Resistance 3 artist “disappointed” at Borderlands 2 box art similarities [Updated]
Simon Williams September 21, 2012 - 2:21 pmNews: The artist Olly Moss has voiced his surprise and disappointment after it was brought to his attention that part of Borderlands 2′s box art bears more than a passing resemblance to one of his Empire Strikes Back artworks – especially as he’s a huge Gearbox fan himself and “would have jumped at chance to work with them.”
The UK artist Olly Moss – most well-known in video game circles for his haunting box art and promo campaign paintings for Resistance 3 – has admitted he’s somewhat taken aback by similarities in the artwork for Borderlands 2 with one of his most well-known pieces of art.
This is the image, as first brought to Moss’ attention by Twitter user Miles Joliffe:
Moss reacted by tweeting “I’m a huge Gearbox fan so I was really disappointed to see this image inside the Borderlands 2 box.”
The reason he’s disappointed becomes clearer when you head over to this page on Moss’ site which shows his original artwork based on The Empire Strikes Back.
Initially Moss was “Not angry, just disappointed. One of my favourite developers. Would have jumped at the opportunity to work with them. Oh well.” and in further tweets noted his surprise and that it “just feels weird coming from such a great dev.”
However Moss then pointed out that “they actually lifted elements straight out of my thing, which I hadn’t noticed…” and posted the following image for comparison:
Moss’ biggest frustration at the rather blatant “homage” to his original work was that “if they’d called I would have just made them something new.”
UPDATE: Randy Pitchford has reached out to Moss on Twitter, saying: “You’re amazing. Inspiration is part of art and you’ve inspired us. But the bit that was lifted is uncool, so… consequences”. The Gearbox boss continued: “We should be working together to do it right and legit.”
Slightly dodgy interior art or not, Borderlands 2 is something special. Our review is inbound, but you can check out ten reasons it got us all excited.
