The vibes are good around Borderlands 4. That may sound like a pretty vague statement, but I’ve been doing this long enough to hold my finger to the wind and know which way things are moving. And in the case of Borderlands 4, all signs point to a successful launch in September, even in the wake of many that may have become disinterested in the series after its last installment.
I’ve always been a huge Borderlands fan, the genesis of the looter shooter genre that Destiny eventually took and ran with (granted, Borderlands originally took a lot from Diablo and the like). Borderlands has avoided being a live service, and that still seems true for 4. But it also has learned significant lessons from its last installment, Borderlands 3, which attracted a lot of criticism despite big sales and made fans concerned for the future of the franchise.
Now? Those fears are mostly gone. Almost entirely gone, for me especially.
I have more or less not seen anything bad released for the promotion for this game. Not trailers, not interviews and now not an elaborate dump of first-impression previews and active streams of the game from creators. I know marketing is obviously meant to make games look good, but Borderlands 4 looks very good.
There are a number of ways the game looks to have improved itself, but I’m most excited about three of them in particular:
The Tone, thank god, The Tone – Borderlands 2 started this in some capacity, but Borderlands 3 went way off the deep end when it came to pop culture references (all of which are now significantly dated) and “edgy” humor like the main villains being livestreamers. Even if the game was fun, the story was…rough in multiple ways.
Now? Just watch any of the trailers, especially this latest one, where the game will not forgo humor entirely, of course, but it’s a lot more focused on actually menacing villains over Butt Stallions and the like. The writing everyone hated appears, at least, to have taken a hiatus, direct feedback producing clear results, something the game’s writers have talked about explicitly.
Mobility – For being a game entirely focused on guns, abilities and combat, Borderlands has never exactly been the best-feeling shooter on the market. It appears Borderlands 4 has realized that’s a missing component of most combat powers outside of some specific class abilities and has changed with alterations like a grappling hook everyone has access to, and a Warlock-like hover drift moving from locations. This may not be the highest-profile thing discussed about the game, but I think it’s going to be key once everyone gets their hands on gunplay.
Open World – I don’t know how many hours I’ve spent looking at loading screens between the 20+ zones of a given Borderlands game, but that seems to be getting majorly reduced or eliminated with the inclusion of an open world this time around. I know for a time, switching to an open world seemed like an Ubisoft-style gimmick, but I genuinely believe Borderlands 4 will benefit from this. Early previews have also suggested this is a “dense” world that won’t have just endless sprawling spaces, but rather lots of things to find and do across the entire map in large quantities.
I’m excited. I can’t think of anything else coming out in the latter half of the year that I am personally looking forward to more. While I was always going to be excited for a new Borderlands, the previews for 4 have just been so reassuring they got it right this time. I hope that’s the case.
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