Borderlands 4 devs talk loot, comedy, and what makes Borderlands great: "We listen to the fans"

Set on a new world, with largely new characters, grounded writing and a genuinely serious tone to the story, it's a stark departure from the more recent games from the Borderlands team, two of whom were present at the event.

Executive producer Chris Brock has worked on Borderlands since the very start. Lead writer Taylor Clark joined the series for 2022's New Tales from the Borderlands. I sat down with the two of them to chat about the upcoming game.

I open the conversation with what is, for me, a simple question. For Chris and Taylor, not so much: What makes a great Borderlands game?

"That's tough," Chris immediately chuckles. "So much of Borderlands is a vibe, you know? It's not about the actual pieces that you put into it. It's more about what the mixture of those pieces is."

"It's the mix between the guns, obviously the loot chase, the humour and the art," Taylor chimes in.

Chris explains the challenge between iterating and evolving the series without losing that Borderlands magic. "You could have all of those things in there, but if the mix isn't right, it doesn't feel like Borderlands, right?"

Going into Borderlands 3, the focus was on improving the gunplay, something Chris and Taylor (and I) think they pulled off. Going into Borderlands 4, that attention has shifted to movement.

Chris explains: "[In BL3] we added slide and mantle. What if we just went all in on movement, all in on the traversal stuff. What if we just doubled down on that stuff so that was kind of the core?

"So, it was like, 'Hey, let's throw in a double jump. Let's throw in glide. Let's throw a bunch of stuff at the wall and find what sticks.'"

Double jump and glide have indeed both made it into the game, but so have a dash and even a grapple, all of which add a huge amount to both exploration and combat, and it will be tough to return to a Borderlands without these mechanics, something that Chris himself has experienced.

"Once you get those things going and you feel how much more dynamic the experience is, just going around the world, comboing your grapple with your double jump and then ground slamming and dodging away – it's hard to go back at that point."

While movement plays a bigger role in combat and traversal, the world you traverse has seen significant upgrades too. BL4 features a huge, seamless world – go anywhere you want, loading-screen-free.

"When we first conceived of Borderlands a million years ago, I think in 2009, we conceived of the game as this one big, cast world," Chris recalls.

"Because of the limitations of the time, that wasn't really plausible for us to do. So, as technology has evolved, this is actually kind of how we've imagined Borderlands for a long time, it's just that we can finally build it."

I mention the perceived open world fatigue many players appear to be experiencing, asking how, if at all, Gearbox has sought to navigate this in its own giant new world.

"Borderlands 4 has a big map that you can explore in whatever order you choose, right? But at the same time, it is a very bespoke experience," says Chris.

"The vast majority of content – I hate that word," he asides, "the vast majority of the exploring and adventuring you'll be doing is story related. There's a huge amount of not just mainline story missions, but an order of magnitude more of side content, and all of that is very bespoke.

"They're individual stories that don't require you to understand other parts of the game, and I think that's what combats that feeling that you're talking about. That feeling of there just being things in the game to create content, and I do mean content."

An interesting aspect of Borderlands as a series, and, naturally, of its development, is that there is a significant focus on endgame and post-game content.

Rematching bosses for a chance at the best loot is a core part of the Borderlands formula – I ask Chris and Taylor about their approach in BL4.

"Graeme [Timmins], our creative director, is very bullish on endgame," Chris explains. "Normally, we talk about endgame later in development, and this time, from the beginning, it was like, 'How are we going to handle endgame?'"

Naturally, the two are unable to let much slip regarding BL4's endgame, but they very proudly extol the virtues of their new boss rematch system, which lets players immediately fight defeated bosses without having to replay entire levels.

"A core part of endgame stuff is being able to go back and replay content, right? I think that's easier than ever in Borderlands 4," Tyler adds.

After discussing the good, I want to touch on the bad. Borderlands 3 and Tiny Tina's Wonderlands were both criticised by a large number of players for having overtly childish potty humour. I ask if BL4's return to a more grounded tone was a response to this.

"I wouldn't formulate the thinking on it like that," Taylor replies. "We listen to the fans, to the times, but more than that, we look at the story that we're trying to tell, and we try to cater the voice of the game to the stakes.

"Pandora being this corporate wasteland with this free-for-all element between all these corporations who have the most mercenary goals imaginable, it kind of made more sense to have a more shotgun tone, right?

"Whereas here, we have this dystopia. People are being crushed under this ominous Timekeeper character. It would be weird if we were just constantly playing with wackiness all the time."

He goes on to discuss the importance of humour to the series, and how no matter how the tone may shift, comedy will always be key: "Humour is essential to Borderlands."

"There is a more grounded tone for sure, especially in the main content," Taylor says of BL4, " but you will find in the side stories a real diverse mix of some classic wacky Borderlands missions, some serious, some sombre, some thoughtful and touching.

"We tried to go for a cornucopia approach there."

Borderlands 4 may harken back to the olden days of the series in some regards, but it is perhaps as fresh and vibrant as the series has ever been, and one that aims to continue to push forward and innovate.

Taylor concludes by asking the question that Borderlands 4 is built on: "What's the new frontier?"

Borderlands 4 releases on 12th September 2025 for PC, Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5.

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