What struck me about the Borderlands 4 trailer shown at The Game Awards is that the graphical fidelity has advanced so far that the comic book art style that defined the first game is fading away. It looks like the characters are doing Borderlands cosplay, with black Sharpie lines on foam props, and in the daytime scene at the start of the trailer, the signature Borderlands style is almost entirely absent from the rocky terrain.
I still think it looks great, even if the style that once set the series apart—one of the most successful pivots in videogame history—is becoming vestigial. Borderlands fans, however, had their eyes fixed on more substantial matters: the new vault hunters, whose reveal has divided opinions. The Borderlands subreddit is currently awash with both posts that call the new protagonists "bland" and counter-posts declaring that everyone is being too negative.
