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The first Borderlands was a real innovation—probably more than it gets credit for. It carved out a new genre that’s gone on to be one of the most influential in the industry. After that, Borderlands 2 cleverly refined and expanded on the core formula, demonstrating quite how much of our time all that looting and shooting could suck up with a bigger world to do it in.
And then after that… well, it’s been a lot of wheel-spinning, hasn’t it? It’s depressingly hard to remember the last time Borderlands had a really fresh new idea.
Watching the substantial new gameplay reveal for Borderlands 4, it certainly doesn’t feel like we’re 13 years on from Borderlands 2. It doesn’t even look bad, necessarily—I can admit to feeling the looter-shooter itch creeping up on me as I see glowing loot flying out of enemies. There’s just a complete lack of innovation.
The big headline features, shown off for the game’s first major reveal? For the most part it’s very basic quality-of-life updates, like improved lobbies, instanced loot, or being able to replay a boss fight. All ideas that have been commonplace in other games for years now. Is that all Gearbox has to show for six years of work?
There’s a handful of new movement abilities—including a jetpack glide and a grappling hook—but it’s all stuff we’ve seen before in other games, and none of it seems to have a major impact. During the combat sequences in the reveal, the player is jumping and sliding all over the place, but it’s pretty clear to see that that isn’t necessary—fights are still static, with slow-moving, bullet sponge enemies and flat combat environments.
Watching a character grapple-swing from one side of a small loading dock to the other when it seems like they could easily have just sprinted the distance, while enemies look on blankly… it’s not exactly selling the idea of more dynamic combat.
Meanwhile, we’re on a completely new planet that looks exactly like Pandora, fighting enemies that look just like enemies we’ve fought before (does every world have its own horde of mask-wearing bandits and infestation of flying bat monsters?), still hunting for vault keys, and apparently still doing missions where we have to track down Lilith for some reason or other.
A seamless open world map is appealing, but again the demo seems to have nothing cool to show in that space. As the footage takes us across icy plains exactly like the beginning of Borderlands 2, the developers talk breathlessly about such exciting features as… pressing a button in a bunker to activate fast travel, and groups of enemies mindlessly patrolling the map.
We’re promised a great new story, but what we’re shown is just the same old sprinting and shooting while you ignore snippets of forgettable NPC dialogue. The big new change this time? “For our longtime Borderlands fans, we’re throwing back to our more grounded tone,” according to Pitchford. Given the still fantastical setting and goofy foes, that seems to just be code for ‘less instantly outdated meme references’, which is certainly welcome but hardly a significant shift in style.
It all seems like a perfectly fine set of tweaks and improvements to the Borderlands formula, but they’re just not really adding up to anything. This is the point in the preview cycle where the developer has to really sell the biggest, coolest things about their game. When we’re instead being invited to get hyped for things like equipable medpacks and slightly different skill trees, it’s concerning.
I’m sure there’ll be some nostalgic fun to be had here, but I can’t help but be disappointed seeing the developer that invented the genre seemingly failing to push it forward. If you’re a Borderlands fan, you’ve likely already spent 100s of hours with the series—I know I have. Another 100 of the same again but a bit shinier and more convenient just isn’t enticing, and it’s not a good foundation for the inevitable spin-offs and expansions we’ll be getting over the years waiting for the next mainline Borderlands.
Borderlands 3 already felt like diminishing returns for the series, and with the dreadful movie still fresh in people’s minds, it feels like time for a revitalising release. If Borderlands 4 is that, then Gearbox really needs to show us before September. Right now what we’re seeing is just more of the same but with less annoying jokes. Is that really enough to get people excited in 2025?
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