Borderlands 4 Team Shaped The Story Partly Around Their Own Internal Struggles

There have been a lot of questions about how the story of Borderlands 4 would go. Many point to the 3rd entry as the weakest of the bunch, and for many reasons. One of the key ones is that, unlike the other franchise entries, it didn’t try to create its own comedy and style, but instead, “followed trends” and tried to “please everyone” by bringing back characters in ways that didn’t make sense, and so on. Thus, it wasn’t exactly beloved. However, in an interview with The Gamer, Gearbox Software CEO Randy Pitchford made it clear that the story was one of the first things the team tried to settle on, and they didn’t mind reflecting on their own troubled past to get inspiration on what to do:

“With Borderlands 4, I remember when I got everybody into the room and we’re like, ‘okay, what are we going to do here?’ We felt confident with where we wanted to push tonally, with the style, and we knew that design would follow. So we really thought about the story and we thought about the themes.

That kind of congealed around this fundamental theme that I put in front of the team, which was related to what we were all going through at Gearbox, which is about the balance between freedom and order, about organization and autonomy.”

For those who don’t know, at various points in the franchise, Gearbox Software had many different owners/publishers. They used to be independent, and then they were eventually bought by The Embracer Group, which was the publisher for the 3rd entry. Now, they’re with Take-Two Interactive, and they’re being allowed to “be themselves again,” which was a huge influence on the story and the new world that players will be in.

“If you are the timekeeper, [it’s] about chaos versus safety and security. If you’re a freedom fighter in the world of Kairos, it’s about freedom versus fascism. And what’s interesting is these [are] themes that we’re feeling as a company, that all of us are feeling as talent, and that’s why we’re putting ourselves in the game.”

As ironic as it may sound, putting “themselves” as a focal point of the game’s story could be what saves it and elevates it to a new level, because that means they’re trying to make the story relatable to many, and just about everyone can understand a tale about fighting for freedom and to get out from those who are oppressing you.