‘Borderlands 4’ Looks Fantastic After Listening To Fan Feedback

Borderlands 4 just moved its release date up two weeks, and whether or not that’s to escape GTA 6 or Marathon (allegedly it’s not), after a recent showcase I positively cannot wait to play.

It would seem that Gearbox has taken an immense amount of fan feedback to heart when it comes to Borderlands 4, and with that comes a game that looks extremely impressive, at least from these early previews. So, what’s changing

No Loading Times – Borderlands 4 will have an open world in the sense that you do not have to load into dozens of different zones in order to access new areas. It may not cover every space but it looks to be a lot less loading than the last three games.

New Tone – This may be one of the things I’m most excited about, as Borderlands eventually dove so deep into third grade toilet humor it was actively repellent. They’ve said specifically they are return to a “grounded” tone, and from the preview, even with a few jokes, that appears to be true.

Movement – Borderlands seems to have taken to heart the fact that it’s movement abilities have been sorely lacking for a decade now. You can now glide after jumping, double jump, dash and you even have a grappling hook. Shown off in combat, this looks amazing.

Dynamic Weather and Events – With a large new open world the idea is to put dynamic events on the map whether that’s a weapon system, public combat events or even world bosses.

Summon Vehicle Instantly – To traverse the newly giant world you can equip a hoverbike-ish thing (Destiny sparrow, perhaps) to jet around without stopping at a Catch-a-Ride or finding an old car you left somewhere.

Skins – These seem to be a lot more elaborate than we’ve seen in the past with recolorings and new heads. Full-on skins, and no word so far these are microtransactions, which Borderlands has avoided.

Part Swapping – This is a cool new addition where the more rare a gun is, the more parts it can have blending the special abilities of weapon manufacturers so you could get a Jacobs/Maliwan/Tediore combo with the perks of each.

Legendary Loot – Loot explosions are core Borderlands and yet it can go too far. Legendary loot is now going to be more rare and impactful than it’s been so far. No word on another tier of rarity (Pearlescent) but given everything else they’ve listened to, I’d be surprised.

Ordnance Slot – This is a cool idea where this puts grenades, rockets and heavy machine guns into a cooldown based slot so you don’t have to save that stuff for boss nuking, and it can be part of a normal combat flow.

Mission and Boss Reset – No more losing missions after completing them and more importantly, no more save reloading to fight bosses. There will be a simple way to reset them that doesn’t involve any shenanigans this time.

So, does anything actually look bad from this preview? I’d say the UI, as it was pretty ugly and confusing and I think it could use some work, especially the weapon and gear page, less so the skill tree page. Months until launch so if there’s enough feedback, maybe it can be altered. But overall, I am so excited for this game.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.