2K were kind enough to invite us to go hands on with Borderlands 4 recently and at the event were Randy Pitchford, Founder and President of Gearbox and Andrew Reiner, Global Creative Executive.

During the hands on with the game, I had the chance to talk to the pair about Borderlands 4, including the new world, why a psycho mask is on the new world and why co-op is improved so much better in this latest game.

If you want to read about our hands on with the game, you can do that here.

Maxi-Geek: Last night the Creator’s Voice from Nintendo released about Borderlands 4 and I watched that, but the only thing that was missing from it was the games release date for that platform.

Randy Pitchford: Oh September 12, oh you mean for Switch 2, yeah that is not out yet. I actually don’t know, there’s a couple of factors that we have no control over that are going to be a part of that, but as soon as we know, we will tell the world.

Editor’s note: Randy did confirm afterwards that the Nintendo Switch 2 version of the game is being developed by Panic Button, alongside Gearbox Software.

This is not an official image, but just one that we dream about

Maxi-Geek: Borderlands 3 released 6 years ago now and in between then and now, there has been a significant increase in power available to players, with new consoles and graphics cards. You mentioned earlier that you brought back some elements that were original included in select ways due to budgets and limited power. Is there anything that you’ve brought back in this time, because you have that power and were you surprised that they worked?

Randy Pitchford: Well, I don’t know about surprise, but the biggest thing to me is how we can move data from storage to memory and that is immediately accessible by the CPU and the GPU, and that changes a lot. That’s why we can have a seamless world now, more than anything else and I don’t know if it is surprising but it’s something that Borderlands was always kind of meant to be and we just couldn’t do technically. If we did it wouldn’t look good, because there is only so much memory.

Now being able to make the best-looking version of Borderlands, combined with having a seamless world, we can get any amount of data we want in and out from storage in effectively instantaneously, it changes everything. It does create new problems, like it used to be the case with the load times, that if you were playing a co-op game and one person wants to go to the next section, everybody’s dragged with them, to keep everyone together.

But if you are playing co-op and there are no load times and everything in seamless, well what if you run off 3 miles in that direction? Then I run off in that direction, what do we do now? Then we have to do new features like fast-travel to friends or the inclusion of the big map, so you can see what is going on and where everybody is. I was talking about the guns earlier and it’s funny how what was a compromise back in Borderlands 1 with mix and matching parts, is something we lost once we had the capability to not do it a certain way. We are gaining that back with the licence parts concept and that just tickles me.

You get a licenced part and you get a licenced part

Maxi-Geek: Awesome, well something I have been curious about is the psycho mask. We saw it in the State of Play and I am curious from a story standpoint, I mean I get from a gameplay standpoint, it is something players can recognise and know its Borderlands. However, from a story standpoint, how does a planet that’s been lost for thousands of years have that same mask that Pandora had?

Randy Pitchford: Elpis. The citizens of Kairos look up because suddenly this moon appears and is tearing apart the veil and chunks are falling, pieces of the moon are coming to the surface. The people of Kairos have their eyes opened for the first time, like it is not even that we are not alone in the universe, but there is a universe. So, from Elpis, the pyscho mask and all the stuff that was on the moon from Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, that is now falling and raining to the surface of Kairos. Now that vault symbol, on this new culture on Kairos, that becomes the symbol of freedom in this new world.

When Kaylis rips her bolt and experiences things for the first time, if you watch that first teaser trailer, the mask is in a crater from one the meteors that fell out of the moon, that is her picking that up. We call her the Ripper Queen, because she gained freedom and then she started this whole cult and that became her symbol and it just took off from there. It is funny because she worships it like a religion and she has no idea what that symbol means to the people of Pandora, because she has never heard of Pandora.

Andrew Reiner: The part of the game you are playing right now is set in Fade Fields right now, it’s lush, it’s green, it’s a little different, but as you go further in, you’re going to see areas that have been affected by moonfall, with parts of Elpis falling and you are going to start to connect those dots.

Maxi-Geek: I have to ask, with Elpis being inhabited by Aussies, will there be many Aussie voices sounding out from Kairos?

Randy Pitchford: Unfortunately, not many of the Elpis people survived, some did, but I don’t think that any of our Aussie characters made it.

Editor’s note: Borderlands The Pre-Sequel was not made by Gearbox, but developed by 2K Australia in partnership with the studio.

Maxi-Geek: Borderlands has been known for its co-op gameplay, so where there anything that you wanted to bring in, aside from the previously mentioned warping, to make the game seamless this time around?

Randy Pitchford: We did do a lot, we invested in the co-op lobby, to make it more convenient to find and connect with people that you know, but also people that you don’t. We invested into the Big Map (MG: The Big Map is the in-game map you can view, which has a 3D look to it), so that’s a lot more convenient when playing in co-op and there are some other features built into it that make co-op nicer. When you bring up the games menu, you can see the list of names of people in your party, but you can also see the people that are not in your party, but are on your friends list so you can bring them into the game.

There has been a deep investment in that and across a lot of different fronts, some are more technical and some are quality of life. The goal wasn’t to be a best-in-class co-op experience, but we wanted to show the way, because we are dealing with this unique to where we are at with Borderlands now. Also, because we play Borderlands, a lot of those decisions inform us on what we need to do, in order to make it nice and comfortable to play.

