Borderlands 4is shaping up to be a major leap for the franchise, both in terms of scale and ambition. Between a seamless world, new traversal mechanics, and a deeper emphasis on exploration and progression, it’s clear the game is striving to outdo its predecessors in whatever way it can. With a new planet, a new villain, and systems that challenge player expectations, much of what makesBorderlands 4stand out comes down to how it reimagines the series' formula without losing its spirit in the process.
In a recent interview with Game Rant,Borderlands 4senior project producer Anthony Nicholson offered up the scoop on the game’s most distinct features, touching on everything from how Unreal Engine 5 shaped the design of Kairos to the narrative decisions behind its new cast and antagonist. Through the wide-ranging conversation, Nicholson outlined how player feedback, internal experimentation, and a fresh technical toolkit allowed the team to rethink long-held assumptions about what aBorderlandsgamecould be.The following transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Building Borderlands 4’s Kairos
Q: Kairos is seamless with very few loading screens. How does this design choice influence the game structure and the player experience?
A:Well, so when we started working onBorderlands 4, we didn’t set out to design anopen-world game, right? What we found, as we were developing, as we were adding activities, as we were able to move into Unreal Engine 5, is the power that it creates.
And then, using all these different tools thatUnreal Engine 5brought to us, all of these different factors helped us realize that we can do a lot more of the things that we’ve always wanted to do that maybe technology kept us from doing in earlier games in the franchise. And then also expand and make better the things that we feel like we need to improve on our own from the last game or double down on the things that fans have really enjoyed, like the movements.
And so, as we were going through, we noticed yes, we can have more sprawling maps where you don’t have to have abunch of loading screens. you’re able to go from zone to zone, just like if you’re out on the highway or something, you know. But it’s also not just that. When we talk about seamless, if you’re on one side of the Fadefields, and I’m on the other, and you say, “Hey, man, come on over here. I’m about to take this world boss on.” Then I just hit your icon, and now I’ve seamlessly and instantly traveled to where you are.
Drop in, drop out co-op. Instancing, loot instancing, level difficulty. All of these different things were all factors that that really lend to making the world feel seamless. It’s not just about the map.
Q: How did you all figure out how to organize the different biomes or to even encourage players to go to these different locations just depending on the way they looked or felt?
A:So, obviously there are story implications in each place, right? But to us, it was the spaces that we’ve always wanted to explore. How do we make things feel more alien or different than Pandora does, or some of the otherplanets fromBorderlands 3? How do we show that it can be different in these biomes, but also push the envelope?
To go back a little bit to the technology, we were able to do more things with vistas anddynamic weather— things like rain and snow and dust storms, all varying degrees of them. It really allowed us to say, “How do we look at this a little bit differently and kind of push on some of those things, so now you can go into the Terminus Range, and you can see it’s snowing or the snow accumulation on the ground and different things like that. So, I think that that was really the approach that we took was, “How can we make the bestBorderlandsfeel in the maps and in the world that we’ve always wanted to?”
Q: What I’ve noticed about Borderlands 4 so far is that it’s not that you’ve left behind the Western dystopian feel of it. It’s just more sci-fi than previous installments. What inspired that?
A:There are other parts of the game that will feel a little bit more familiar, like you’re talking about with some of the western feel, but sci-fi all the way, right? We really pushed on some of the architecture, the generative design. You can see the tower in the Fadefields, and you can see how it looks, and the roof is all sprawling and the Order army themselves are all generative. So, it was really about helping to understand what we can do within those spaces and within those bounds.
Q: So, the decision to remove the mini-map. Was there feedback that led to that change, or was it just a change in design philosophy?
A:It was more about how the world is presented to the player. As we’re moving through, we want to make sure that enemies, we want to make sure that points of interest, obviously direction, are things that you’re able to see, the compass accomplishes that. But also, we’ve addedEcho-4 inBorderlands 4. Echo-4 helps you to be able to navigate.
