I made a critical error in Borderlands 4 before my adventure even started. Rather than doing extensive research on the looter shooter’s new Vault Hunters to figure out the best starting class for me, I decided to let vibes guide my hand. I landed on Harlowe after some casual consideration, as I was drawn to the combat scientist’s high-tech tools. That decision paid off once I started crafting a powerful build out of her skill tree, but there was an unfortunate trade-off: I’d have to spend dozens of hours with the hammiest comedian on the planet.
That’s part of the gift and the curse of Gearbox’s extravagant new shooter. It amplifies the series’ love of excess in a full-on open-world game where every dial is cranked to the max. If you love the shooting, unique loot, or crisp sound design that have long defined Borderlands, you’ll get all of those qualities at their peak. But if there’s anything that’s ever bugged you about the series — like, say, bad one-liners served with the frequency of McDonald’s hamburgers at a drive-thru window — you’ll find that your pet peeves have become an invasive species.
I suppose it wouldn’t be Borderlands if it wasn’t a lot, now would it?
Set on the planet of Kairos, new to the series, Borderlands 4 follows a crew of Vault Hunters (also new to the series) who find themselves at war with a big bad known as The Timekeeper. The tyrannical menace has taken control of Kairos with the help of a few loyal coconspirators that rule over three of the planet’s biomes while The Timekeeper hides in Dominion City. The conflict lights the fuse for a revolution, as the Vault Hunters must seek out allies around the planet and aim to take back each region one body at a time.
Like everything in Borderlands 4, the story is grand enough to fill a continent-spanning adventure — but that doesn’t mean that it’s substantial. Rather than using its political intrigue to fuel a meaningful story about resistance in the face of dictatorship, Borderlands 4 is a superhero movie filled with cartoon punching bags who leave about as much of an impact as Ronan the Accuser in Guardians of the Galaxy. Gearbox has made a point to paint the story as being more “grounded” than the notorious meme-fest that was Borderlands 3, but that mostly just amounts to having more long-winded quest-givers. The result is a white-noise conflict that’s vague enough with its hot-button political terminology to either let you hang your real-world frustrations on it or completely tune it out and argue that it’s all sci-fi escapism.
Though that saga is more serious, Borderlands 4 doesn’t ditch its signature humor to achieve it. The constant pop culture references and memes are largely gone, but characters still toss out punchlines with the frequency of a Leslie Nielsen comedy — and the hit rate is unbelievably low. In trying to steer the series away from self-parody, Gearbox has misdiagnosed its writing weaknesses. The problem has never been memes; it’s hackiness.
The humor now has to shoulder the burden of filling silence in an open-world.
Harlow, for instance, is constantly punctuating scenes with “Um, THAT sounds wrong!” gags. I’d have to grit my teeth as recurring barks like “From rip to RIP!” and “Guess all Rippers do bathe in garbage juice!” shot out of my Vault Hunter’s mouth with the overconfidence of a stand-up comedian at an open-mic night. Most of the best jokes are design-based, like a Pokémon parody side-mission that has me catching sentient guns and fighting a dynamic duo that comes prepared for trouble. But the actual lines rarely land.
Of course, none of this is new for Borderlands. What is new, though, is that the humor now has to shoulder the burden of filling silence in an open-world. That’s where the scale of the project teeters into tedium. Hammy one-liners crop up more often, whether I’m clearing out a camp or simply riding my hover bike across a field. Quest design similarly suffers from the increase in scope. The more involved side missions, for instance, tend to drag on for 45 minutes and send me bouncing between a minimum of six locations across the world each time. Since fast traveling is restricted to a small handful of silos and safehouses, I spend a lot of time driving 800m to clear out an enemy base, talking to an NPC, and then shuttling off to another marker. Even with lots of containers to crack open everywhere you turn, there’s a lot of filler in what’s by far the longest Borderlands game to date. Part of that runtime also comes from a glacial leveling pace, which forces you into long grinding sessions as you take down those overstuffed side missions that never feel like they reward enough XP given the time commitment.
None of that particularly plays to the strengths of a series that made its name on comparatively compact missions that could neatly fit into a relaxed multiplayer session. But the longer I played in that sandbox, the more I saw a connection to a series that Borderlands once inspired: Destiny. (The faction-uniting story even sounds like something you’d see in Bungie’s looter shooter.) There are bounty boards that give me repeatable missions to chase, like killing a certain number of enemies. There are pop-up boss fights in the world that function like public events. There’s a weekly activity reset. You ride a mount around that is, functionally, a Sparrow. It’s enough to make you wonder if Gearbox really had its heart set on making an MMO here.
