Borderlands visuals won't be cel-shaded

Gearbox chief Randy Pitchford says the visuals in Borderlands will not be cel-shaded.

Confusion arose thanks to scanned screenshots from a magazine preview and misleading comments on the official game forum and website.

However, "Heh! No, Borderlands is not cel-shaded - it's a gritty and serious world after all," writes Pitchford on the Borderlands site (spotted by Gamespot).

"But since the game was first unveiled we have made big advancements with the art direction and the technology to support the art, and have produced some pretty impressive, even shocking results."

They're going with something called Concept Art Style, adds Pitchford in a subsequent post.

"[The artists and programmers] developed technology and techniques to render the concept art look for [Borderlands] in real-time 3D. We don't know what to call the result. You can use whatever term you like. We decided to use the term Concept Art Style," says Pitchford.

"It looks cool in screenshots. It looks astonishingly cool in real-time. You'll see soon."

Randy Pitchford says Borderlands will be shown live at E3 in June. Before then, he points to the official website for an imminent announcement, which appears to be loaded for firing on Thursday, 16th April.

Borderlands is futuristic, post-apocalyptic openworld action game for PS3, Xbox 360 and PC. It was described as "Diablo meets Mad Max" when revealed in 2007, and originally expected from 2K Games last Christmas.

The ambitious project flaunts four-player co-op and a content creation engine that can whip up endless missions, equipment, enemies, environments and items.

A Borderlands release date is TBC.