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Double jumping Rafa’s way through Borderlands 4 at Gamescom
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Charlie Wacholz
But with Borderlands 4, it seems like Gearbox has studied the last 16 years of FPS design and gone back to the drawing board with the right attitude, leaving what’s worked while building on the rest.
I attended an hour-long demo event at Gamescom 2025 hosted by Gearbox and 2K, where I saw a brief presentation about the game from a pair of series veterans before briefly going hands-on with the game itself as Rafa, the game’s Exo-Soldier.
Hosted by Senior Producer Anthony Nicholson and World Building Director Jason Reiss, the presentation opened with a promisingly cheeky mission statement: “Less borders, more lands.” At face value, this is a clear nod to the game’s open world form factor—which boasts seamless, interconnected lands for the first time in the series—but it actually goes much deeper. The leads’ presentation put a major focus on seamlessness. By looking for friction points in previous games (like looking around on a loot-laden battlefield for a healing item during combat), they found ways to streamline the pace and flow of normal gameplay. Now, healing is tied to a held item on a cooldown rather than the old school syringe needle-in-a-bullet haystack method of previous entries.
This is all done in the name of letting players enjoy the best parts about the series without being slowed down by some of the less efficient design ideas that could drag on looting and shooting. And that’s where the bigger changes come in; movement has been drastically expanded. In the interest of both modernizing the series and opening up Borderlands 4’s open world, you’re not just running and gunning here. Now, you can double jump, air dash, glide, swim, and have a grapple hook, encouraging a more dynamic approach to Borderlands’ gunplay, combat encounters, and open world.
I took some time running through something resembling a standard section of gameplay from previous titles to see just how these new tweaks and tools fit into the Borderlands kit. I’m pleased to say that running and gunning with extra verticality and more dynamic movement felt more natural than I expected. Maybe that’s because I generally really enjoy the movement in games like Fortnite or DOOM Eternal, but some of them, especially double-jumping and dashing around with a shotgun, were smooth as butter.
I had to choose between the vault level and a section of the open world. I wound up choosing the option that’s closer to the classic games to see how all the new movement options and tweaks worked out. But I still got a taste of the open world from the presentation, which promised some pretty cool tweaks to the open-world formula. My favorite is Gearbox’s approach to missions in the open world. Borderlands 4’s story is open-ended, with a non-linear story. As such, story and side quests will often pop up as you get close to their destination; no talking to an NPC. This is a really cool feature that I think is going to do a lot to keep the gameplay moving without slowing down too much.
And even though I'm a bit worried that might take away from their industry all-star cast of writers’ ability to really flex their comedic chops, the small pieces of writing I did see (namely enemy names and a bad guy’s monologuing) nailed a much drier tone compared to 3’s more maximalist, in-your-face humor.
The linear section culminated in a boss fight against a gigantic, lizard-like plant monster. Grappling off of glowing bulbs and shooting weak points, I dodged and weaved between big AOE attacks and took out minions until I eventually ran out of time before I could dispose of the boss.
This brings me to my biggest issue with the chunk of Borderlands 4 that I saw; the enemies took a little too long to kill. I'm sure more time futzing around with my character’s upgradable skill tree (also new for 4), would've made each bullet hit harder. But even after choosing synergized abilities that doubled down on corrosive effects from my bullets, enemies took some beating, especially for the amount of ammo I was going through and for how much I found myself jumping, dashing, and grappling around.
I wish I had more time with the game to really get my hands dirty with its new character progression options and open world, but I think Gearbox is making the right steps to bring Borderlands into a new era.
Buy Borderlands 4 on the Epic Games Store before September 12, 2026, and receive the Mad Moxxi Bundle in Fortnite! Offer expires 11:59 pm ET on September 12, 2026. For full details, read the FAQ.
And for a deep dive into how the team first defined the looter-shooter and now hopes to refine it, check out our cover story.
