Historically, I have had a rough time at the end of a Borderlands game. The original titles didn’t really understand what was supposed to happen when the story ended – sort of shoe-horning in hidden boss challenges and ramping difficulties to keep challenging the gear people had put together, and provide a rickety treadmill to new loot. Bashing your head against particular loot piñatas was the norm.
Later entries made innovations to how this loop should work, and were helped greatly by other properties exploring the age-old query of what the hell keeps people interested after the credits roll. As part of my hands-on preview with Borderlands 4, I was told that the endgame experience this time around was the most carefully considered implementation they had ever done. While they did not go into detail, they did invite me to jump into one of their vault-based dungeons and see the kind of stuff players can get involved with when they want to start challenging themselves.
Stepping into the Primordial Vault known as the Fadefields, I was given a single objective: “Go to your death.”
Seems simple enough, but you gotta hand it to Gearbox for making the intention of this place readily apparent. The rocky landscape appeared to be floating in a hazy void, pillars of glowing rock jutting out of the earth and the odd molten puddle reminding me to stay on my toes when traversing the area. The landscape was almost serene initially, but the jump pad beckoned to fling me somewhere less tranquil.
I was still playing the same vault hunter from my earlier experience, Rafa, only this time I was both a higher level and had some time to tinker with my build. Gone were my energy swords, instead I had opted for a pair of digi-structed support guns that would automatically fire at whatever target I was currently attacking, turning myself into a mobile weapons platform. I had no idea what awaited me, so figured “MORE BULLETS = BETTER” for the sake of facing whatever threats would appear. My loadout had also been updated, with different weapons and a very different instrument of death in my ordnance slot: Throwing Knives. I had heard a comment earlier that throwing knives had a very unique playstyle in Four-derlands, because they could critically hit if thrown at a weak point – this was the trade off for the fact they didn’t explode like grenades, or blitz through chaff like a heavy machine gun. An elegant weapon of a more civilized age.
Quickscope a dope
The launch pad lands me on a new floating island, not massively unlike my last one – just with a few obvious areas of conflict, and things start to happen immediately. Purple rifts of energy flare up and deposit waves of baddies at me, marching out from behind cover and peppering me with small arms fire. I start with my scoped rifle, picking off heads and seeing that satisfying blood fountain from where an alien dome used to exist – before my scope is filled with the hulking form of some kind of mechanical gorilla thing. I un-scope and tap my ordnance key, hoping to whip out my massive Bio Blaster from the last session to liquify this huge construct – but instead flick out the throwing knife I had managed to forget from 30 seconds ago. By pure luck, I managed to hit the thing in its odd box-shaped head and see a colossal four-digit number pop up – well then. Throwing knives are indeed awesome.
A few more waves come and go, alongside additional ape-bots, and I feel like this is pretty tame. As far as a solo dungeon experience goes, this is manageable and I don’t immediately think that I would be better off with mates. But I do consider – how DOES this scale with friends? Borderlands has historically offered the chance to have 3 friends come along for the ride, so maybe things would be exponentially more chaotic with more people. Food for thought.
Another jump pad takes me to another platform, and a similar experience occurs – only this time, there are more unique enemy dorks causing havoc. Directional shields and pools of damage appearing on the ground brings me to a proper sweat, and I regret feeling so comfortable a moment ago. My hubris has clearly brought such suffering upon me. While difficult, it isn’t insurmountable, and I feel that there are mechanics in play that I am learning on the fly – if I had actually levelled this character to level 20, I’d probably understand what a mob with “leaking” as an affix means, but here in the crucible of learning on the fly means I gotta figure it out with my face. I scrape by and enjoy my victory, before an ethereal voice starts speaking to me – pontificating about what it means to be a guardian with nothing to guard.
A few more platforms and a handful of dicey situations later, I am put on a platform with some vending machines and given a period of respite. My wonderful objective of “Go to your death” has been amended, and now reads “Go to your point of no return” – making my rest stop feeling all the more appreciated. I stocked my ammo, reloaded every gun at my disposal and jumped on the final launchpad.
