While our German colleagues of PC Games already tested Borderlands we at PC Games Hardware rather wait for the final games version. Nevertheless we reveal some details; we start with an Engine overview:

Borderlands: UE3 meets concept art
As with former titles, developer Gearbox relies on Epic's Unreal Engine 3 again which was heavily modified, though. The biggest difference compared to most of the UE3 games is the exceptional concept art style: Hand-drawn textures in combination with black lines result in a Cel Shading look which is unique in this form and makes Borderlands stand out from the crowd. The rather simple optics - which plays up during fights, though - is backed up by an impressive technology package: The modified UE3 boasts with Parallax Occlusion Mapping, Soft Shadows, HDR-Rendering, Screen Space Ambient Occlusion and adaptive Depth of Field - the latter is a matter of taste but we like it. According to Gearbox Borderlands is completed by the option to use anti-aliasing and having a slightly better performance under D3D10 - however, both options had not been accessible in the pre-version.

Borderlands: Multicore optimization meets Nvidia Physx
By contrast multicore support already works very well: Borderlands definitely uses more than two cores - even with maximum details at 2560 x 1600 pixels (with a Radeon HD 5870). As usual for Unreal Engine 3, Nvidia's Physx library does the physics computing - to what extent acceleration via GPU will be possible remains to be seen.

More about the topics Quadcore, GPU-PhysX und D3D10 will be revealed soon. Till then have fun with the screenshots in our gallery.

More interesting articles about Borderlands:
• Borderlands: System requirements revealed
• Borderlands: PC version delayed
• Borderlands: New screenshots of the DirectX 10 shooter - Update: Behind the Scenes trailer