Borderlands 4's Seamless World And Movement Mechanics Will "Make It Hard For Players To Go Back"

A new trailer for Borderlands 4 debuted during The Game Awards, providing our first good look at the upcoming looter-shooter and hinting at just how big its world--which is seamless--is going to be. The trailer is also a stark contrast to the reveal for Borderlands 3, which featured repeated shots of familiar faces and locations from the franchise. The Borderlands 4 trailer, in comparison, has very little familiarity--going solely off the two trailers, it seems like Borderlands 4 is a cleaner break and more approachable on-ramp into the franchise than Borderlands 3 was.

Still, it's clear that Borderlands 4 is building off the conclusion of Borderlands 3, with a prominent shot of the new Ripper Queen big baddie staring up at a moon falling toward the planet. That moon is Elpis, the same moon that Lilith teleported away at the end of Borderlands 3 (and the setting of Pre-Sequel). The trailer features a ton of shots of the horizon line, which actually tease Borderlands 4's seamless world.

"With Borderlands 3, with the idea of going to different planets, it was more compartmentalized," Gearbox Software CEO Randy Pitchford told me. "It felt a little less open and free. Borderlands 4 is the most open and free ever [for the franchise]." I saw the trailer for Borderlands 4 a week before The Game Awards and got a chance to then speak with both Pitchford and creative director Graeme Timmins, both of whom had a lot to say about the new game.

"Now, when you look at [this] scene [in the trailer], you can see these characters looking out at a vista," Pitchford said. "In every video game you've ever played that's a backdrop, right? In Borderlands 4, everything you're seeing is playable space that you can get to and reach without a load time."

I was quick to joke that the part of the trailer we paused on included the moon, so even if it was cool that we could reach the far-off mountain and tower in the shot, saying we could go anywhere in the shot without a loading screen seemed like an exaggeration they should probably soften in future marketing. All Pitchford had to say was, "Everything in the scene, Jordan. Everything in the scene." So I stand corrected!

Borderlands 4 is able to pull off feats that the rest of the franchise never has been able to, as it's the first mainline game in the series to be made for Xbox Series X|S and PS5. Part of that is making the world seamless, which isn't a huge deal in the grand scheme of things for video games, but it is unheard of for a Borderlands game.

"All these scenes, every scene, everything is explorable and reachable," Pitchford said. "So I will say, Jordan, one of the challenges with the term 'open world' is other games have done different things with that and there's things that we're doing that none of them have done. But there are things that we, specifically, don't do because we are Borderlands. And we care so deeply about combat dynamics and care so deeply about that moment-to-moment feeling. We craft this [world]. Everything that unfolds has [purpose]. You can feel the heart of the designer behind it. You can tell, people that care a lot made this shit. They're putting this here for [the player]. This isn't all just a systemic, algorithmically filled world. So be careful when you're talking about this. I wouldn't say 'open world' because that [term] will come with baggage. That isn't what we are. But it is seamless, and it is expansive, and it is larger than anything we've ever done, and it is filled like nothing we've ever done."

Any comparison I make should be taken with a grain of salt because I still haven't actually played the game, but the way Pitchford was talking about Borderlands 4's world reminded me of 2018's God of War. I wouldn't call that game an open world, but it is a seamless world. I imagine Borderlands 4 is designed in a similar fashion.

To get around that world, Borderlands 4 is adding new vehicles and movement mechanics--you can even see one of them quite prominently in the trailer: a grappling hook. "It might get a fancier name than grapple--we like to have our own words for everything, but we'll call it grapple for now--but the idea is we want to give players the most seamless traversal mechanics that let them explore the world and execute combat how they want to do that," Timmins told me.

Borderlands 3's movement tech was a huge jump from Borderlands 2, and this next game is set to continue that trend. "From [Borderlands] 2 to 3, we did really push on our gunplay and we added a mantle and we added a slide," Timmins said. "We brought in butt-stomp from Pre-Sequel. And this time around, we're adding a few more that are just as seamlessly connected. I'll sometimes bring up the [Borderlands 3] editor to reference something and I'll go try to do something [that I can in Borderlands 4] that I can't do [in Borderlands 3]. I'm like, 'Damn.' That's how I know that we're doing it right. It's just like people who play [Borderlands 3] and then go try to play [Borderlands 2], and they're like, 'Man, I miss the mantle.' We've leveled it up again where it's going to be pretty hard for players to go back to just [Borderlands 3] and not have some of these new tools and abilities that we're giving players pretty much right out of the gate."

Gearbox has been working on Borderlands 4 for quite a while, building off Borderlands 3's improvements from the start. "From a timeline perspective, we started working on Borderlands 4 before we shipped Borderlands 3," Pitchford said. "So some of the people who were working on Borderlands 3 joined the Tiny Tina's Wonderlands team after Borderlands 3 shipped and worked on Tiny Tina's Wonderlands. And after Tiny Tina's Wonderlands, a lot of the people working on that joined the Borderlands 4 team."

The implication of that statement would be that Gearbox is already working on whatever comes after Borderlands 4, and probably has been for a while. Pitchford agreed with that thinking but did not officially confirm whether Gearbox is working on another project at this time.

Borderlands 4 is scheduled to launch for Xbox Series X|S, PS5, and PC in 2025.

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