I’ve played the opening hours of Borderlands countless times. When Gearbox’s looter shooter first came out in 2009, everyone I knew was looking for a co-op partner. I was happy to be a pal’s Player 2 any time I was asked, even if it meant replaying the same sequences over and over. Why? Because each new playthrough was a chance to try a new Vault Hunter, a decision that radically changed my playthrough.
That’s always been part of the series’ long-term appeal, but the team behind Borderlands 4 is looking to give players even more reason to start from scratch. The latest installment, set to launch on Sept. 12, isn’t just introducing four new Vault Hunters. It’s also getting a completely revamped skill system that lets players build those characters out in countless ways. In an interview with Polygon about Borderlands 4’s latest hero, Amon the Forge Knight, lead character designer Nick Thurston paints a picture of a shooter that’s leaning more than ever into its action RPG side.
Getting into that change starts with Amon, Borderlands 4’s bearded beefcake. He may look like your typical brute that loves to smash things, but there’s a twist: Amon uses cybernetic drones to forge weapons that he can use in battle. Thurston says that early drafts of the character included a nanobot user and a psuedo-Iron Man (an idea that was scrapped for coming too close to stealing the Siren’s magical thunder). Instead, the team settled on a “sci-fi Viking” that could manifest weapons through technology, pairing with Borderlands 4’s other techy new characters.
“If Harlowe is the crypto bro in the high-tech world, we wanted someone from the N64 era that’s very analogue,” Thurston tells Polygon.
Amon plays against archetype in some ways. Looking at him, you might expect a lumbering oaf who only knows how to break things. Instead, he’s a technologically capable character with some surprising spiritual depth. That design philosophy comes from what Thurston calls the “melting pot of ideas” that ultimately defines the series.
“The idea of a brute is very satisfying,” Thurston says. “It’s the big dumb brute who goes up and smashes people. It’s the Barbarian from Dungeons & Dragons. It’s also very one-note, and if Borderlands is anything, it isn’t one-note. It’s multi-note constantly. So for Amon, he has that kernel of rage inside of him that fuels him from his past of being a cult survivor … But also he came from this cult, so they have their beliefs and that has shaped him from a very young age to have a warrior/poet persona. Almost citing scripture and stuff. Ultimately, he’s a gentle giant.”
We also have more passives than all the previous Borderlands combined.
That multifaceted philosophy isn’t just limited to the way that Gearbox Software thinks about character backstories; it’s baked into its approach to gameplay systems, too. Borderlands 4 is set to feature the series’ most robust skill tree system to date, one that’s going to give players an overwhelming amount of options compared to previous games.
“The Augment and the Capstone system that we have forces you to make a choice and all of them drastically change the ability that each player has,” Thurston says. “That alone would create more build diversity than we’ve ever had. But then we also have more passives than all the previous Borderlands combined. I think Amon alone has 87 passives, and most Vault Hunters have about 80.”
In the case of Amon, players can opt to chase the Onslaught path of his tree. Those powers put an emphasis on close-ranged meleeing, health regeneration, and more tricks that let him stay alive in the thick of it. Scourge is more about ordinance damage, creating a path for players who like grenades and heavy weapons. Crucible is about long-ranged attacks that have area of effect powers. There’s even sub-paths within those options, like a “pet build” that treats drones like summons. And all of that is before considering how passives and guns synergize with those core skills.
As Thurston breaks it all down, I have a moment where I’m no longer thinking of Borderlands 4 as a first-person shooter; I’m seeing the RPG at its core instead. Borderlands has always technically been an action RPG, what with its stat-heavy guns, but the latest entry evolves that further. It’s almost like Thurston is describing what it’s like to craft a Dungeons & Dragons character over time, adding onto the skill sheet with proficiencies and spells at each level. It’s not an accident. Thurston is a big role-playing gamer himself and cites Baldur’s Gate 3 and Path of Exile as influences on his thinking here.
“I’m a min-maxer,” Thurston says. “When I play an action RPG, I want to hit the end game and be doing billions of damage, but I want to do it in the way I want to do. In a lot of cases, there have been times where previous characters in our franchise have been very focused on one thing. But it was always really important to me that if you have this really cool character, you’re going to want to use him in a bunch of different ways.”
That’s the RPG sweet spot Borderlands 4 is trying to hit. The goal is to create a version of the shooter with a bigger emphasis on personalized character building. It’s not the kind of game where you’ll naturally unlock every skill tree node a character can access by the end of the game. Thurston says that players will have to make hard choices along the way in order to specialize their build. He hopes that the end result of that is a game that feels different every time, even when playing with the same character composition.
“For me, whenever I’m playing an RPG and my friend picks a class, I don’t want to pick the same class. It’s like you’re already doing this function, why do I need to do it?” Thurston says “In previous Borderlands titles, you could be like ‘If you’re going to be Zero and I’m going to be Zero then we’re both going to do the same thing.’ Maybe that’s fine and fun for you, but I really want to be like, we have four Amons in this group and every single one of them has a different build.”
It’s daunting to think of just how permutations there could be in even one character, but it’s great news for anyone who has ever had to play the opening of a Borderlands game half a dozen times with noncommittal friends. Trust me. I would know.
