Sometimes it feels like the entire Borderlands marketing strategy for the last 16 years has just been a guy pointing at a big sign that says “THE NUMBERS ARE BIGGER”. So it is that in the run up to Borderlands 4, we must receive and digest the claim that it contains 30 billion guns, for example.
My question is always: what do the big numbers actually mean for players? Do they really enhance your experience of the game? I like looting and watching stats go up as much as anyone, but the only time playing a Borderlands game where I’ve really felt the impact of such an enormous pool of items is when I’m having to stop every 10 minutes to clear all the trash guns out of my inventory.
So I’m a little skeptical to hear that the same spirit of inflation even applies to skill trees this time around. Speaking in an interview with Polygon, lead character designer Nick Thurston says that Borderlands 4 has “more passives than all the previous Borderlands combined”, with each hero having around 80.
The goal is maximum build diversity. “It was always really important to me that if you have this really cool character, you’re going to want to use him in a bunch of different ways,” says Thurston. “I really want to be like, we have four Amons in this group and every single one of them has a different build.”
More options for character build tinkering is a welcome feature in theory, but to be exciting, skill choices need to feel impactful. Previous Borderlands have always been a bit 50/50 on that—a split between skills that genuinely change your playstyle in interesting ways, and ones that just add a small percentage bonus to something that’s barely perceptible until, at best, it becomes mildly relevant to your final endgame build.
It’s hard to see double the skill options helping there. Can they really all be interesting choices? Or is this just going to be another menu screen to fuss over when you’d rather be making numbers fly out of people’s heads?
Maybe I’m too cynical—Borderlands 4 certainly looks like an improvement over the controversial 3rd game in all sorts of ways, and it’s possible that in play these enlarged numbers will make a real difference.
But I’m finding it increasingly hard to shake the worry that this sequel is just going to be more of the same old formula, just with all the dials turned up even further. After 16 years of playing these games, what I’m craving isn’t double the passive perks or 29 billion more guns than last time—it’s some meaningful changes to the action.
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