Borderlands' last minute art style change cost Take-Two $50 million, CEO reveals

Close to launch, Gearbox’s 2008 classic Borderlands dropped its drab mid-late 2000s color palette, adopting the now iconic cel-shaded look, which cost a whopping $50 million at the time.

The details:

• When Borderlands was first revealed in 2007, the cel-shaded art style that the franchise is now known for was nowhere to be seen. Instead, the game featured more muted and mature visuals, similar to other popular titles at the time, such as Gears of War. However, Gearbox decided that a change was necessary in the 11th hour, giving the series its final look.
• Speaking with podcaster David Senra, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick recalled the events behind the visual change, beginning with an executive walking into his office to state that the team had “screwed up” with its art style just two months before release. "We had not turned around the company yet." 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 it's done, and we'd spent a lot of money,” Zelnick said. “And the head of the division came into my office and said, 'Look, we just don't think this is good enough, and we think we screwed up, and the art style is not appropriate and it's not differentiated. So, we want to remake the game.'”
• Despite costing the publisher $50 million to complete, with the game’s release date being pushed back to the following year, Zelnick backed the decision, which he believes made Borderlands the success it became. "That was a nonobvious decision," he said. "And I pretty much can assure you no one else in the business would have done it.”
• However, the CEO added that the decision was "insane" and that no other major publisher would have granted the request, as the expensive switch to the new art style didn’t guarantee its success. "The game is done, put out the game, move on to the next thing—I'm not spending $50 million bucks to remake the goddamn thing in another art style,” Zelnick explained.