Summary
- Borderlands 4 will shift towards a more mature tone, with a darker villain and action on a new planet, Kairos.
- The game promises a larger, more seamless world, demanding a substantial upgrade for vehicles.
- Borderlands 4 should offer greater accessibility and customization options for vehicles in order to match its new scope.
Borderlands 4 will be arriving this Fall, on September 23. After six years since the previous entry, developers at Gearbox Software have revealed a number of details regarding how it is planning to switch up and hone in on a few key aspects in the upcoming installment ahead of its launch. Borderlands 4 will look to further refine and iterate on the series' core looting-shooting gameplay and mechanics while pivoting away from some of the previous "low-brow" comedic tones that didn't always hit home in favor of a more mature direction.
Some of the factors that will go into this new vision are Borderlands 4's "darker and sinister" villain, The Timekeeper, and that most of the action will be taking place not on Pandora, but on a new planet known as Kairos. Gearbox Senior Producer Anthony Nicholson has highlighted that Kairos is not strictly an open-world, but traversal within it and between areas will be "seamless." What exactly that might mean for how it will function is currently unclear. But it does imply that a closely related element– namely, vehicles and their associated upgrades– might need to be much more accessible from the start.
Borderlands 4 brought on writer Miles Luna, known for RWBY and Red vs. Blue, to help with the script.
For Better or Worse, One Classic Borderlands Feature May Be More Important Than Ever in BL4
Borderlands 4 is making a change to one of its longstanding features, which might mean that it will be a bigger part of the overall experience.
Borderlands 4's Bigger World Needs to Come With an Equally Bigger Upgrade For Vehicles
Borderlands 4's Setting of Kairos Will be its Largest Map Yet
Although usually separated by distinct sequential regions, prior maps were always decently sizable. Adding to the comment above, Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford has stated that Borderlands 4 is "the most open and free game" yet, but also stopped short of describing it as fully open-world. Still, this suggests much larger territories compared to previous Borderlands games. If Kairos is more expansive from the get-go, the ways that fans will be able to travel across will naturally be more important, and thus Borderlands 4's vehicles should be geared up to accommodate this change in design.
How Borderlands 4 Can Ensure Vehicles Keep Pace With its World's Larger Scale
While most previous titles had a range of vehicles for players to use, in many cases they felt secondary, and were often less preferable to simply walking or fast traveling. Gearbox has said that vehicles in Borderlands 4 will be able to "be summoned almost anywhere." Given this, along with the scope of Kairos, it seems they are poised to play a bigger role this time around. As such, vehicles will need to be more reliable and remain relevant, and perhaps most importantly, highly customizable, throughout the course of the experience.
Having the ability to call vehicles to players' sides at will also implies that Borderlands 4 may lack the Catch-a-Ride system. To replace it, making a range of upgrades available frequently through other means, covering both mechanical ones like weapon types, speed boosters, and armor, along with cosmetics, would go a long way to maintaining their usefulness and appeal. This could be done similar to SDU purchases, and perhaps let players tailor them directly via their ECHOs. Further, Borderlands 4 could have easily swappable vehicle loadouts for additional versatility, allowing fans to quickly adjust to situations and any potential quests that require them.
Another good way to do this would be to let players try out an array of already-upgraded vehicles right at the start, perhaps in a tutorial that drops them in an area designed to introduce the various models and how they work. They might then soon lose it for story reasons, but would have been given a good taste of the potential options to get a feel for which ones gel with them once they properly attain one and are given free rein to customize. With Kairos promised to be the biggest locale seen in Borderlands, it seems necessary that vehicles will need to be subsequently overhauled in order to match this vision.
Borderlands 4
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OpenCritic Reviews
- Top Critic Avg: 82 /100 Critics Rec: 88%
- Released
- September 12, 2025
- ESRB
- Mature 17+ / Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Sexual Themes, Strong Language, In-Game Purchases, Users Interact
- Developer(s)
- Gearbox Software
- Publisher(s)
- 2K
