Borderlands Art Style Q&A

Gaming Union had the chance to quiz Gearbox creative director Mikey Neumann during E3 about the recent (and drastic) change to Borderlands' art style.
GU: Was it an option that was always on the table? Or was there something that inspired the new style?

Neumann: It came up originally, and we did the concept art in that style. The concept art we have is beautiful, it's very painterly. We had our vice president at the entire company say, "You know what, we can make this happen, give me three artists and a programmer for a week and a half" and we were all like "What? We've been in development for a few years, you're going to change it at the last second?" We let him go crazy for a week and a half and he showed his stuff and we were like, "that's pretty cool, take it a little further." Gave him a couple extra weeks and he had the whole of Firestone done, and we were all blown away. We could not believe how pretty it was, so we took it to 2K. I mean, we liked it, but they're our publishing partner and we were like, totally changing our horses on them, and they loved it. Right away they were supportive of it, kind of the same way they were supportive of what Bioshock wanted to do with the art-deco style and things like that. They really wanted to take a chance there. So once everyone was on board we just went with it.