Warden of the North
Ned Stark's head
It looks rather underwhelming to me, personally. I played the first game for the first time just last year and this doesn't look like it's 10 years newer. I think that a large part of it is the cell shading. When you're going for a comic book look instead of a realistic look, there's only so much that you can do to raise the bar, since you're purposefully choosing to not use high resolution textures or shading techniques. I hope that there's a way to turn the cell shading off on PC like there was on the previous games. I wouldn't have played the first game (and wouldn't still plan to play the second) if there hadn't been a way to turn it off.
That said, because I dislike the cell shading look, every Borderlands game has looked underwhelming to me, so my impressions may not mean much. I put off the first game for 9 years because it didn't look appealing to me, and I ended up quite enjoying it (after modifying it a little), so, if this turns out to be a fun game in spite of unimpressive visuals, that's probably all that matters.
BL2 is 75% off on Steam right now. Go buy it! Its a way better game then 1