In many ways, Borderlands 4 is one of the best games in the series to date, and several notable features contribute to that status. Its Vault Hunters, for one thing, have deeper customization and build flexibility than any of their predecessors, making gameplay feel more personal and freeing up players to play their own way. But hidden beneath layers of those more obvious improvements, Borderlands 4 implements a number of quality-of-life changes the series has always needed, but especially now. One of those quality-of-life features even shows just how self-aware the game is, and it might even slip under the noses of some of Borderlands' most devoted followers.
One of the biggest hurdles players have had to overcome in the Borderlands series is inventory management, and that hurdle has only grown larger with time. Every new Borderlands entry brings with it an increasingly high number of guns, so sorting through all of them can be a pain. Well, that's even more true of Borderlands 4 now, which has over 30 billion unique gun combinations that can leave players spending an unbelievable amount of time trying to find the combinations they like. However, despite this colossal number of guns, the latest entry in the series has finally implemented a major quality-of-life feature that will help players better manage their inventory on the fly rather than constantly navigating menus.
Borderlands 4's Take-as-Junk Mechanic Shows Its Self-Awareness
The Burden of 30 Billion Guns
Given the fact that Borderlands 4 has over 30 billion different possible gun combinations, needless to say, players have their work cut out for them when it comes to their inventory. As it always has been, the loot loop of Borderlands 4 naturally sees players marking weapons they'll never use as junk, with white, green, and, less often, blue-rarity guns all immediately becoming vendor trash upon collection. Then, once players do happen upon a vending machine in the game, they can immediately sell all of their junk with the press of a button or the click of a key for a pretty penny.
But marking each individual item with the player's inventory can still be incredibly time-consuming, even though the loot-sell process has been streamlined since the launch of the first Borderlands game. Plus, most players aren't after the whites, greens, and blues as much as they are after the purple weapons and, even more coveted, the orange, Legendary weapons. As such, whites, greens, and most blues are going to be marked as junk anyway, so it would make sense if there were an easier way to do that, especially with over 30 billion different gun combinations being possible in Borderlands 4.
A Small Shortcut With Big Impact
As it turns out, Borderlands 4 has implemented the perfect remedy for that for the first time in the series. Rather than marking each individual weapon they collect as junk, players can immediately mark a weapon as junk upon picking it up by using its "take-as-junk" mechanic. This means every white, green, and potentially even blue weapon they come across can make its way to their pockets in the form of cash quicker than ever. But more than anything else, it just shows how self-aware Borderlands 4 is.
Essentially, Borderlands 4 knows it has an absurd number of weapons. To be fair, every game in the series has, but it has reached a level of absurdity that few, if any, games manage to achieve with their own loot pools. It's confident in the fact that players will be selling the vast majority of weapons they pick up, because with over 30 billion unique gun combinations, most of them are bound to be duds. Perhaps Borderlands 4 could have just given players more cash instead of guns to sell, but that's a question best answered by the god of RNG.
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