This untrained puppy keeping making a mess of the carpet
I rocketed into a cavernous lair, the first indoor area I had encountered within Primordial Vault Fadefields, before camera control was snatched away from me to reveal the threat I was facing. A long mechanical tail slinked its way out of a gap in the wall, before a lanky robotic beast swung through the cave entrance and attached itself to the ceiling. Before I could really grasp what I was looking at, the same bladed tail shot into the ground and pulled the beast away from the ceiling – entering one of those signature freeze-frame intros that define personalities in Borderlands. This was Inceptus, primordial guardian – and by christ his bladed fingers looked concerning.
The fight started properly, where I immediately learned two alarming things. Firstly, that long, bladed tail was part of a matching set – and secondly, that intro cinematic did nothing to prepare me for Inceptus’ actual size. The fight initially involved several telegraphed attacks, including a massive tail sweep that begged you to double jump at the right time and a scorpion-like JAB with spear-headed appendages. During this madness, I pressed every damaging button at my disposal, turning into a generous bullet dispenser and noted how quickly his health bar moved. Damage was moderate, which was a relief – I personally can’t stand fights that are designed to be a slog that dares you to make a mistake, and that didn’t seem to be the case here. Every now and then, Inceptus would highlight a weak point, allowing me to lash it with my energy tether and force him to grow a weird energy bubble on his body. I could then pop this bubble for critical damage, speeding up the fight. Sometimes he would fart out a huge cloud of these bubbles, untethered from his being – and they’d float towards me like malicious spores. Shooting them would of course risk me depleting my ammo, but letting them hit me was a world of hurt.
Close to the halfway point of his enormous HP bar, Inceptus mixed things up by leaping onto the ceiling to attack from a new angle. While peering upwards like that Willem Dafoe meme, I suddenly came to notice that my health was depleting rapidly. Turns out Inceptus had jumped off the floor, because it was now an acidic mire of damaging vapor. This was the first mechanic that defeated me, and on my second attempt I case a wider net to figure out what I was supposed to do – and discovered that when Inceptus is pretending to be a chandelier, there were dangling plant things that I could tether myself to and swing around like a gun-toting Tarzan. Mastering this phase rewarded me with a minor rest period, where Inceptus cocooned himself and offered new weakpoints to destroy until he was torn out of the thing.
Forget Tarzan, this is some George of the Jungle type energy
I now had the specifics of the fight under my belt – and while Inceptus would introduce a few more attacks and a few swerves to his usual ones, I was confident I could beat him. And beat him I did, with a sliver of health and a paltry handful of bullets left – helped in large part due to changed systems like the ordnance key and my active ability. Inceptus slumped to the floor and rewarded me with a satisfying loot explosion – including some magnificent orange (legendary) goodies.
Forgetting where I was, I rocket to my feet and exclaim an excited YES! before remembering that there were other people in the room still fighting the robotic panther thing. Sheepishly, I sit back down as Andrew Reiner, the Global Creative Executive at Gearbox, comes over to quietly ask how I felt. My heart was pumping, I felt satisfied, I explained that I was feeling all the stuff I would like to feel after defeating a video game boss. I pointed out that I never hit a wall of frustration, and little things like the acid floor being a sneaky surprise when he jumps onto the roof were well done. He tells me that this is just a taste, and that these experiences will change in unique ways as you progress through the game or bring your friends. This is a world of many vaults, so you’ll be exploring all manner of fun, dangerous things.
The disembodied voice from before returned to talk to me, happy that I had survived and making it known that I am fit for purpose for what may come next. More vaults await, and I can only assume that they too have these guardians that have outlived their duty. I pored over my loot, politely declined the opportunity to fight Inceptus again (my heart was still pounding) and instead moved to spectate how others were getting on.
Mmm delicious orange spoils
While it is hardly a rigorous tyre-kicking of what the endgame of Borderlands 4 might entail, it does show that some of the ingredients in place suggest a tasty dish. It’s a far cry from the days of yore where you’d replay story sections for a boss, or dig up a secret encounter – and with the right tools to increase difficulty or drag along a crew of willing mates, this may well be the most ‘carefully considered implementation’ of an endgame experience seen in a Borderlands experience. The important thing is that what I played was fun, and while my old self needed a little rest before considering another run, the important thing is that I wanted to do it again.
And that is definitely a positive outcome.
Previewed on PC at a preview event hosted by Take-Two Australia
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