Borderlands 4 certainly looks like it's taking its story more seriously: 'We wanted to go back to this sense of dread about the villain of our game'

A psycho in Borderlands 4 stands ready for battle. — (Image credit: Gearbox)

I'm downright curious about Borderlands 4—having played most entrants in the series, it's been interesting to see it mostly capture a good narrative essence with Borderlands 2, then spend the rest of its library uh… not doing that. Which is why this sequel's been intriguing to me, given promises the game'll be cutting back on "toilet humor" and irreverent meme culture.

A recent story explainer in Beyond the Borderlands #2 looks like it's delivering on that promise. And while I went in skeptical, I can't help admitting that I'm kinda sold.

BEYOND THE BORDERLANDS #2 | Welcome to Kairos | Borderlands 4 - YouTube

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Now, obviously, writing is more than just having good ideas. There are plenty of stories out there with excellent concepts but terrible execution: But the ideas are still kinda important, and these aren't half-bad.

Borderlands 4 takes place on a prison planet named Kairos, after Elpis shows up in its atmosphere—the moon was previously teleported away in Borderlands 3's baffling ending, wherein Lilith randomly sacrifices herself before Girl on Fire by Alicia Keys plays. I wish I was joking.

Anyway, Kairos sucked before the moon got there and it sucks even more now. It's being ruled over by someone called the Timekeeper, who's implanted something called a "bolt" into everyone's neck, a remote killswitch that also lets him see through their eyes.

The video then goes on to describe a few factions—like the crash-landed Outbounders, the mining Augurs, and the temporarily embarrassed billionaires the Electi. Each zone has one of these factions, plus a Timekeeper general boss you'll have to kick over, too.

Dare I say it, this is all sounding… well, kinda cool? Borderlands 3's tedious streamer villain pair isn't a low bar to surmount, but if a DM came to me with this thing as a setting for their TTRPG campaign, I'd be excited to play around in it. Which, in my book, is a good sign.

The words of Lin Joyce, managing director of creative, give me some hope as well: "When we were approaching how to write the Timekeeper, we certainly looked back on all of our previous main villains and considered how we wanted to approach the Timekeeper differently."

Sam Winkler, narrative director, continues: "We wanted to go back to this sense of dread about the villain of our game … We wanted a villain who was a new type of character in the franchise who is ever present and not overstaying his welcome."

I'm reading into Winkler's words, here, but that certainly feels like a subtle dig at Handsome Jack, a halfway-decent villain that the series was never quite able to replicate.

Anyway—I've never played Borderlands games for their stories, but rather the same, ol' reliable, boilerplate-competent looter shooter fun. I had a great time with Borderlands 3, even with its outdated memes yapping in my ear. So if Borderlands 4 winds up having a semi-decent story? All the better.

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Harvey's history with games started when he first begged his parents for a World of Warcraft subscription aged 12, though he's since been cursed with Final Fantasy 14-brain and a huge crush on G'raha Tia. He made his start as a freelancer, writing for websites like Techradar, The Escapist, Dicebreaker, The Gamer, Into the Spine—and of course, PC Gamer. He'll sink his teeth into anything that looks interesting, though he has a soft spot for RPGs, soulslikes, roguelikes, deckbuilders, MMOs, and weird indie titles. He also plays a shelf load of TTRPGs in his offline time. Don't ask him what his favourite system is, he has too many.

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