I have been a Borderlands fan for a long time, rooting for its plucky backstory of a doomed project that took a stylistic risk and eventually finding myself quite enamoured with the world of Pandora and the downtrodden denizens that lived there. But things got a little wobbly and weird as the iterations stacked up – so the prospect of seeing Borderlands 4 up close and personal was one of keen discovery. After being told that Four-derlands was on the right track, I wanted to see what that right track is.
My journey proper began as I was whisked away to the edge of our Borderlands preview experience – a conference room with a nice big projection sheet hungry for a slideshow. I was almost jumpscared at the door by Randy Pitchford himself, a presence I had only been made aware of some 10 minutes beforehand. His beaming smile and eagerness to talk all things Border-ly and Lands’y readily apparent. Randy decided to forego the presentation lectern, and instead sidled a chair up alongside all of us would-be Borderlanders to give us the skinny on what to expect. Joining him was Andrew Reiner, the Global Creative Executive at Gearbox – and recognised by many of us as a former Editor-In-Chief at Game Informer. A slide was displayed, titled “Less Borders, More Lands”, and I couldn’t stop myself from openly chuckling at it. “It’s good, isn’t it?” Randy said, before he and Andrew drilled into just what that means for Borderlands.
This was the big ticket that grabbed me, the idea that Borderlands was finally becoming a truly cohesive world, not a myriad of sectioned corridors and microbiomes. Past hardware and design philosophy meant that the games were always made in a predictable, manageable way. It almost feels like the next logical step for many games, but often the idea of going open-world can also elicit a groan from players if there is no confidence in finding that open-world interesting. But I’d always felt as if the environments of Borderlands yearned to be properly seamless, considering how characterful and bursting at the seams with stuff they had been in the past.
The presentation walked us through some other slightly more predictable developments – things will be prettier, more mechanically exciting, you name it – before getting into some nitty gritty. Health kits were coming to Borderlands? Curious. The ordnance button, controversially replacing heavy weapons and grenades, could also be used to throw knives? There was even a breakdown on how the old adage of the game having “bazillions of guns” was more accurate this time, as weapon generation would lean into each individual component of the gun. Magazines, scopes, barrels – all from different manufacturers, all with unique stats and effects. “Somebody is going to find some game-breaking shit – and it is going to be awesome.” Randy said with a laugh.
That’s a whole lotta Borderlands
Hands-on and immediately, it sure looked like Borderlands. Before I even had the time to breathe and take it all in, some runt-like dog creature was gnawing at my leg and making a compelling argument for trying out my guns. What do you know, they did precisely what they were meant to – memories screaming back into my headspace about how unique the gunplay of a Borderlands game felt. Somewhat floaty, but not frustrating. I looked up from the mess I had made, and witnessed something unfolding in a little sci-fi hamlet no fewer than a hundred yards from me. Like a kid with an undiagnosed attention disorder, I immediately lost interest in the rest of the world and the dog-things’ family members and headed onwards in the hope of finding something that put up a better fight than the beast.
Sure enough, stepping into the town saw a flurry of activity. Some strange beacon-ship thing appeared in the sky and started warping soldiers into the street. I glanced at my controls sheet and remembered that Borderlands 4 offered an expanded range of locomotion, so I immediately sprinted forward and leapt into a double-jump-and-hover manoeuvre to make my dynamic entrance. Upon hitting the ground, a random gubbin in the world was highlighted and dared me to press ‘V’ on my keyboard. From my wrist, a neon laser whip flicked out and nabbed the item – pulling it into my hand. I have seemingly grabbed an explosive barrel, and was now advised I could THROW this handy propane punisher with my ADS button. With perfect timing, a spindly robot enemy came trotting out from behind some cover and I made my stunning throw – entirely missing the mechanoid and watching it turn to look at me in a puzzled manner. It opened fire, and I responded by attempting to return a salvo – only to realise I had neglected to reload my gun from the earlier dog battle. However, this prompted a reload animation – and being that my gun was a Tediore weapon, I just ended up throwing the empty firearm directly into the peanut-headed android where it exploded spectacularly. Ah, yes, it’s all coming back to me now.
What followed was a street fight of self-discovery, as I looked around for more cool things to grab and throw while cycling through my standard weapons and seeing what else went boom. Eventually, the corpses had started to stack up, and a second warp-ship doover appeared to bring another wave of dorks into the fray – so I slapped my ordnance button to see what kind of fireworks I was capable of. Retrieved from my FPS pocket dimension, some kind of enormous bio-launcher was manifested into being – with 6 shots in the chamber. I pulled the trigger while staring down some basic soldier, and a girthy orb of green energy leapt forward and dissolved him. Oops, maybe the ordnance was a little TOO heavy, so I pivoted to try and find an enemy that was more deserving of this kind of firepower – to find a ‘Badass’ level robot waltzing my way. Whiffing my first bio-orb, the next 4 found their mark, and my enormous killer cannon vanished from my hands. Checking the UI, I could see a cooldown timer of only 50 seconds would separate me from my bio-blaster, which felt insignificant compared to ye olde Borderlands style, where you’d need to start pillaging random toilets for heavy ammo. I like this change.
