A couple of days ago, PlayStation hosted a State of Play dedicated to Borderlands 4. Going into the State of Play, there have been quite a few nasty stains on the Borderlands name. Such as bad choices made in the third game’s story, the middling Wonderlands game, and the shockingly poorly received New Tales from the Borderlands (and we will just ignore the movie adaptation for now. These stains were evident when the game was being revealed. At The Game Awards last year, Randy Pitchford, Founder of Gearbox tried to reprise his legendary confirmation of Borderlands 3 before being revealed. But it felt forced, and ever since the initial reveal for Borderlands 4, there hasn’t been a whole lot of hype around it.
Obviously, there is a lot of game’s coming out this year still, and a lot of people are suffering financially (as the game may follow Nintendo and Xbox’s lead into the $80 USD territory). But even then, view counts on all of the current Borderlands 4 trailers, including the reveal, have been pretty low. That’s not to say the State of Play did not garner nearly a million views at the time of writing. Overall, though, there has just been a lack of general interest in what should be an exciting new entry. With all of this being said, however, if you watched that Gameplay Deep Dive? It is very evident that Borderlands 4 actually will be an exciting new entry that finally piqued my interest on the game.
Stepping Away from Pandora
Borderlands 4 is going to be set on a whole new planet, Kairos. The setting for the story is fairly simple and easy to follow. Essentially a ruling class consisting of the antagonist named “The Timekeeper” oppressing the inhabitants of Kairos with “The Order” but the illusion is shattered after Elpis, the moon of Pandora was sent into orbit around Kairos after the ending of Borderlands 3. This causes an uprising, and the new Vault Hunters jump into the middle of it while investigating the effects of Elpis being near Kairos. Obviously, characters from Borderlands 3 will be in the story, like Zane, and even Amara. As well as older characters like Moxxi and Claptrap.
Kairos is going to have, as the official Borderlands 4 website says:
Four distinct, seamlessly connected regions to explore: the rolling hills of the Fadefields, the frigid peaks of Terminus Range, the shattered lands of Carcadia Burn, and finally the Dominion, the Timekeeper’s impenetrable fortress city.
So, as opposed to Borderlands 3 having four different planets to explore, the setting of Borderlands 4 will focus on just Kairos. Whether these four regions are similar in scope and scale of the four planets in Borderlands 3 is to be seen. But not having to rely on Pandora and past locations to pad out this new entry is exciting. I wish we did get to see more of the varied locales outside of a sizzle reel. But the open snowy environment shown in the gameplay demo looked dense, and very interesting to explore. But the setting and story of Borderlands are not necessarily the strongest aspects of the games. The Vault Hunters and how they play, and the way they change up the guns are pivotal to the experience, and they definitely nailed it with the improvements.
More Exciting Buildcrafting Opportunities
To get some simple parts of the new gameplay changes out of the way. You will have a little drone to hack terminals, and you can summon a vehicle on demand. In addition to all of this you can also just respawn bosses at will instead of having to exit and reload your save. Those are small potatoes compared to the rest of the changes. The key change that I am personally excited for is the way guns now drop. On top of legendaries now being rare, most normal guns can drop with different manufacturer parts.
For those unfamiliar with Borderlands, guns come from different manufaturers. Vladof is focused on high fire rate weaponry, Maliwan works with elemental weaponry and Jakobs focuses on “fire as fast you can pull the trigger” western designed weaponry. Guns in Borderlands 4 can now drop with random builds from different manufacturers. They showed that a gun can drop with the high fire rate of a Vladof, explosive bullets from Torgue, with Maliwan elemental effects and have a Hyperion shield that pops up when you aim with it. This one feature alone changes how the game will feel, especially in the early game.
Finally, they are making some more subtle changes. Like separating gun effects from relics and making a dedicated trinket to alter gun perofmrnace. Allowing for more people to experiment with relics for character skills, and for how their weapons work. Not to mention they’re also keeping the 3 different action skill approach from Borderlands 3 and adding deeper skill trees to the Vault Hunters. It all looks and sounds exciting as someone who really loves the challenge of finding that perfect build.
But can Borderlands 4 Nail Everything Else?
The story should receive more love than Borderlands 3, but I do worry about other things regarding Borderlands 4. With 4 months and some change left on the clock, it’s all about the presentation now. I know how it will look, and how different most of the experience will be. But Borderlands 3 had amazing character trailers for the Vault Hunters. Rewatching some of them just give me chills. But what is the intro cutscene going to look like? Having murder and mayhem with the Vault Hunters has been a thing for 2 and 3. But having that blend of The Heavy western feeling music with the intro’s generates hype like no other game could.
Obviously, this is a “marketing” complaint, and there is over 4 months to see some of this happen. My only worry is that, after the reveal and launch date trailer garnering little excitement. Is Gearbox going to follow the same path they are on and just let the game speak for itself? Or will they go down a traditional route, and stick to the Borderlands hype cycle? Time will tell, as it only took a little over 4 months after release to change how I felt about it. What originally felt like “another game reveal” to me, is now something I am very excited for as a big Borderlands fan.
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