Randy Pitchford and the rest of Gearbox became surprisingly candid about what they were thinking when they were making Borderlands 4.
Pitchford was in a conversation in PAX AU with global creative executive Officer Andrew Reiner and narrative director Sam Winkler.
We’ve transcribed their conversation, edited for clarity, below:
Andrew: Sam, I know you’ve been looking at the feedback as well relating to storytelling. Any interesting takeaways that you’re seeing?
Sam: It’s been great. It’s been really good. I’ll be honest. I’m really happy with it.
Randy: Isn’t it weird to ship a game where like the biggest complaint isn’t like how we fucked up the story?
Sam: Yeah, it’s a relief for sure. Yeah.
Randy: Like we’re wondering like what is going to be the reaction, and everyone’s like, no, the story is awesome. The characters are great. We love it and game play is great.
And we’re like, God, I know there’s got to be some complaints. It’s like, okay, we’ll get technical. Cool. That’s cool. I’m happy to live in that world.
Sam: Six years ago, we sat in a room and figured out what this game was going to be and we stuck to it.
Randy:…We knew what we wanted and what we felt was going to work for the audience. And I’m really glad like and you and the team just crushed it on the storytelling.
Was Gearbox Really Worried About Borderlands 4?
For fans, Gearbox’s slow decline after Borderlands 2 only seemed like a mild thing to be sad about. But the studio was experiencing a lot more turbulence from their perspective.
Borderlands The Pre-Sequel was perhaps the biggest failure they had in the franchise. While this game does have its fans, its commercial performance led to 2K Australia shutting down.
Battleborn was an even bigger flop for the studio. The MOBA released one month apart from Overwatch, and it absolutely did not survive the comparison.
Borderlands 3 is not a flop at all. In fact, it received higher metascores than Borderlands 4. But the consensus today is that it didn’t actually deliver on a satisfying story or meta, especially for its longtime fans.
Even if Borderlands 4 launched with a lot of performance issues, it is otherwise now one of the most popular games in the franchise. Some fans consider this its true peak.
Gearbox knows better than to hyperfocus on their metascores and they’re paying attention to what their players say.
Overall, it looks like Gearbox felt that they pulled off on what they intended, especially in terms of story and game design.
