Gearbox and 2K is set to release Borderlands 4 in a mere two weeks, the latest entry in their looter-shooter franchise. And for the last month or so, the studio has slowly peeled back the curtain on the game’s four playable Vault Hunters through gameplay breakdowns and short narrative videos.
Borderlands 4 takes place on a brand new planet called Kairos, where the Vault Hunters—Siren Vex, Exo-Soldier Rafa, Forgeknight Amon, and Gravitar Harlowe—join up with the world’s resistance fighters to bring down its oppressive ruler, the Timekeeper. The Vault Hunters’ individual character shorts are a good tease for what players can expect from their abilities, and give clues to where these characters are coming from at the start of the game.
In Vex’s short, she’s a retail worker who winds up with her Siren powers and accidentally tests them out on her unsuspecting customers. Rafa’s video, meanwhile, establishes that he’s at the mercy of a tech corporation’s experimental super-soldier program and on the run after his commanding officer turns on him.
The shorts themselves aren’t breaking new ground, but they are charming and give the Vault Hunters more of a real feel than previous entries. It helps that each video ends with the characters discussing the subject’s “origin story” around a campfire, amping up the camaraderie.
In previous games, the Vault Hunters’ backstories were revealed through in-game audio logs; Borderlands 3 marked the first time Gearbox used shorts as part of its marketing strategy for the game. Now, the videos seem to also be trying to establish a tone. The series’ use of humor has always been divisive, but Borderlands 3 felt a bit much, something BL4’s writers nodded to in a recent interview with IGN. Narrative director Sam Winkler acknowledged that game could feel like a parody in its “worst hours,” and the team seems to have taken a more grounded approach here.
“Kairos is a totalitarian planet ruled over by this dictatorial figure,” lead writer Taylor Clark told IGN. “In this context of global oppression, the Whac-A-Mole joke style didn’t make as much sense. [We had] to make sure the tone fit the stakes of the world, and that the humor was rising organically out of situations and character moments rather than the wild west feel of the first games.”
That grounded feel will persist through the game’s post-launch DLC, while also exploring different tones and genres, as Gearbox has done with previous entries. Winkler, Clark, and narrative managing director Lin Joyce were mum on what that’ll look like, mostly because the DLC is still in development and they don’t fully know yet. Until then, we’ll see if Borderlands 4 sticks the humorous landing when it releases September 12 for PC, Xbox Series X|S, and PlayStation 5.