One of the key appeals of the Borderlands series for its creators as well as fans is that the games can evolve with each new installment — which is an attitude that next year’s Borderlands 4 is going to take to new levels, according to Gearbox’s main stage panel at PAX West 2024.

“We’re five big games deep in the franchise,” Randy Varnell, Gearbox chief creative officer told the crowd about working on the upcoming installment, recently announced for 2025 release. “It’s a great problem to have that we have a lot of characters that we want to spend time with — but we’re also creators.”

As a result, fans should be expecting a lot of new in the new game, the Gearbox team teased. After all, the game will take place on an entirely new planet, previously hidden from the rest of the Borderlands universe — and one that might break some previously established rules for the series as a whole.

Sharing some concept art for Borderlands 4, art director Adam May said, “The Borderlands universe is super-interesting, and there’s so much to get to play with. I mean, it is like a post-apocalyptic world, but in the distant future, so it’s like high-tech, but lo-fi, and it creates all sorts of interesting opportunities on what we can do [with] tech and our weapons and our characters and our world in general.” The new game, he teased, “a lot of other things we haven’t really had a chance to play with too much in the past, some of that high-technology stuff. You can see here, we’re getting to do a lot of digital projections. We’re getting to see some, because this has been an isolated world, some of the things you wouldn’t have seen anywhere else… That was one of the key things I was after, you know: we want to see something new, too; we don’t want to just keep rehashing the same world over and over. We really get to play with more color, and more tech, in this world than we have in any other.”

The approach of reinventing the game isn’t just isolated to the visuals of Borderlands 4, however; creative director Graeme Timmins said that, having established a tech-level in previous games, “we’re really looking to kind of bend and break some of those tech level rules this time around.” “With a new planet comes a lot of new characters,” added narrative director Sam Winkler. “In Borderlands 4, we’re trying to focus on new characters and new questions.”

“We do like to consider ourselves storytellers,” said Timmins. “We love creating characters with depth and complexity, and personal struggles that we get to explore, and I think that’s why our characters have resonated with our community… This time around, we’re focusing on newer characters, and telling their stories more clearly and concisely, as opposed to having a massive cast that we have to juggle between all these points. So I’m really excited about that focus this time around; I think the storytelling is going to be much stronger for it.”

Borderlands 4 is scheduled for release in 2025, and is available for pre-order now.

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