The ‘Borderlands 4’ Character Shorts A...

Gearbox and 2K is ready to launch Borderlands 4 in a mere two weeks, the most recent entry of their looter-shooter franchise. And for the final month or so, the studio has slowly peeled again the curtain on the sport’s 4 playable Vault Hunters by gameplay breakdowns and brief narrative movies.

Borderlands 4 takes place on a model new planet referred to as Kairos, the place the Vault Hunters—Siren Vex, Exo-Soldier Rafa, Forgeknight Amon, and Gravitar Harlowe—be a part of up with the world’s resistance fighters to convey down its oppressive ruler, the Timekeeper. The Vault Hunters’ particular person character shorts are a very good tease for what gamers can count on from their skills, and provides clues to the place these characters are coming from firstly of the sport.

In Vex’s brief, she’s a retail employee who winds up along with her Siren powers and by chance checks them out on her unsuspecting clients. Rafa’s video, in the meantime, establishes that he’s on the mercy of a tech company’s experimental super-soldier program and on the run after his commanding officer activates him.

The shorts themselves aren’t breaking new floor, however they’re charming and provides the Vault Hunters extra of an actual really feel than earlier entries. It helps that every video ends with the characters discussing the topic’s “origin story” round a campfire, amping up the  camaraderie.

In earlier video games, the Vault Hunters’ backstories had been revealed by in-game audio logs; Borderlands 3 marked the primary time Gearbox used shorts as a part of its advertising and marketing technique for the sport. Now, the movies appear to even be attempting to ascertain a tone. The sequence’ use of humor has all the time been divisive, however Borderlands 3 felt a bit a lot, one thing BL4’s writers nodded to in a latest interview with IGN. Narrative director Sam Winkler acknowledged that sport might really feel like a parody in its “worst hours,” and the crew appears to have taken a extra grounded method right here.

“Kairos is a totalitarian planet dominated over by this dictatorial determine,” lead author Taylor Clark informed IGN. “On this context of worldwide oppression, the Whac-A-Mole joke model didn’t make as a lot sense. [We had] to ensure the tone match the stakes of the world, and that the humor was rising organically out of conditions and character moments somewhat than the wild west really feel of the primary video games.”

That grounded really feel will persist by the sport’s post-launch DLC, whereas additionally exploring completely different tones and genres, as Gearbox has completed with earlier entries. Winkler, Clark, and narrative managing director Lin Joyce had been mum on what that’ll appear like, largely as a result of the DLC remains to be in growth they usually don’t absolutely know but. Till then, we’ll see if Borderlands 4 sticks the humorous touchdown when it releases September 12 for PC, Xbox Collection X|S, and PlayStation 5.

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