The next Borderlands game is coming in 2025—and while the recent movie was an absolute financial and critical catastrophe, I'm actually still excited. While I've had plenty of feelings about the series' direction in terms of story and aesthetic since Borderlands 2 (in that it's mostly been all over the place) I can't say I've really been let down by many series' entries when it comes to gameplay. You sit down, you shoot, you make numbers go up, you shoot some more—and the formula hasn't really changed. It's an old reliable.
I am, however, greatly amused by Randy Pitchford, developer Gearbox's founder, who has a habit of posting through it, like the whole movie thing, which culminated in him comparing the studio to The Beatles. You know, standard game developer stuff. I'm being a little harsh here—he also recently pledged to help a terminally ill fan see Borderlands 4 early, which was genuinely heartwarming, and there are worse things you can do than get a little too into it online.
He's now re-emerged with a twinkle in his eye (thanks, Gamesradar) to hint at an upcoming feature for Borderlands 4. Well, sort of. As Borderlands streamer JoltzDude139 was marvelling at the nearly-seamless loading that happens when you throw an SSD at a game that came out 12 years ago (it is a fun marker of how far we've come, don't get me wrong), Pitchford appeared and, typing with a mischievous twinkle in his eye and a click in his heels, replied: "Seamless, you say?"
JoltzDude139 responded, flabbergasted: "Randy... You must elaborate. You can't leave us hanging with a message like that with BL4 on the horizon." Pitchford, already fading into starlight, reassures JoltzDude, "I will absolutely elaborate", before proceeding to log off X for three days, which is quite honestly character development.
Let's try and extrapolate some kind of linear thought from this act of mischief, shall we? Borderlands games have typically followed an ARPG-like structure—while there've always been big, open areas, it wouldn't be accurate to call them "open world". More, they serve as questing hubs to funnel you towards smaller dungeons, quests, and missions. You get the idea—it's all very Diablo.
Assuming Pitchford's secret cartel of scientists haven't secretly developed the world's first SSSD, the idea that Borderlands 4 could be "seamless" suggests more of a structural difference from the past games, rather than any kind of technological marvel. After all, that Risk of Rain 2 expansion didn't exactly inspire a lot of code-based confidence—it tied its physics engine to its framerate which is, uh. Bad. You shouldn't do that.
So this could genuinely mean that Borderlands 4 is going to be open world in some capacity: A seamless sprawl full of loot where you can, one assumes, drive a little dune buggy around and crash into lampposts. Or, Pitchford could be having me and the rest of his fanbase on. We'll see in the hypothetical announcement to come.
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