Hands-on with Borderlands 4, Gearbox’s “most ambitious game to date”
6.23.2025
By Sarah LeBoeuf, Contributor
A lot has changed in the last 16 years, but the core games in the Borderlands series have never strayed far from their roots. It’s video game comfort food, only instead of empty calories, developer Gearbox Software loads each installment with lots and lots of guns. Borderlands 4, due out later this year, isn’t trying to reinvent the wheel. It’s staying true to the series’s roots, but it's trying out some new things too.
“This is our most ambitious title to date,” said Anthony Nicholson, a Senior Project Producer at Gearbox. “We have taken the things that we really enjoy, that fans really love… and amped it up a notch.” That means new combinations of weapon parts, new ways to explore, and a new game engine to bring the series into the current generation.
The Unreal effect
Technologically speaking, Borderlands 4 is a big step forward for the long-running series. It’s the first to be developed in Unreal Engine 5, and according to Nicholson, that gave the developers far more freedom to create their vision. “Our zones are much bigger, allowing for us to add more things like dynamic activities, migrations, and weather,” he said. “It feels like a much bigger experience without a lot of loading screens.”
The upgrade from Unreal 4 to Unreal 5 came with a bit of a learning curve, but the development team soon learned to “push its limits” and explore beyond the series’s previous boundaries. “This is a seamless experience in a number of ways,” Nicholson explained.
I experienced that seamlessness during my own session with Borderlands 4, which was indeed a load-free experience. The sequel (four-quel?) boasts several new traversal abilities, including a grappling hook, which we saw firsthand in our demo. Much like in the recent release, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, the hook is simple and requires no guesswork. Simply get within range of a grappling point, hit the button, and you’re flying upward and onward right away.
That’s not the only use for the grappling hook, either. You can use it to pull items like explosive barrels toward you and then launch them at enemies. I had a lot of fun with that mechanic; there’s nothing like crouching behind a barrel with your health running out and then spotting a useful item across the field. Yoink! It’s mine. Yeet! It’s making all of the bad guys explode.
Meet your new crew
Six years after the events of Borderlands 3 (spoiler alert!), no one knows what’s become of Lilith after she seemingly sacrificed herself to save Pandora. Nicholson wouldn’t shed too many details about how Borderlands 4 plays into the greater series canon, but we do know it takes the franchise to a new locale: the planet Kairos, which is made up of four distinctive regions. It’s up to a new crew of Vault Hunters to lead the resistance against the Timekeeper, an oppressive dictator.
Gearbox has announced four new Vault Hunters for Borderlands 4, and two of those were playable during my recent session. I had the choice of playing as Rafa the Exo-Soldier or Vex the Siren, and, as usual, I felt myself drawn to the Siren. Cynical and sarcastic with an edgy sense of style, Vex is a girl after my own heart.
“We always have a Siren, but this Siren is a little different,” Nicholson told me. “She’s a little darker. She has some magic mysticism about her on top of the Siren powers that she has, but she can also manifest companions.” Though I didn’t get to try out her summoning abilities during my demo, the fact that she can create a tiger to passively attack enemies only makes her more attractive as a player character.
Rafa, on the other hand, is “literally living every day like it’s his last” (as Nicholson put it) due to an exoskeleton suit that’s also a ticking time bomb. He can “digistruct” massive charge cannons or use Arknives to slice and dice his way through enemies. The differences between Vex and Rafa highlight one of the franchise's best aspects: It supports a number of different playstyles, whether you’re a runner-and-gunner or prefer a more thoughtful approach to looting and shooting.
You’ll also see some familiar faces in Borderlands 4, although the developers aren’t naming too many names. We do know that Amara, the playable Siren from Borderlands 3, will be on-hand as a “mission giver and mission helper” in Kairos’ mountain region. You’ll also run into Zane and Moxie on your adventure. But don’t let the series’s 16-year lore scare you; Nicholson said the team at Gearbox was “making sure that people who have never touched a Borderlands game before will pick it up and really love it.” I have to concur; though you might miss some deeper context when seeing old friends again, it feels like the kind of game you can just pick up and play without first needing a history lesson.
It’s all about the guns
Fun fact about Borderlands: It actually holds a Guinness World Record for “most guns in a video game” thanks to the 17,750,000 weapons players could get their hands on in the first installment. For a series that’s always been about the weapons, how do the developers build on that reputation and take it even further? Ironically, Nicholson says that “it’s about quality for us and not quantity."
“You go and find a gun that suits your style. And so for us, it’s taking these parts and making them feel very, very valuable.”
Borderlands 4 amps up the weaponry with new parts and manufacturers while giving players plenty of customization options to suit their preferences. Want a machine gun that turns into a shotgun at the push of a button? That was my weapon of choice throughout my demo, and it made it easy to pick off enemies from afar and blast the ones who got a little too close. “Or it could have underbarrel micro-rockets,” Nicholson cited as another example. It all adds up to “billions of permutations” that build upon the series’ already impressive inventory of weapons.
“The game is about guns and combat and feeling like a badass,” Nicholson said. Above all else, it was critical for the developers to keep that in mind, even as they wondered: “How do we push it? How do we make it even cooler?” To answer those questions, the team turned to the fans, using playtesters and listening to feedback throughout each stage of development. As Nicholson puts it: “All of these types of things help make sure that we’re grounded in what the franchise is while also pushing boundaries.
“...I think that people will really be excited about where we’re going with our gameplay, with our narrative, the little bit darker and more grounded humor we have in the game,” Nicholson said in closing. “But I think overall the gameplay and just how beautiful the game looks and how much fun it is to play with friends will be something that really stands out for all the fans.”
You can experience the awesomeness for yourself when Borderlands 4 releases on September 12, 2025. Pre-purchase the game right now on Epic Games Store!