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I know it's not steampunk, but it's kinda dieselpunk...

Has anybody heard about Borderlands? It's not out yet, not for a couple of weeks at least, but it looks awesome! It's got a heavy Fallout 3 style to it, but it's supposed to be inspired by Mad Max... but it's on an alien planet that was colonized long ago, kinda like Gears of War. There's supposed to be thousands of different guns, 4 player ad-hoc co-op, customizable vehicles... And the art style is really fresh.

I probably won't be able to get it for a while, but I'm quite excited nonetheless!!


Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borderlands_(video_game)

Official Website:
http://www.borderlandsthegame.com/

IGN:
http://ps3.ign.com/objects/957/957207.html

The problem with swapping from realistic to this comic book-esque style is that it often leads the Art Directors to exaggeration in gameplay to accentuate it. If it follows the path of Frontline: Fuels of War, which originally had a more COD look that GOW, then expect people to fly through the air if you kill them.

*Months later*

...After having given the game a thorough playthrough and a half (still not done with it though!) I have to say it's more cyberpunk than dieselpunk.

If you take cyberpunk and put it on a desolate, desert planet with sparse population and plenty of crazy alien creatures, anyway. It definitely got the Team Fortress 2 treatment, which in my book isn't a bad thing. Last minute revamps are really common in the game industry, we usually just don't notice unless the game was heavily hyped up before the big changes were made.

I typically don't care much for games that try too hard to be realistic looking, because in the end it's still just a game. Call of Duty usually gets realism right most of the time, keeping in mind that people play these games for FUN not for realism. Granted if the next Call of Duty game came out cel shaded and cartoony, with purple guns and green blood and exaggerated weapon effects, I'd be upset... but more in the "if it ain't broke don't fix it" way.

Borderlands is just goofy enough that you can still take the few serious moments seriously. It doesn't try to look better than real life, it doesn't try to stick to realistic physics or gun mechanics or any hold-backs like that. Nearly everything in the game is some sort of parody or movie reference or game reference. It just feels lighthearted and fresh and funny, all while you're spraying lead into murderous raiders, blowing man-eating creatures to smithereens and generally raining blood and mayhem all over the place.

It's a great contrast to the grimdark looming global nuclear holocaust business of Call of Duty.

That's kinda the point I was trying to make. It's fresh, it's different. And most important, it WORKS. The change is only bad if you had your heart set on the original visuals, but I get plenty of "realistic" elsewhere. I haven't played a good colorful shooter, since, hate to say it, Halo 3, which I don't play at all anymore. Just got sick of it, but that's another topic for another time.

Besides, realistic gets boring. Greys, browns, blacks... green grass and red blood. Restrictive physics, etc, etc.

Very disappointed in Borderlands, was fun playing through on the first go, my house mate finished the game at lvl 35 or something and the second play through was bull s**t. No high level instances or anything, the last boss is level 34 or some s**t and you had no where to store your guns which you had SO FREAKING MANY OF.

DLS should be like add ons, building up a larger area for the game to build on. Not make the consumer have to buy what was ORIGINALLY going to be in the game anyway, like the storage chests, adjustible instances and the replayability. WTF.

Any of course the characters are your basic warrior, mage, rouge and ranged type. Though cudo to the dev team for making a chick, alot of work goes into that.
And there were only a few different types of creature, the majority were just wearing a different coloured skin.

They should have kept the public up to date on what they were doing and at least gotten some feed back from responces to the development.

I like the style, for it, not many games out there have it and the ability to run through instances with your friends.