Multiplayer shooters have evolved quite a bit since the first Borderlands was released in 2009, but I can appreciate that Gearbox Entertainment’s series has stayed mostly the same over that time. Booting up a Borderlands game, I always know I can expect vibrant comic-book style visuals, solid solo or co-op shooter gameplay, charmingly grating humor, and a whole lot of loot. All of these things still ring true and louder than ever in Borderlands 4, but the latest Borderlands game is also shaping up to be the most experimental one yet.
Last month, I visited 2K’s headquarters in Novato, California, and played a couple of hours of Borderlands 4. The more traditionally designed, Destiny-like open world structure stood out, but all of the new movement options available during combat were also a real game-changer. The over-the-top humor and the number of legendary drop have both been drastically reduced, which gives Borderlands 4 a slightly different feel than Borderlands 3. All of this makes Borderlands 4 feel different than what has come before, but ultimately just as appealing.
Gliding around Kairos
Borderlands 4 completely leaves Pandora behind and takes place on a new planet called Kairos, which was ruled by a tyrant called The Timekeeper. His reign was disrupted when Lilith teleported the Pandora moon of Elpis near it at the end of Borderlands 3. Borderlands 4 picks up later as a new batch of vault hunters explore Kairos, fight The Timekeeper, and eventually save Lilith. This new setting allows Borderlands 4 to take on a more open-world structure with dynamic events and an emphasis on exploration. That seems to be working to the game’s benefit so far.
Borderlands 4’s comic book art style is as vibrant as ever, and the Fadefields area of Kairos feels more colorful than any area I’ve visited in a Borderlands game before. According to Art Director Adam May, the Fadefields area was intentionally designed to be quite vibrant, although players will explore more darkly colored areas as the adventure progresses. “It is the most expansive Borderlands we’ve ever made, so we start you off early in some place that looks bright and beautiful so that you can dive into those darker, creepier spaces as you progress through the world,” May tells Digital Trends.
While I don’t think Borderlands 4 will revolutionize open-world game design, its new structure gives it a feel that’s more similar to Destiny 2, especially now that players have a vehicle they can spawn at almost any time. The more impactful benefit that comes from this shift in design is that players now have significantly more traversal options at their disposal. I constantly found myself using the new double jump and jet pack to float in mid-air and get an edge in a firefight.
Those systems, plus a grappling hook, allow Borderlands 4 to embrace verticality in a way the games have never been able to before. This was on full display during a boss fight in a vault I fought through, as the fight at the end of it required me to damage the boss from above and constantly grapple up to higher platforms. May admits this did come with some art design challenges, but also allowed Gearbox to play into the vast scale of Kairos.
“The glide especially is super troublesome if I’m trying to set up big, cool vistas where you want the player to go look out and witness everything,” May says. “The problem is, if you can glide all the way across that area, you have to push everything back. So we did, and I had to focus on bigger, outside the gameplay space where vistas are big and massive, implying there is even more world because Kairos is a place we want to be able to explore further.”
Making More Vault Hunters
I think it’ll be hard for me to go back and play previous Borderlands games once Borderlands 4 comes out, specifically because combat now has such a smooth, movement-focused flow to it. I also really like all the Vault Hunters introduced this time around. May walked me through the design process for Vault Hunters, explaining that each one is designed to offer some sort of fantasy fulfillment and appeal to a different kind of person.
The art team went as far as to bring character concept designs around the offices at Gearbox to ask which ones people like the most. “I feel like we’ve done a good job if we go through it and, depending on the group of people that I’m talking to, I get a different answer every time,” May says. There’s still some unpredictability when it comes to Vault Hunter popularity, with May claiming that characters marketing and production think are least likely to be popular, like Zer0, often end up becoming fan favorites.
At launch, Borderlands 4 will offer four new Vault Hunters to choose from. I got to play as two of them: the Siren Vex and the Exo-Soldier Rafa. I ended up preferring Rafa’s more offensive abilities, which allows players to slash through enemies with blades or shoot them with even more bullets from shoulder-mounted turrets. Vex is no slouch, though, as her ability to spawn a powerful cat named Trouble or decoys of herself is incredibly useful during a firefight and doesn’t quite feel like the play styles of any of the Borderlands sirens who have come before.
May hyped up Amon, a beefy Forge Knight that I was not able to play during my time with Borderlands 4. “I always like the big skull crusher guys, so artistically, a giant Viking-like character, I was super stoked about. He’s kind of like a mix between a space biker and a Viking,” May says. “This is the most interestingly diverse group of people we’ve ever had in our Vault Hunter lineup, so I’m interested to see when it comes out which one is actually people’s favorite.”
Showing some restraint
These new Vault Hunters, gameplay tweaks, and locations Gearbox is introducing in Borderlands 4 are paying off so far. But just as it’s showing innovation, Gearbox is also showing restraint in some key areas. For example, Legendary loot drops much less frequently than it did in Borderlands 3. I didn’t obtain a single legendary item during my entire time playing the game. This made the more valuable drops I did find feel even more special, as I then eagerly equipped the new gun to see what parts of its abilities set it apart. Considering that Gearbox has increased the number of weapon manufacturers and now lets weapons feature parts from several different manufacturers, there’s bound to be a lot more depth and variety on the weapons front that’s not undercut by overly frequent Legendary gear drops.
One area where I have more mixed feelings is in Gearbox’s approach to humor in Borderlands 4. Retrospectively, Borderlands 3’s humor and villains are widely considered annoying even by Borderlands standards. May tells me that Gearbox drastically wants to dial things back in Borderlands 4 in order to make this a more serious adventure.
“A lot of the feedback we’ve gotten on Borderlands 3, we had that feedback internally. Sometimes it’s hard to see the forest for the trees, and as we were developing, things started to shift and change. By the time we got to the end of development, there were things that got a little bit off track tonally. A lot of the dark, black humor we wanted to bring back. In general, we want our games to be classic and enjoyable regardless of when we play them, so we didn’t want to have too many things linked to memes or real-world events and instead focus it on the world of Borderlands.”
I am worried Gearbox overcorrected a little too hard on the comedy front. During my time with Borderlands 4, I didn’t find one joke very funny. Sometimes, comedic bits were non-existent; other times, jokes like a militia leader being overly wholesome to the point of annoying his cohorts, just didn’t land that well. Those who prefer a lack of jokes to cringeworthy humor may appreciate this shift, but I have a feeling I’ll be playing Borderlands 4 because of its silky-smooth gameplay rather than its storytelling, characters, or jokes. I don’t need Borderlands to show comedic restraint; the abrasiveness is part of the charm for me.
Even if I’m not completely embracing Borderlands 4’s shift in humor, I can appreciate that Gearbox is taking a risk and changing a core part of the series like that. While I’m sure that players would’ve been happy with Borderlands 4 just offering more linear areas to loot and shoot in alongside some new hunters, Gearbox is making big strides in its approach to world design, character movement, and more in a way that feels ambitious. Borderlands 4 still feels like Borderlands, but there’s a good chance this will be the best version of that formula.
Borderlands 4 launches on September 12 for PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch 2.
