We finally got a good look of Borderlands 4 in yesterday’s State Of Play Deep Dive showcase, with more than 15 minutes worth of gameplay and information drops.
And it looks like Borderlands 4 is making giving a decent shake-up to the formula of the game series that popularised the looter shooter.
Borderlands 4 looks a lot bigger and that’s due to the showcase showing off one of the four “seamless zones” the new locale of Kairos has to offer. Don’t call it an open world, but when you have a big map split into regions, “activities” you can discover and changing weather plus world events, it sort of is. A major change as the game series has stuck to making large zones separated with loading screens for its entire run until now.
But tonally it’s also a lot restrained. Borderlands as a series has caught flak for its supposedly funny tone that ends up cringe to the modern audience. And here in the showcase, it’s a lot more buttoned up, there’s nothing cringe in the snippet of a story mission we see here. But it also feels a little sterile.
Of course, it’s too early to judge, but it doesn’t help that the redesigned UI also looks a bit generic. It now incorporates a mouse cursor and a horizontal flow instead of charming vertical menu that’s supposed to be the projection of your selected Vault Hunter opening up the menus in-world. At least new players who may have played other games will find the menus familiar to navigate.
The gameplay shows off two of the playable Vault Hunters: Vex the Siren and Rafa the Exo-Soldier.
That being said, the traversal mechanics should be fun. There’s double jumps into a glide, wall-climbing, dodges/dashes, grappling hook points to swing and more. Add the ability to slide and shoot and kick exploding barrels and there should be more fun to be had during combat.
Here’s a list of notes of changes and/or additions to Borderlands 4:
- Kairos is a hidden planet controlled by The Order led by The Timekeeper. Events of Borderlands 3 (involving the moon) has uncovered the planet, and oppressed citizens are fighting back. Vault Hunters are in support of the new “Crimson Resistance”
- Returning characters include Lilith, Moxxi, Claptrap (“bummer…”) and as per series tradition, the Vault Hunters from the previous game. Borderlands 3’s Zane and Amara is shown
- Cross-play on all platforms
- New lobby system that should make it easier to join a friend’s lobby
- Two-player split-screen
- Ability to set campaign difficulty independent of party (it’s okay to play with a party of mismatched levels they can scale accordingly)
- Always Instanced loot in multiplayer (no loot ninja-ing)
- Four zones “that you can seamlessly explore with next to no loading times”
- Dynamic weather and events
- “Activities”, short gameplay experiences, dotted around Kairos. No need to start a mission to find and start these
- Fast travel around the map. Players can fast travel directly to another player
- Customisable Digirunner, summon vehicle at any time (no need to catch a ride anymore)
- New traversal moves: double jump, glide, wall climb, grappling hook swing
- New menu UI with mouse cursor
- Three new manufacturers shown:
- Order: charge-to-release blasts
- Ripper: Full-auto
- Daedalus: “reliable, easy-to-use”, can use multiple ammo types
- Five returning manufacturers:
- Jakobs – high crits
- Maliwan – elemental
- Vladof – low accuracy but faster fire rate
- Tediore – toss to reload (and have it explode)
- Torgue – “EXPLOSIONS”
- Licensed parts: weapon part of a different manufacturer can spawn on a gun of a different manufacturer. More licensed parts can spawn on higher rarity guns
- Manufacturer Hyperion appear as a part, but don’t produce guns in this game
- Legendary loot drop more rarely (feedback from players who find Borderlands 3’s drops too generous undermining the loot chase experience)
- Gear slot changes
- Enhancements replaces artifacts: confers bonuses to manufacturer’s gun, gear and licensed parts instead of flat bonus
- Ordnance replaces grenade slot: grenades and heavy weapons share a slot, now work on a cooldown and don’t take up a gun slot
- Rep Kit allows for healing or adding buffs
- Mission and boss replays available via Moxxi’s Big Encore Machine for faster loot farming
Borderlands 4 is launching on September 12, eleven days earlier than the first revealed release date, on PS5, PC (Steam, Epic Games Store) and Xbox Series X|S. It will also launch Nintendo Switch 2 later this year.