What wastelands are left for Borderlands to conquer? This time it's Kairos, a vast open world made of four distinct, seamlessly connected regions. I stomped across the rolling hills of the Fadefields for a few hours, looting and shooting my way through endless, cacophonic firefights almost on autopilot. Or should that be instinct? Borderlands has rarely strayed all that far beyond the boundaries that it set 16 years ago.
For developer Gearbox Software, the trick is to not let familiarity lapse into complacency. "Borderlands is almost old enough to drive. It would be strange if it weren't constantly growing and adapting," says lead writer Taylor Clark. "And that's not because we're trying to meet the market in some cynical way. We are a creative team and there are ideas that we want to express through Borderlands 4; ways that we want to make it feel like we're breaking fresh ground again."
