Borderlands 4 has some clear runway now that Grand Theft Auto VI is coming next year instead of this year.
The action role-playing first-person shooter looter game (now priced at $70 instead of the previously floated $80) is coming on September 12 on the Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and the Windows PC.
I visited 2K’s Hangar 13 studio in Novato, California, and played a couple of hours of Borderlands 4. I have been writing up my impressions this week. I also interviewed the creative director of the game, Graeme Timmins, about what his goals were for the game and the kind of characters we’ll counter.
Like with GTA VI, there is a lot of pentup demand for this game. Gearbox’s Borderlands 3 came out six years ago in 2019. And Borderlands 4 was in the works even before that title debuted. Randy Pitchford, CEO of Gearbox, said the fourth title was the “most open and free game in the franchise so far.
It takes place on a planet named Kairos, and players assume the role of a Vault Hunter who must lead resistance against a dictator named the Timekeeper and his army of synthetic followers.
Kairos has four distinct, seamlessly connected regions to explore: the rolling hills of the Fadefields, the frigid peaks of Terminus Range, the shattered lands of Carcadia Burn, and finally the Dominion, the Timekeeper’s impenetrable fortress city.
The game has a new planet and an all-new cast which has nothing to do with last year’s forgettable Borderlands movie. I found the Vault to be particularly difficult, while the Fadefields were more open and relaxing.
There’s a lot of at stake in this title, as Take-Two acquired Gearbox in March 2024 for $460 million. That’s a lot of cheddar, though it’s much less than the up to $1.3 billion that previous owner Embracer paid for it. I enjoyed playing both the single-player game, the time in the Fadefields section of the game and the very difficult (at least from my perspective) section of the game called The Vault.
These new open world and competitive sections of the game may help gamers see the value of the $70 price, as the suggestion by Pitchford that it might be an $80 game didn’t go over so well.
Here’s an edited transcript of our interview.
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