5 Improvements Borderlands 4 Needs

Developer Gearbox is scheduled to release Borderlands 4 on September 12, 2025. The team has had nearly five years to sit with the fan reaction to Borderlands 3, which sold and reviewed well, but was also criticized for lame humor and “bullet sponge” enemy design. In the meantime, the team launched Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, a tabletop RPG spin-off from the main Borderlands series that didn’t review or sell as well, but was praised for its improved humor and gameplay, giving hope to players wanting the fan-favorite series to take a leap with Borderlands 4. With that in mind, these are the improvements we’re hoping to see in Borderlands 4.

Don’t Let the Tone Swing Too Far

Most would tell Gearbox to rein in the humor, and the developer has said Borderlands 4 will be the “darkest” game in the series’ history. However, Borderlands is known for its humor and has been genuinely funny in the past. Sure, it’s often very hit-or-miss, but it would be a mistake to completely ditch what made the franchise so popular.

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Instead, Gearbox needs to tone things down drastically from Borderlands 3 while not becoming an overwhelmingly serious game. That could be a tough balance to strike for a team that’s focused on lowbrow humor for so many years, but it’s one of the most important updates to the formula the team can make.

Better Enemy Design

As mentioned, the Borderlands series has too often relied on “bullet sponge” enemies over well-designed encounters. Borderlands 3 did add stages to boss fights, but the series needs to rethink its overall enemy design to keep players engaged.

Enemies need more attack patterns. Bosses need more unique mechanics. In short, Borderlands 4 has to update the enemy design or risk being left behind as other games continue to improve. Shooting a Badass variant for five minutes might’ve felt challenging in 2009, but the industry has moved forward. It’s time Borderlands does as well.

Update the Quest Design

This sort of ties in with the last point, but it’s not 2009 anymore. Borderlands will probably always include fetch quests to stretch things out, but we’d prefer the series focus on large setpiece missions and clever side quests.

Borderlands’ quest design has always felt a little MMO-lite, but we’re hoping Borderlands 4 gives us a bit more to chew on. It doesn’t need to be a complete overhaul of how Borderlands works, we just want more from the fourth mainline game in a series in 2025.

Scale Back the Vehicles

Let’s be honest, the vehicles in Borderlands have always been serviceable at best. More often than not, they’re annoying to control and even worse to fight from. It’s time to ditch them. Gearbox won’t get rid of them completely (we’ve already seen that in the trailers), but we’d like to see them rely on them much less.

If that means smaller open worlds, we’re all for it. Borderlands doesn’t need extra bloat in its world. The team at Gearbox should instead focus on making distinct areas filled with content. Driving across a map has always been boring, and we’d be more than willing to shrink the map if that means we don’t have to catch a ride again.

Less (But More Unique) Guns

It sounds sacrilegious to say that Borderlands 4 should have fewer guns, but it’s true. The series has long touted having “87 bazillion” guns, but keeping your inventory in check has long been a hassle.

Instead of focusing on quantity, Gearbox should give us more quality. That doesn’t necessarily mean boosting the number of Legendary guns that drop. In fact, we already know they’re going the opposite direction after the fan response in Borderlands 3. That said, we’d love to see Gearbox tone down the sheer number of weapons in Borderlands 4 in favor of guns that can completely change your build. Thankfully, the new part-swapping system in the algorithm should make for some ludicrously powerful weapons, even if we don’t get our wish for fewer total guns.

That’s where the real power comes from with a great gun. Seeing the numbers go up is fun, but finding something that totally warps your playstyle is Borderlands at its best. More of that, please, Gearbox.