Infamous Borderlands art swap cost $50 million to pull off, Take-Two CEO says

Many years ago, Gearbox did the unthinkable: At the eleventh hour of the game's release, they decided to completely remake the game in a new art style. Now it's been revealed how much this cost Take-Two, especially at a time when the group didn't have that much capital to spend.

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Old-school gamers may remember Borderlands 1's original art style--a more realistic, gritty visual representation that felt more in line with the popular shooters of the era, but one that lacks the timeless look and feel of cel-shaded graphics. In the end, Gearbox bravely made the decision to scrap this original style and go with the comically iconic visuals the series is known for, but it wouldn't have happened without the approval of Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick.

In a recent interview with David Senra, games mogul Strauss Zelnick briefly discussed an interesting piece of yesteryear gaming lore regarding the Borderlands art swap. According to Zelnick, the overhaul ended up costing $50 million in developer costs and tacked on a full year of development for the game. It was ultimately the right move--the Borderlands series has now sold-in more than 100 million units, and that may not have happened if the game didn't have its bombastic style.

In an interesting twist of fate, Gearbox is now at home at Take-Two Interactive. The publisher also shared the story about Borderlands 1's original artistic scope in a GDC panel from many years ago.

Check below to hear Zelnick's recounting of the story:

The test is when someone comes into your office...

This happened to me. We hadn't turned the company around yet and we had very limited capital, and we were developing a game and it was about to be released two months later. Which is to say that it was done, and we spent a lot of money.

And the head of the division came into my office and said, 'look, we don't think this is good enough, and we screwed up and the art style is not appropriate and it's not differentiated...so we want to remake the game.'

I was like...'what does that mean?'

And he said that it would be $50 million of incremental dev costs, which is a lot of money to us, and another year. And it was on our release schedule, which we had announced.

I dug in, I don't give knee-jerk answers. I dug in, and did my homework, and in the end I supported the decision. And that title became Borderlands.

Had I not done that, Borderlands would not have become a hit.