{"id":1315247,"date":"2025-09-05T13:23:19","date_gmt":"2025-09-05T13:23:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/SzZhoeVgyqCpzVj2vYxxRD"},"modified":"2025-09-05T13:23:19","modified_gmt":"2025-09-05T13:23:19","slug":"borderlands-4-devs-want-to-redeem-the-series-story-which-is-a-tall-task-since-its-always-been-all-over-the-place","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/borderlands-4-devs-want-to-redeem-the-series-story-which-is-a-tall-task-since-its-always-been-all-over-the-place\/","title":{"rendered":"Borderlands 4 devs want to redeem the series’ story, which is a tall task, since it’s always been all over the place"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Harvey Randall, Staff Writer<\/div>\n
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\"PC<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>

(Image credit: Future)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This week I’ve been: <\/strong>Playing Silksong and writing PSAs about benches.<\/a><\/p>\n

Last week I was: <\/strong>Getting back into Deadlock, <\/a>because I just really hate having free time.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

One thing I’ve seen repeated often in Borderlands 4’s interviews is the insistence that yes, we’ve learned our lesson with Borderlands 3, and we’re not going to give you a headache this time<\/a>. We’ve got character motivations, stakes, and jokes not rooted in years-old memes!<\/p>\n

Which is fair enough. Borderlands 3’s story (which, warning, I will be spoiling<\/strong>) was so atrocious it nearly spoiled what I otherwise found to be a great little game. I massively enjoyed zipping around as Zane with my movement speed build, and the moment-to-moment blasting was as consistent as ever. And then the story would happen and I’d start itching desperately to be shooting something again.<\/p>\n

It wasn’t just<\/em> the jokes, either. Borderlands 3 tripped over itself when it came to its serious moments, too. Maya’s death, its insistence that Ava was the chosen one, Lilith throwing herself into a moon for some reason, any time the Calypso twins, who could’ve been 1,000% more interesting, were on screen\u2014it was a game that did not know how to stick the landing.<\/p>\n

But the question is, was Borderlands’ story ever actually, y’know, good? The answer is ‘kinda’. I’ve been sticking with this series since I was\u2014and I’m sorry to make you feel ancient\u201414 years old, and I don’t know if I can rightly say that there’s a ‘return to form’ to go back to.<\/p>\n

Call me old-fashioned, but in order to go back to your roots, you need roots to begin with, and those foundations haven’t ever truly been solid. Borderlands has always been a mosaic, and that’s part of its charm, but let’s try and get the blueprint sketched out here:<\/p>\n

Borderlands is high-concept science fantasy, but it’s also a space western, but it’s also post-apocalyptic Mad Max, but it’s also satirical dystopic cyberpunk, but it’s also TTRPG-style character drama. And there’s nothing wrong with mixing your genres, but if you throw too many into the pot, you start having a game that doesn’t really know what it’s about.<\/p>\n

Actually, that might be the problem<\/h2>\n

Whenever Borderlands’ story has been ‘okay, with some very good moments’, it’s because it’s stuck to a couple of lanes and fleshed them out, using the rest of its madcap multitudes as garnish, not main ingredients. Let’s take a moment to rattle off a list of what each game actually focused on from the aforementioned genre grab-bag:<\/p>\n