Gearbox says it started working on Borderlands 4 right after it shipped Borderlands 3 in 2019. Five years and a couple spin-offs later, the next mainline Borderlands game is almost here.
The studio has had a somewhat turbulent ride over those years, merging with Embracer Group in 2021 and then being bought in 2024 by Take-Two Interactive, the parent company of Borderlands publisher 2K Games. It also released a Borderlands movie to not-so-rave reviews, but Gearbox head honcho Randy Pitchford took it in stride.
"So what you're saying is: You like what my friends and I do with our Borderlands videogames even more than you like what some of the biggest and best cast and crew of film makers on the planet have done," Pitchford tweeted after the movie struggled at the box office in its opening weekend. "I'm super flattered! We're working extra hard four you on what's next."
Here's everything we know about Borderlands 4.
Is there a Borderlands 4 release date?
Gearbox says that Borderlands 4 will release in 2025. We've only just seen the first trailer with gameplay in it, so I'm guessing we're looking at a fall release window. Borderlands 2 and Borderlands 3 both released in September.
However, Grand Theft Auto 6 is also set to release sometime in the second half of 2025, on consoles at least. It'd be a little surprising if Take-Two put two of its biggest games up against each other, so we'll see how it plays out—one or the other could be delayed.
Borderlands 4 trailers
Here's the latest Borderland 4 trailer from the 2024 Game Awards
There have been two Borderlands 4 trailers so far, a teaser in August 2024, and then a longer trailer at the 2024 Game Awards (embedded above).
The August teaser's celestial fireworks show the aftermath of the events of Borderlands 3, when Lilith saved Pandora by teleporting its moon, Elpis, which turned out to be a giant vault key and was about to destroy the planet.
The Game Awards trailer picks up where that teaser left off, and introduces the villain of Borderlands 4, The Timekeeper: "a ruthless dictator who dominates the masses from on high." We also see someone who'll probably be a sub-boss: a lady with giant robotic wing-arm-things who seems to be in control of the Psychos, and is apparently an enemy of the Timekeeper and his army of automaton-lookin' guys.
In the trailer's description, Gearbox tells us where we are: a new planet called Kairos. At a PAX panel in September, Gearbox said that the planet was "completely hidden" from the galaxy until now, so we're probably not going to find references to it in existing Borderlands lore.
What do the encrypted messages in the trailers say?
Both trailers have ended with flashes of alien script, and fans quickly decoded them by substituting letters for the symbols.
The first teaser ended with the encoded message: "He is watching. Break free."
The Game Awards trailer ended with a longer message composed of new symbols, which was decoded by Skarrow9 on YouTube. Using an automated tool for cracking substitution ciphers, they came up with:
- "Invader cut me open, I died, and that's just the start. Now my knife is redly suddenning. She saw right through me and into you. His hand on your neck. Rip it out from the roots."
- "You're gonna like what comes with it"
- "Time kept is brain lost"
- "It's your turn"
Borderlands 4 gameplay details
Who are the new vault hunters?
The Game Awards trailer gave us our first look at the four new playable vault hunters in Borderlands 4, but Gearbox hasn't told us much about them just yet.
At the September PAX Panel , the studio talked generally about its strategy for designing vault hunters. "We think it's important that we switch it up" between games, said creative director Graeme Timmins, so expect the archetypes to be at least a little different this time. Narrative director Sam Winkler also had a little bit to say about Gearbox's overall goal with Borderlands 4's characters and story.
"With Borderlands 4, we want to bring it back to the player," said Winkler. "We want to make sure the player and the vault hunters are the central characters of our story. We want to make sure the world is reactive, that the world is grounded. That while we keep our humor that brings a lot of people coming back to our franchise, in the game, we want to make sure that it's situational, that it emerges naturally. So while we're building these characters, we're always making sure that they have strong personalities, that they will react differently to different situations, that we see the effects of that."
The fan reaction to the new hunters has been mixed—some fans think they look too bland—but we really don't have a lot to go on yet.
What other gameplay details do we have?
There are some gameplay snippets in the Game Awards trailer. Aside from the usual Borderlands 'bazillion guns' shooting, three things stood out to me:
- An energy grappling hook
- A hover bike that appears to spawn outside of a Catch-a-Ride station, so maybe we're now free to call in vehicles anywhere
- You can't escape Claptrap, even on an uncharted planet
