new images (for the internets, at least), and be sure to click the hi-res button in the gallery to embiggen.

Borderlands

Source

Tags: 2k-games, borderlands, gearbox, gearbox-software, Microsoft, take-two, take-two interactive, take-two-interactive, Xbox-360

Reader Comments (40)

looks alot like crackdown

I was just about to post the same thing haha.

ditto.

Was going to post the exact same thing.

Yeah, at first I got excited hoping this is Crackdown 2. Did you see the fifth picture? The dude is surfing a car in mid air lol.

then theres a good chance I'll buy this for my PS3 then. =D

but I do mis my old 360 and crackdown...... :(

Awesome. Now it looks about a billion times cooler than it did before.

I call it "Oh, look, there are weird black lines around our otherwise photo realistic images. I think we have a rendering bug" shading

yeah right? just make less than perfect thick black ink marks for every outline and crease and then fill with water or pastel colors.

but looks great anyways.

Oh, I don't care what it looks like...I am totally looking forward to good co-op play though!

It's called sloppy "art."

Well seeing as cel shading is a technical term specifically for a certain kind of illustrative style, no this is not cell shading.

Actually, Cel-Shading refers to the black-outlines of everything typical of all Cel-Shaded games, so yes, this is cel-shading, and it looks excellent.

Go down and read Ed's comment for exactly what I would have said.

It is a type of cel-shading. Sure it doesn't look like Jet Set Radio, but it looks like the new Prince of Persia without all of the colors.

This game originally had some legs to stand on with what appeared to be more gritty and realistic. Somewhere between Mad Max and Riddick. Now it just looks like a Gamecube game trying hard to make it on a xbox360. Sorry, this is not progress.

if that's true you gotta think from their point of veiw, i don't think they had a huge budget to stand with anyways.
I think it looks great, remember their going for 250+ weapons here.

Yeah, design is stupid. And this game doesn't have enough brown dirt. Where the fuck is the chic with DDD tits? This game really blows. Blah blah blah. Sorry Cass-D, but your opinion is...wrong. You really think that by going all "gritty and realistic" this game was going to be able to differentiate itself from the herd? Please. Style IS progress.

Wow, that's pretty sexy looking.

It looks good, but I wonder why the change was necessary?

In a world full of brown, dark, post-apocalyptic games, screenshots are monotonous and samey. It's a lot easier to advertise when your product stands out from the crowd.

Not to mention that the 'Game gets facelift, looks pretty' headlines generated by the change have put this on the radar of quite a few people that had never heard of the game before the switch.

They keep talking about a bunch of highly customizable vehicles, but they keep showing the same damn one.

Looking good, keep it up guys. I want this game to succeed 110%

I definitely like this much better than the old style... More games need to have cell-shading!

I'm so glad they changed the style. I had forgot all about this game, so when head lines said "boarder lands new look" I had to go back and see what it looked like before, and it weren't pretty.

Realistic is a hard look to acomplish and I think they were abit to much off to really make it. This is Stylish and Gorgeous.

Saying this is "realistic but with outlines" is so far off, the visuals clearly are taking some libertys with proportions and colors. And I'm posetive that animations will not be all realistic either.

WOW! This one really does look sexy. Not just "one to watch" for me this is a "must buy". I did the same for Auto-Modelista back in the day, just because it looked crazy.
Looking forward to this game 10 times over with every new screenshot.

Oh and... come to think of it, I wouldn't mind seeing an Auto-Modelista 2 out this gen.

Cell-shading by any other name....

It looks nice, like a graphic novel. But the black lines kind of have the effect of detaching the characters from the environment... they look kind of cut and pasted in.

I wonder how it'll look in motion...

It looks pretty cool, definitely an improvement over the bland generica of the old style.

I stand by my earlier statements (in comments of another story) that it's most definitely not cell shaded. Objects are outlined in the same way you generally find cell shaded objects outlined, but the actual coloration, the "shading", is not made up of contrasting flat colors and is therefore not cell shaded. There's no room for argument here, as cell-shading is a very specific process to achieve a very specific visual goal.

Read about it if you disagree; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cel-shaded_animation

Before this game got it's facelift i wasn't too excited about it. Now that they ditched the "Real is brown" bullcrap i'm veerrryy interested. I'll have to see it in action more before i make any judgements, but i've definitly got my eye on it now.

Hooray for personality!

Hmm I'm skeptical. I'm normally all for cool cell shading looks, but it really doesn't seen to fit Borderlands setting and story.... then again, the discrepancy could be very interesting, kudos if they pull it off well.

This just looks like TF2

i'm disappointed with this direction

I'm with you there but we must be a minority.

I'm very disappointed. Like someone else said - this doesn't seem to fit what the style of the game was...I'm really not too excited for this game anymore. Maybe a rent...maybe

This was such an unbelievably smart move by Gearbox. They went from having a bland-looking shooter with a couple of cool features to one of the most distinctive and visually interesting art styles I've ever seen. The consistency displayed in quality of the graphics and in basic character/environment design truly astounds me. Congratulations, Gearbox!

Doesn't look cel-shaded to me. Just looks like normal 3D graphics with an outline applied to the edges of the polys.

I hope they trim down or eliminate that black edge, it's very distracting.

i hope that's an accurate representation of what it really looks like in motion. if so...... i think i'll step in.

I first cringed when i saw embiggen, I don't know why; it's a perfectly cromulent word.

totally not cel-shaded.

Ohhhh it looks amazing
For me, cel shaded anything is beautiful

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A bunch of totally not cel-shaded Borderlands images

Borderlands

Reader Comments (40)

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