So far, Borderlands 4 feels like an improvement on its predecessor. The game doesn’t chase after trends and instead sticks to the looter-shooter format that the franchise has iterated on for years. It makes for a game that will likely prove popular for long-time fans but, I suspect, won’t necessarily convince newcomers to finally give the series a try. Sirens are still incredibly fun, bosses still take a tremendous amount of bullets to take out, and there are still so, so many different firearms to find.
After playing Borderlands 4 for about three hours at a preview event, I sat down with senior project producer Anthony Nicholson to talk about the improvements implemented in this latest entry, such as mission replay (so you don’t have to start a brand-new save or jump into True Vault Hunter mode just to redo a mission or boss to get better loot), a seamless world, and manual healing kits. Our conversation is detailed below, edited for both brevity and readability.
What was the team hoping to get out of revisiting this series again?