IGN recently spoke with Randy Pitchford, Co-Founder of Gearbox Software, about Borderlands, the upcoming massive shooter for 360 and PS3. In their full interview, they discussed a lot of things concerning Borderlands and its development. Two of which were the weapon count and the decision to alter the art style.

When asked about the bold claim that Borderlands had 650,000 guns, Randy Pitchford offered up a clarification. He also added a ridiculous stat: Borderlands has more guns than every PS3 and 360 game put together. Here's what he said:

"Actually, 650,000 guns is the safe number. We've now got some other new types of weapon classes and a lot of different weapon manufacturers and we have created a bunch of super rare and unique epic weapons and other gear, so the actual number of different weapons in the game is quite a bit higher than that. There are more weapons in Borderlands than in every shooter on both the 360 and PS3 added together. It's an absurd number of guns to the point where talking about it isn't really relevant any more. What's relevant is to realize that you'll be able to find lots of varied and better weapons and gear as you play to become more and more powerful." -- Randy Pitchford via IGN

IGN even managed to ask Pitchford about the decision to change the look of Borderlands. For those that don't remember, the title wasn't always cel-shaded. It started like this:



Well, the decision to change the style seems warranted. And very cool.

"Borderlands is a big, huge game and it was decided earlier that it would be best for the game to move it into later in 2009. With the time, the artists had been itching for awhile to see if they could render their concept art style in real-time. So a bunch of them got together and put a prototype together. When they scheduled a meeting to let me see it, I went in there thinking I was going to have to shut it down for being too risky. But when I saw it on screen, I was blown away. They did it! Quickly, I shared what we had done with our amazing publishing partner, 2K Games, who found a lot of value with the creative risks that were taken with BioShock, and I was excited that they saw the same value that we did and supported us. In fact, the art direction turned out to be bonus value that came from artists effectively using time that the project needed anyway. " -- Randy Pitchford via IGN

Borderlands is going to be gigantic. I'll probably wind up wanting to starve myself rather than take breaks from the game.

Anyone else looking forward to this?