So, I think there is a lot of lessons in the game that other co-op developers can learn from and we watch others, so we’ve learned some things as well. The state of co-op games is not the best right now, there are some folks who do it right and some that do half-assed attempts and it’s a bit sad, but we love playing co-op, so we wanted to get right for our game.

If you are playing solo, you are going to still enjoy a great game, we are not leaving them behind, but co-op does have a big advantage in the instanced loot. Like loot drops for each player in the group and that means more chances for a legendary weapon, which I can then throw at another player, so there is that. It is an awesome game to play solo and we spend just as much time in QA and internal play testing in solo, as we do in co-op, so I would hate for any solo player to get the impression that it’s not fun unless you play co-op.

Maxi-Geek: In the recent State of Play, it was revealed that players who do play co-op can experience the games in different difficulty levels. So, I could play on easy and a friend could play on hard. Was this something you wanted to add to the game, in order to welcome in new players?

Randy Pitchford: It’s really just a quality of life thing, because the reality of how people play. On launch day my wife is immediately going to be playing, she is my number one customer and while she is playing it, I am going to be in the war room, working on any issues that pop up. I will keep working away until I can’t then, I will sleep and someone else will take over and by the time I get to go home and play, she will be level 18 and I will be level 1, and we want to play together and that makes it work. That is the truth of how we play, because if you start the game with a friend and life gets in the way for you, your friend can still keep playing and when you both get time to play together, you can still enjoy the game. They don’t have to stop playing because you’re busy and you won’t have to stop playing if they’re busy.

Barney is not the only purple powered person around these parts

Maxi-Geek: It is the same thing I saw in MMOs, I used to play World of Warcraft with mates, if I was not playing every day like they were, they would power ahead. I would then get invited to do a raid, for level 25 and here is my level 15 character just not doing anything in it.

Randy Pitchford: And that sucks, so you either have to mess up your life to stay with it, or you miss out on the opportunity.

Maxi-Geek: It is one of the reasons I play very little of multiplayer in games these days, because if you don’t stay within that game and constantly grind those levels, you get left behind.

Randy Pitchford: So, we realised we can solve this algorithmically, because what matters is that this is not a competitive game. It doesn’t matter that we are exactly the same level, we can make it work. Let’s say that you’re way ahead of me, you at level 15 and me at level 9, because its cool when we are playing together and we are in an area that is a challenge for you, but for me they will be the right challenge for me. If we wanted a challenge, we go to an area where the enemies are level 18 for you, but for me they would be level 12 and it just works. Plus, the loot works as well, so we are getting loot that matches our levels. It is sophisticated under the hood, there is complexity there, but the result is that the player does not have to worry about, they can just play the game. All of this means is that you can just have fun playing the game and if your buddy more than you did, you can still play together.

Maxi-Geek: Speaking of together, there are some familiar faces that are coming back. How do you bring balance bringing back some characters from past games, be they numbered entries or not, against creating all new characters?

Andrew Reiner: That is something we talk about all the time.

Randy Pitchford: It is something we talk about a lot, one of the fortunate things here is that once we kind of knew what we were doing from a story perspective, the universe and characters told us what we needed to do. The situation was that Lilith teleported the moon away, so the question was well who is going to look for her? Which characters are going, and which ones will stay back? Which characters will go in groups and which ones will go solo? So, from a storytelling perspective, a lot of those answers just came from talk about that.

But like you said there are a lot of characters in the Borderlands universe, it’s impossible to do something that has all of them. You know, I don’t want to compare us to Star Wars but imagine trying to make a Star Wars movie with all of the characters, it is just not happening. So, for us, it is a tough choice to make, but I think we got really lucky this time, because the story told us what we needed. A character like Tannis is not going to be heading across the galaxy, she is going to stay in her lab. But someone like Moxxi and like Zane, well they are going to get their friend back and even Amara, she is sure going to go find Lilith. Something that is cool, is that we mapped out what everybody is doing, that does give us other opportunities too.

The 4 in the title matches the number of players

Maxi-Geek: Interesting. Well Borderlands 4 has its September 12 release date and that means the finish line is in sight. Is there something in the game, that you can’t wait for players to discover?

Andrew Reiner: Yes, but I can’t say.

Randy Pitchford: Two things came to my mind that I don’t want to spoil, so now I’m kind of fishing for something that I can’t spoil. Well, this is not a spoiler, but I think we’re shipping with the best end game that we have ever had and its going to take a minute for players to get to, cause the game is so freaking big. We have some awesome, awesome fans that are going to just destroy this game and they are going to tear into it and I kind of can’t wait, because there are some permutations of what is possible, that we haven’t even thought of yet.

I am also excited to see how Graeme does (Graeme Timmins is the Creative Director of Borderlands 4) and after we ship a game, he is the one that comes in and cleans up the mess. He’ll be in the post launch world, managing the ecosystem, fixing some bugs and now he is shipping the game. It’s like there is a guy after the party who has to clean up the kitchen, this time Graeme is the one cooking in the kitchen before the party. So, I can’t wait to see, because something is going to throw him for a loop and I just want to see what he does.

Andrew Reiner: I will say this, if you see it, you can get to it. Even if you are looking up, this is a big game.

Borderlands 4 is set to release on September 12 for PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, with pre-orders available now. At the time of publishing the Nintendo Switch 2 edition of the game does not have a release date.

Hands on with the game was made possible by 2K.