Borderlands Interview, Gameplay Trailer

In addition to posting an exclusive gameplay trailer for the game, GameSpot had the chance to sit down with 2K Games president Christoph Hartmann for a quick Q&A about Gearbox’s Borderlands.

GS: You mentioned the switch in Borderlands’ art style as something of a controversial choice, even though it was a new franchise that didn’t yet have an established art style. Is that the sort of change in development you could only do because this is a new IP?

CH: You can do any sort of change at any time. It just always comes with a price. Look at the lessons we learned from BioShock. BioShock portrayed a very unique atmosphere, when you look at the water and the rest of Rapture. It’s all about emotions.

A good game needs amazing gameplay that’s intriguing and pulls you in. It also needs a great, unique atmosphere so that when you stop playing the game, you still have the emotions, like with a movie. We want you to be at a point where you hear a song that’s in the game and all those emotions from the game come back to you. And that means far more than the gameplay.

Look at Borderlands. Gearbox created its own universe, with open space, some insides. It didn’t immediately have a unique look like [BioShock’s] water elements, but what the art does is give it a lot of uniqueness. And it works. Look at movies, like the graphic novel look of 300. People were skeptical, but it’s one of my favorite movies. It looks very different to what’s out there, but if it were just a standard movie, it wouldn’t have worked, maybe.

Based on the trailer, there’s a lot more shooter than role-playing in this “RPS”.