Borderlands - Interview @ ShackNews

ShackNews talks with Gearbox's Mikey Neumann in a rather tongue-in-cheek Q & A from E3, mostly about a new art style for the  post-apocalyptic fps/rpg  Borderlands, slated for October release.

Here's a bit on shifting the art emphasis away from 'dark and gritty':

Shack:  One of the things that really grabbed me was the use of brighter colors in Borderlands...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: ... 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, "...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!