The new Vault Hunter designs in Borderlands 4 are actually fine, you’re all just mean
Another year, another Game Awards trailer that puts Reddit’s hackers on edge. This time Border countries 4a game that has the unenviable task of following up both the phenomenal second part of the series and the very mixed reactions to Border countries 3. No, I’m not going to discuss the film here, I erased my memories of it with a Neuralyzer I borrowed from Will Smith.
We already knew a fourth Borderlands The title arrived thanks to a CGI reveal trailer in August, but this new trailer gave us both actual in-engine gameplay footage (which, unsurprisingly, looks a lot like the third game) and our first look at the four new titles. playable Vault Hunters. And boy, some Redditors sure aren’t happy about it.
The biggest concern when reading several long comment threads about these new protagonists is that they are just a bit generic. “Not one of them has the same personality in its appearance as any other game except Wonderlands,” says user u/SmileJakoby, referring to the (fairly mediocre) spin-off title Little Tina’s Wonderlands. Another user, u/k_afka_, says: “Those vault hunters look kind of boring, but hopefully they’re more interesting than they seem.”
I get it, I understand. These four new heroes don’t fill me with excitement based solely on their appearance. But here’s the thing: Borderlands has never actually been good at creating truly iconic character designs for players.
The new Vault Hunters are cut from the same cloth as the old ones
I mean it here: the Borderlands games may feature some visually striking characters here and there, but what makes most of the larger-than-life figures you’ll encounter on Pandora and beyond interesting are their great voice performances and unusual abilities.
For example, let’s look at the earlier Vault Hunters. Check out these four here:
Mordecai from the original game is basically just a skinny guy with a goatee, a sword, and a skintight outfit. What made him interesting and likeable was his extremely angry pet bird, low-key offbeat humor, and the extra characterization he got in the sequel as a friendly NPC. The same goes for Roland, who was actually just an ‘ex-soldier’ in the first game, before being given a leading role in the story of Border countries 2. Brick, who I love, at first glance is literally just a big, muscular guy in a tank top. Not exactly earth-shattering character design there, Gearbox.
Sure, we’ve got some nice ones: the playable Sirens Lilith, Maya, and Amara all look pretty interesting, but again, it’s their magical abilities that make them stand out from an aesthetic standpoint. And I can’t ignore Zer0 and his funky holographic faceplate, although what really sticks him in my memory is his deadpan, haikus-only dialogue.
The point is: the world of Borderlands is full of characters who, in a less violent and unhinged universe, probably could have been pretty regular people. That’s part of the appeal: you don’t play as the Chosen One, you’re just a random treasure hunter who gets caught up in a world-saving adventure, dressed in whatever ratty clothes you happened to put on that morning.
So I ask you hapless Redditors: give these newbies a chance. Sure, we get the same old tropes – cool guy, tough guy, tech girl, magical girl – but let’s at least see what cool ways they have of killing people before we pass judgment on them, yeah?