A lot of words, a lot of numbers – but a simple premise: Kick Some Arse
The badass bot was not finished yet, given that these are the elite type enemies of Borderlands – so I needed to leverage some more player power to put him down. The timing was right to hit my next big cooldown – my character’s Action Skill. My perspective was shifted to third-person as energy blades erupted from Rafa’s arms and the game became a slash ’em up, and I set to work dismantling the robo-biped. I grossly under-estimated how much health the robot had once his shield was broken, so after a brief “I thought you were…stronger” moment, I set to dashing from enemy to enemy and positively blitzed them with laser swords. During this time, I could still double jump, so taking to the air and playing the role of a hyperactive techno-ninja felt like the best course of action. I ended up clearing the street and eventually hit the end-state of the mission, where a massive holographic head appeared in the sky and berated me for embarrassing him, and threatened to turn me to dust. Or goo. He hadn’t decided yet.
Checking my recording, this all seemed to have happened in a little under ten minutes – and it felt damn good. I felt sufficiently manipulated (complimentary) to use my ordnance key more often, with its paltry cooldown and Earth-shattering bio globules. Similarly, my active ability was also less than a minute cooldown, leaving me with a giddy feeling of how future combat encounters will go. This really is the most involved Borderlands combat has ever felt, without feeling bloated or too much like you are spinning nonsensical plates – just get stuck in and start nuking shit.
With bullets no longer flying, I was introduced to some other bit players in the story – with that signature Borderlands freeze-frame introduction – before they gifted me the key to my freedom. I was informed that a vehicle was now mine, and could be summoned at will – a big noisy hover Harley that could manifest out of midair and put a little pace under me. I was glazing over the entire exchange when suddenly it dawned on me that I still had an entire SEAMLESS world to explore – so I cut the NPC off, mid-sentence, and called my steel steed into being to roar away into the elsewhere.
A corrosive sniper rifle makes short work of bots
Hitting the open road, the NPC’s chatter changed to simple radio sound as I blasted forward. I had an objective, but I was curious what I could find just by being a menace. To my delight, the vehicle could both jump AND boost, so I rapidly navigated both through and over whatever I desired. Even a cursory glance at the map revealed that this was a proper zone of content – not just a ‘reasonably big’ patch of dirt. I zipped across water and found myself beholding a corkscrewing mountain that beckoned me to find my way up it. My space-Harley got me most of the way before a yawning chasm dared me to figure it out. Dismounting, I deployed my tried-and-true method of double jumping into a hover, before dashing at the last second and plonking onto a gantry. I was rewarded by a small cave that gave way to a hidden bandit camp, which delighted me as psycho enemies are one of my favourite Borderlands baddies. Bio-bombs and electro swords took quick care of the riff raff, leaving me with an elevated view of the Hungering Plain beneath me. Damn, this place is genuinely enormous.
After plummeting off the mountain (fall damage is not a thing in Borderlands 4) I headed to my next mission objective and found a facility crawling with military nerds and their robot buddies. The narrative muscles of Borderlands 4 started flexing, with the boss of the building happily gloating over his radio about all the terrible things he would do to me, and Rafa referring to him as a “Murder Pervert”, showing that the Borderlands dialogue we all remember is definitely present. This was a proper boss fight, and fighting him genuinely meant I was feverishly watching what big button I could push next, and monitoring ammo. There was a slight panic that this might end up like some past Borderlands boss encounters, when you are scavenging ammo and scraping by – but with a satisfying POP, his head came off within a reasonable time frame, and my objective was complete.
I summoned my road-rocket and careened out of the facility, with Andrew Reiner approaching me to ask how I was finding it – before being IMMEDIATELY interrupted by a ship crashing on the horizon, cutting himself off mid sentence (much like vehicle NPC from before) and pivoting to excitedly tell me that this was a random event that doesn’t always occur. I smashed my turbo boost and zoomed into a ravine to find the remnants of the ship, and those who would gladly fight for its wreckage. As I gleefully carved up the unfortunately outgunned idiots, I was informed that my time with this portion of the game was up. So the mystery of the ship will need to be solved another time.
Hey McFly you bojo, those boards don’t work on water. Unless you got POWER!
I was vibrating with excitement from my hands-on time with Borderlands 4. Clever mechanical changes and a huge open world had me all aflutter with the potential of online anarchy with my usual crop of gun-hunting mates – but deep within me I still had that flicker of thought towards how the narrative will develop. The wobbly weirdness of recent Borderlands games was attributed to bad writing and tonal dissonance, and while loot scrounging with your mates is always a fun time, I still want to care about these backwater planets and their downtrodden citizens. The story laid out for this new game is one about generational subjugation and newfound freedom, offering a very unique opportunity to tell a great tale – but I only got a faint whiff of what it might be like.
Faint whiff that it might have been, it did have a deliberate sense of narrative to it – so I have hope that the heading is a good one. Borderlands 3 received plenty of critical feedback that wasn’t entirely hyperbole, so everyone working on Four-derlands is well equipped to right the course.
Now Gearbox just needs to double-jump, hover and stick the landing.
Previewed on PC at a preview event hosted by Take-Two Australia
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