Borderlands 4 Reveals One Feature Aimed At Improving Replayability

Lead character designer Nick Thurston confirms a heavier RPG influence over the characters in Borderlands 4 in their skill trees, making each one feel more unique through multiple playthroughs. As Borderlands 4 continues to approach its September launch date, new information about the game continues to arrive, putting a bigger spotlight on how this latest entry is planning to improve on the foundation of its predecessors.

While there’s still a good amount that Gearbox hasn’t detailed yet, the studio has shared a number of big new changes coming to Borderlands 4. The maps are bigger and more vertical than ever before, which has also caused the movement system to evolve, allowing players to use a grappling hook, summon vehicles, and even gliding while in the air. Even for its vault hunters, the 4 characters players can choose from at the start of the game, Gearbox is attempting to make each of them feel more unique, even on subsequent playthroughs.

Borderlands 4 Has More Passive Skills Than All Previous Borderlands Games Combined

In a recent interview with Polygon, lead character designer Nick Thurston discussed the newly revealed vault hunter Amon and what makes the character unique. While attempting to make Amon more than a typical Barbarian-style character, Gearbox also made sure that the skill trees feel unique as well, so if there are multiple Amons in a session, players will be able to make powerful character builds that are different from one another, so that each one isn’t doing the same thing. Thurston went on to say, “In a lot of cases, there have been times where previous characters in our franchise have been very focused on one thing. But it was always really important to me that if you have this really cool character, you’re going to want to use him in a bunch of different ways.”

Part of how that happens is by introducing skill trees in Borderlands 4 which feature tons of different options for players to invest in, from passives to Augments and the Capstone for each character. Similar to past entries, players won’t be able to unlock every skill, meaning they’ll have to make some difficult choices as they level. However, Thurston confirms that each Vault Hunter has around 80 passive skills, which means that Borderlands 4 has more than all previous games in the franchise combined, a staggering number that should help players create new characters that feel unique each time they play.

Borderlands 4 adds an optional combat radar after fans requested the feature.

As it stands now, only 1 Vault Hunter remains to be fully revealed, though if the previous three are any indication, Harlowe should prove to be fairly unique with multiple ways to deal with enemies. Each Borderlands 4 Vault Hunter appears more versatile than ever before, offering players more freedom in how they build their character. Previous Borderlands characters typically had an established role and really dug into that, but with Borderlands 4, each Vault Hunter has become more flexible thanks to bigger skill trees and less of a focus on specific weapon types.