Gearbox talks Borderlands 4: Exploration, fixing the meme humor, and entering the series’ ‘Simpsons Era’

As a critical and commercial success, few mainstream franchises evoke as polarising a reaction as Borderlands.

While most can agree that the series has always been adept at high-quality shooting and games packed with things to do, the Borderlands style of humor has become something so divisive that when Borderlands 4’s narrative director explicitly said that the series was moving away from “meme-style humor,” it was cause for celebration. 

For it’s easy to forget that the series didn’t start off poisoned by internet brain rot. Borderlands, while having some zany humor and an at-times crude tone, was a revolutionary breath of fresh air when it debuted in 2009.

The game, which underwent a late-in-life art style change to the instantly recognisable cell-shaded style still used by the franchise, was a smash hit. Popular with fans and critically well-received, the concept of a first-person shooter RPG where you could find billions of different potential weapons was a novel one.

Watch our exclusive Borderlands 4 gameplay video…

But since then, over 15 years of looter shooters have come and gone, and in Gearbox‘s last outing, Borderlands 3, it felt like some elements of the game hadn’t moved on enough from that first journey in Pandora. Borderlands 4 looks to change that.

“When we were working on Borderlands 3, one of our big goals was to improve the gunplay,” said Chris Brock, the executive producer of Borderlands 4. Brock, a Gearbox veteran who has worked on the series for its duration, tells us that with Borderlands 4, Gearbox focused on exploration.

“We thought that we did a good job. And then going from Borderlands 3 to Borderlands 4, we said, okay, if we could do the same thing for exploration that we just did for guns, we’re really on to something. That’s a big improvement. And so we came in it from that angle first, and then I was like, okay, we’ll now build a world that takes advantage of all those things.”

During our two-hour period playing Borderlands 4, this focus on exploration is clear. The world is much larger, and no longer separated into small zones gated off by loading screens. There are more spontaneous fights, and in-world events as you travel from mission to mission, and there are far more points of interest.

We didn’t think Borderlands had much to improve in the shooting department, so this change in direction to a more open, explorable world, rather than a background you run past as you’re going from mission to mission, is a big improvement. Those more curated experiences are still in the game, like dungeons or the interiors of buildings, but there’s a much greater incentive to explore the world now.

The game is a narrative continuation from Borderlands 3, though Gearbox is keen to emphasise that there’s no need for players to be intimately familiar with legacy characters or old games.

“There are more spontaneous fights, and in-world events as you travel from mission to mission, and there are far more points of interest.”

Taylor Clark, Borderlands 4’s lead writer, tells us, “Narratively, it’s both a fresh start and a continuation. It’s a new planet that is very different from Pandora, with a very different kind of villain than we’ve had before. So naturally, it will feel fresh and new and exciting, but Borderlands 3 ended with Lilith warping away Elpis, so we’re chasing that narrative thread.

“You don’t need to have played all the old games to understand it, but you have something that rewards people who are coming from Borderlands 3 and also people who want to jump in, with no experience.”

The elephant in the room is the question of what style of comedy Borderlands 4 will use. Clark begins to laugh when we bring up the controversial meme-style humor, and the visceral reaction it evokes from a section of the audience.

“Of course, we were aware of the feedback that Borderlands 3 got, and we took all the valid criticism on board. We’re creating an entirely new world, and we want to have a tone that fits the new planet we’re on. Pandora was like the Wild West, this new planet is a totalitarian world, so having everybody making jokes every minute wouldn’t feel totally right.”

In both humor and mission design, Gearbox is keen to keep things fresh. However, for a franchise that has had at least six games in the last 15 years, it can be challenging to come up with new ideas. Taylor Clark says the team is in its “Simpsons Era,” referring to the idea that when the team comes up with a new take on something in Borderlands 4, there’s a decent chance Gearbox has done it before.

“We’re in the writers’ room, and somebody will have an idea on how to finish a mission, and someone will be like, ‘We did that in Borderlands’,” he says. “We’re always trying not to repeat ourselves; that’s why our villains are so different. We’re always trying to keep it fresh.”

“We’re in the writers’ room, and somebody will have an idea on how to finish a mission, and someone will be like, ‘We did that in Borderlands'”

Chris Brock tells us that developing a new Borderlands game is always a balancing act. “How much of it should be all new? How much should be the same since that’s why people like your game?”

When Borderlands debuted, the looter shooter genre didn’t exist. While loot games are decades old, Borderlands preceded the more than a decade of every major company throwing its hat into the looter shooter ring, with mixed results. While some franchises endured like the oft-troubled Destiny, far more failed to gain traction with a fanbase that’s quick to move on from game to game.

“We play all of them, and we understand what other people are doing,” says Brock. “We might see something that we thought was cool, but we always want to ‘Borderlandsify’ it.”

One thing they won’t adapt from other games in the genre is character creation. “We think we make great characters, and we want these characters to have character. It’s a cool thing to do, but it’s not one of our values, but it’s not what we do,” he adds.

So far, Borderlands 4 is a lot of fun to play, but so were all of the other games in the series. It feels like this latest entry needs to be more than that. While we didn’t get a great sense of the characters or how they’ll fare across a 30+ hour campaign, the grating humor has certainly been toned down.

Borderlands 4 feels like a sequel to Borderlands 2, rather than going further in the direction of 3, and that’s an exciting prospect for us.

However, for players new to the series, it feels like it could serve just as well as a reboot. Sure, you’ll miss a reference here, and you might not know why the bobbleheads scattered around the game depict an old Russian man, but do you need to?

“I don’t think it was a conscious decision to make this game a jumping-in point for players,” says Brock. “I just have faith. I’ve been doing this a long time now, and I have faith that if we make a cool game, that we think is fun, we think provides value, then the new players will be there.

“We also have a lot of staunch, long-time fans. I’ve had so many people say that they remember buying the first game in 2009, and now it’s something that they’re playing with their kids, it’s crazy.”

What has remained consistent from 2009 is that Gearbox’s gunplay is excellent. After Borderlands 3, virtually everything else is up for discussion, especially for fans who’ve left the series. Still, from what we’ve seen so far, Borderlands 4 seems to know exactly what turned people away and is an excellent argument for getting them back.