An undoubted highlight for many people watching the Gamescom Opening Night Live showcase on August 20th was the official announcement for Borderlands 4, which the developers have been hinting at for some time now and even more heavily recently as the Borderlands movie adaptation received an overwhelmingly negative response following its premiere. The teaser trailer that was released to announce Gearbox’s Borderlands 4 doesn’t reveal much about the upcoming game, but it’s enough to be picked apart by Borderlands fans who are hoping to find any detail to indicate what the fourth mainline game in the series will entail.
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Of course, the developers themselves have to join in on this internet sleuthing fun, with CEO of Gearbox Software Randy Pitchford sharing the teaser on his own social media, stating that “There are several secrets in the teaser for Borderlands 4. Some I have not seen commented on yet. What have you found!” Besides many fans being eager to point out the return of Lillith, the teaser also featured a brief image that many believed to also confirm the return of the series’ most infamous antagonist – Handsome Jack.
As Pitchford has responded to multiple of these claims today, the man people believed to be Jack is not him after all – which I guess can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your personal feelings toward him, but regardless it’s nice to see Gearbox not completely stuck in the past and propelling the series forward.
As for who the mystery person is if not Handsome Jack, Borderlands fans will likely be waiting quite some time before a definitive answer is provided, though thanks to another response from Pitchford today we know one detail that certainly inspires more questions to come to mind: “Not Jack. It’s much worse.”
Given that Handsome Jack is not only a fan favorite character for the franchise but one that is consistently applauded as one of the best villains in video games history, it’s a definite eyebrow raise moment to see Gearbox tease a character that’s “much worse” than him. From widespread murder, animal experiments, the destruction of New Haven, torture, assassination orders, multiple kidnappings iand imprisonments including that of his own daughter, and the general spread of tyranny and villainous behavior on Pandora, Jack has a big pile of skeletons in his closet.
I’m excited to see what Gearbox has in store for whomever this mystery figure is.