That approach works in the context where it likely matters most. The density of content is custom-tailored for co-op play, as friends can casually cruise from one mob to the next rather than committing to long story missions. Rewards lie in every corner of the world, whether you’re clearing out a Ripper (a new faction of psychotic weirdos) site in the grasslands, capturing silos in the desert, or just grinding out long-tail challenges. It also makes for a great endgame grind that gives players plenty of rare loot to chase down and tough bosses to slay. Like all games of this nature, it’s best enjoyed while casually talking over the gunfire with friends.
When you come at Borderlands 4 from that perspective, the sequel’s maximalism becomes a much better selling point. Like a repotted plant reaching new size potential in a larger home, the action RPG systems have grown to meet the sprawling world. There are now significantly more ways to craft unique playstyles out of one Vault Hunter thanks to deeper skill trees. For my Harlowe playthrough, I focused on perks that would raise my overshield capacity and give me more damage the higher that number was. I eventually paired that with a mod to my disc ball-like Flux Generator ability, reducing the damage I took per enemy entangled — another skill that I buffed up. As long as I kept my shields up, I was a wrecking machine.
Each Vault Hunter is distinct enough from one another that all of them are blank canvases begging to be filled in like that. Amon is the highlight among the quartet, as he can toss fire and ice axes at enemies right from the jump. From there, he can be buffed up into a tank or a melee-heavy critical hit machine that can burn and weaken enemies. Possibilities like that will no doubt leave you jealous when you team up with your friends and see what they’ve been cooking. In my first co-op session, I watched in awe as my colleague’s Vex ran circles around enemy mobs while dropping a small army of clones. Seeing that ability interact with my flashy Flux Generator made for one hell of a party.
Even just moving around as those characters is more satisfying, thanks in no small part to the scope expansion. To make the open-world more traversable, Vault Hunters now get a hover pack (once again similar to Destiny) and a grappling hook. Both make repetitive shootouts more exciting, as I can soar through the air and fire down at Rippers while making an escape into cover or use my grapple to snag an explosive barrel and toss it at an enemy. The hero moments are larger-than-life, no longer confined to that one clutch ability activation.
All of that pairs with Borderlands’ most important ingredient: the mountains of guns. The elementary joy of the series has always come from picking up a new weapon and seeing what it does. No game quite has the same arsenal of curiosity moments, doling out surprise after surprise that sells the looter shooter hook. That’s preserved here, and even turned up to the maximum, since there are enough guns to fill an entire open world. One minute I’d find myself obsessed with a revolver that can quickfire its entire chamber in a second. The next, I’d find one that instead shot tagging darts that would explode after a few seconds. Whether I’m experimenting with a cryo SMG that works on cooldown rather than clip size or replacing my void grenade with a chain gun that keeps rolling if I nail criticals, I still feel like a kid in a candy store (or Walmart, more soberingly), dozens of hours in.
Even when Borderlands 4 is at its most cloying — and it often is — that simple thrill still holds. That’s because, for all of its lore-heavy storytelling, the series’ more effective messaging has always been at a mechanical level. This is a franchise that throws you into a wasteland and asks you to carve out your place among the freaks. Everything flows back to that idea, as you’re building an identity as much as a playstyle. Borderlands 4 makes that even more focal by adding tons of character customization potential via unlockable cosmetics found in the open world and as challenge rewards. By the time I breach Dominion’s walls, it feels like I’ve found myself just as a teen does in a coming-of-age movie. (Okay, maybe not exactly like that.)
That’s why the main campaign’s rote superhero story rings especially hollow. I’m quickly placed into a position of command rather than left to helplessly wander canyons. My looting feels more like I’m stockpiling weapons for a war rather than figuring out how little old me is supposed to defeat tyranny.
It’s no surprise then that all the memorable narrative moments lie in smaller side quests. In one, I aid a sentient rocket who is self-conscious about its inability to fly. In another, I accidentally become a self-help guru for a guy in desperate need of guidance. There are tons of little stories like this about anxious weirdos whose personal struggles have been lost among Kairos’ political turmoil.
That’s the real heart of Borderlands 4, even if it’s buried under occasionally exhausting blockbuster excess. The world is a big, scary place, but you can always build a life for yourself in the sea of scrap. Or at least cause a little mayhem.
Borderlands 4 will be released Sept. 12 on PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X. The game was reviewed on Windows PC using a prerelease download code provided by 2K Games. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.
