Borderlands Interview

Shacknews caught up with Gearbox’s Mikey Neumann during E3 for a pretty lengthy interview about their shooter/RPG hybrid Borderlands. On the art style change:

Shack: One of the things that really grabbed me was the use of brighter colors in Borderlands. A while back, I was talking with someone about why Mirror’s Edge was so refreshing and different. Part of it was the controls, obviously, but another thing was, with so many dark and gritty games, the look is so clean. That dark and gritty style can be kinda depressing–I’m not always drawn to it when I want to relax after work.

Mikey Neumann: I think Borderlands actually went through the same thing. Last time we were here, it was dark and gritty. Those games are fun to play, I have nothing against them, but I think as you play them, you start getting a little more depressed. You don’t have the same kind of fun [as] when the game is laughing with you, if that makes any sense. Borderlands is definitely a game we want to laugh with you. We want you to enjoy the same things that we thought were funny and fun and different and new.

The art style, again, is the glue to everything. It allows us to embrace what our game actually is, and man, when we had that epiphany, when it all came together, we were like, “shit man, that’s what this game is, this game is about having fun.”

Really, as developers, when you have an epiphany that the game’s supposed to be fun, you simultaneously feel like the biggest genius in the world and biggest idiot that has ever existed. Like, how did we forget this? How did we forget games are supposed to be fun? And we do! Walk the show floor! We forget!