‘Borderlands 4 does have some open-world-like features,’ says Gearbox, before clarifying it isn’t an open world game ‘in the traditional use of that term’

Last year, in an interview with Gamespot, Gearbox boss and professional amateur magician Randy Pitchford compared the upcoming Borderlands 4 to its predecessor. “With Borderlands 3, with the idea of going to different planets, it was more compartmentalized,” he said. “It felt a little less open and free. Borderlands 4 is the most open and free ever”.

More recently, Gearbox’s senior project producer Anthony Nicholson told GamesRadar that while “Borderlands 4 does have some open-world-like features” including “seamless travel between zones” that doesn’t mean we should expect, I dunno, Ubisoft towers or whatever tedious nonsense open world games are full of nowadays. He clarified that, “we did not set out with the intent to create an ‘open world game’ in the traditional use of that term.”

What it will have are side missions and events to discover, and new ways to get around, including a hover bike and a grappling hook. Based on what little we’ve seen of Borderlands 4 so far it seems to be set on a single planet, and possibly its moon. The world of Kairos, Nicholson says, isn’t like Pandora because it’s “a world where the outlook is bleak, the stakes are real, and the characters treat them as such” though it does still have room for “the zaniness, oddity, and mayhem that makes a Borderlands game a Borderlands game.”

I wouldn’t put it past them to sneak in a joke at the expense of the Borderlands movie. In a time when videogame adaptations have often been annoyingly high-quality and respectful, the Borderlands movie was brave enough to hark back to the era when they were almost universally absolute catshit.