The line will draw on the ground depending on the mission that you’ve chosen or if you’ve placed a waypoint on the map, but it also highlights things that are nearby, like the vending machines or the points of interest — the silos, the safe houses, the bunkers, the mines, and all these different things. And then finally, it also highlights the traversal, so you may see the climbing walls or the grapple points and stuff like that. So with all of those tools together, we felt like that was a stronger combination for the type of game that we’re building in thisseamless world on Kairos.
Borderlands 4’s Story, Characters, and Villain
Q: Getting more into the narrative and the characters and lore, can you elaborate more on the backgrounds and personal motivations of the new Vault Hunters?
A:That one’s pretty straightforward. Well, I’ll preface it by saying the moon had teleported into this planet’s space before then. People could not see it. If they were there, they crashed. Kind of like a siren type right where you don’t know that it’s there until you hit the atmosphere, and now you’re down, and now you’re bolted.
Our Vault Hunters fell prey to that same type of thing, where they crashed onto the planet. And so now we’re going along, and I can’t get too much into it, but we have to help them fight back against the Order and the subjugation of theTimekeeper inBorderlands 4.
Q: Speaking of the Timekeeper, what inspired his character design, and how does he differ from previous villains?
A:So, for him, whenever we look atBorderlandsantagonists, we want to make sure that we’re not doubling up on or being tropey or anything like that. And for this situation, for the environment that we’re in on Kairos, it’s a hidden planet. It’s obviously a secret. It’s kind of a prison planet because once you get there, you’re either bolted or killed, or you’re a robot. And so that helped to form everything.
We wanted an order versus chaos theming — theVault Hunters inBorderlands 4bringing the chaos, the uprising of the people in the other factions around the world of Kairos rising up, creating the chaos. And the Timekeeper is such an orderly, put-together, calm antagonist. We needed someone who’s kind of strong. Feels very confident in the decisions that they make. Not easily rattled. And so how do we do that?
Well, it needs to be somebody who looks put together, needs to be very firm and calming in their voice and their candor in the way that they speak. A deep voice helps with that in a lot of ways. Then, when we just started talking about what the story should be and how that all intertwined and stuff that you’ll find out much later, it just felt like all of those pieces together helped us form the Timekeeper and kind of set the stage for him being the ringleader of the Kairos circus that the Vault Hunters have crash-landed into.
Q: How has player feedback from previous entries influenced the design and features that have been implemented in Borderlands 4?
A:I think a good amount. We love our community, and we love the feedback from them, and we keep them on our minds. We always keep the player, whether it’s our community, which means a lot to us, or just the general gamer who we want to introduce the series to. Player first. Every time we’re designing something, every time we’re looking at something, every time we’re thinking of an idea — what does a player feel? What does a player want? What do we want the player to feel or experience? Always, always, always at the forefront.
We playtest the game. That was one of my pillars early on in the project: playtest early, playtest often. So, getting that type of feedback as well. But I was the head ofBorderlands 3DLC, and so they gave me not only that seat to look over all the post-launch stuff, but also to be able to hear what people were saying about the content that we had, the campaign content that we had, the live service and weekly events and different things like that.
And we were able to tweak and adjust and improve quality of life and things like that, as well as just improving on the formula and saying things like, “People really love this movement stuff. We should do more of that. So, sometimes it’s not a really big to do about coming up with these different features and stuff, but it’s really like, “What would the player be interested in, and what would they really be excited about?”
Q: Randy said that this would be a good entry point for new players. In what way would it be a good entry point for new players?
A:Well, I think the accessibility of how we’re giving you the different tools that you can do. So, if you’re afirst-person shooterplayer, you’ll love it. If you’re an adventure game player like myself, you’ll love it because you get to explore. If you are an RPG player, you’ll love it.
But also, if you’re one of those people who’s like, “Oh, I haven’t played the other ones before, I’m going to be lost in the story.” Thestory fromBorderlands 3was the catalyst for what begins this, and that’s really all people need to know. So that makes it to where they don’t have to worry about lore or previous events. We’ll put them in a good spot, gameplay and narratively, to be able to enjoy this if it’s the first one they’ve ever played.
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