Borderlands 4 Was Built For Players To Explore It “In Their Own Terms”

Gearbox creative director Graeme Timmins has once again shared some new insight into Borderlands 4’s game design.

This started out from a conversation between Timmins and the community. JoltzDude139 asked this question to Gearbox:

One thing that I think would tremendously help repeat playthroughs of Borderlands 4 is adding a chunk of XP to picking up any collectible.

At the moment, I pass on 90% of them on new game runs since weighted ammo drops exist. What do you think?

Another fan, CyrealBox, chimed in:

pretty sure on dev said they removed xp from collectables because they didnt wants alts to just run around and collect to 50. idk why they dont want people to explore their game but o well.

And this was where Graeme Timmins explained what Gearbox was thinking. He said this:

You do get some XP, but not so much that players feel like they must do those things to play optimally. We built the world to be explored, but on your terms.

We didn’t want to turn the game into a series of icons that compelled everyone to feel like they had to do everything.

What Kind Of Game Is Borderlands Anyway?

As you may already know, the Borderlands games popularized the genre we now know as the looter-shooter. Randy Pitchford came up with the idea for this game from mashing together action oriented boomer shooters like Wolfenstein 3D, and the random, character building 1980s RPGs on PCs.

Gearbox talked about Borderlands 4 being their most open game with its exploration, but they didn’t quite call it an open world. And this new statement seems to corroborate that.

Gearbox surely saw where open world games have gone at this point, between Rockstar, Ubisoft, and to everyone’s surprise, Nintendo.

The Borderlands games always had some friction around how it transitioned players between levels, and we’re sure Gearbox was inspired with the idea that they could adapt their game to an open world.

But if Gearbox didn’t go so far as to create a dense world with points of interest, or encourage you to treat it like a collect-a-thon, they were not married to making it an open world at all.

And we have seen where that discrepancy in expectations has disappointed fans. But maybe Gearbox is right not to push too far in that direction completely?

Maybe Borderlands 5 will turn out to be a real open world, with all these traits fans are looking for. And maybe, we might be surprised to find out that we actually hate that.

Gearbox will have to figure out if this openness was where they needed the franchise to go to, or if they should push to some other direction instead.