With its distinctive hand-drawn cartoon art style, Borderlands is an odd candidate for a remaster because it’s look is frankly hard to improve upon. It looked great in 2009, and it still looks great nearly 10 years later as a slightly brighter experience with better, steadier framerate and a few minor tweaks. That’s both good and somewhat disappointing: On the one hand, it reconfirms that Borderlands still looks and plays the part a decade later. On the other, it means there’s little reason to return if you’ve already completed the first adventure on Pandora.
Those with keen eyes may be able to see a difference, but switching between Ultra and High settings on PC seemed like a wash to me. There’s unfortunately no HDR support here, but the console versions will have it (we haven’t gotten our hands on those yet), along with 4K on PS4 Pro and Xbox One X. That might add vibrancy to the environments, structures, characters, and weapons, but the graphical style didn’t necessarily need a refresh anyway. Consoles do benefit from 60fps gameplay, though, and the PC version is a free upgrade for owners of the original.
