The Borderlands series pretty much invented the looter-shooter genre when the first entry in the now ubiquitous franchise launched all the way back in 2009. Two console generations and over 15 years later, Borderlands 4 is finally upon us, bringing with it more freedom, replayability – and of course – loot than ever before. That said, in amongst all of the sequel’s many changes and improvements, by far the most impactful is its overhaul to movement.
I’m a bit of a movement fiend, with many of my favourite titles gameplay-wise offering fast-paced moment-to-moment action on all fronts – from gunplay, to enemies and, perhaps most importantly, movement.
While the Borderlands series has over its numerous entries tweaked and improved the formula to make for a more satisfying overall experience, Borderlands 4 is finally addressing by far the franchise’s biggest downside: its movement tech. Thanks to this, Borderlands 4 now feels like a complete experience; once again sitting at the top of the looter-shooter podium.
Prior to discussing the innovations of Borderlands 4 specifically, I would be remiss to not mention the MANY performance issues which PC players in particular are suffering from currently. With the likes of frame rate drops, stutters and what appears to be a memory leak issue (among other performance woes), the Unreal Engine 5-developed title has quite the journey to go on before being deemed acceptable on PC.
Even on console, the experience is far from perfect, with noticeable framerate issues on PS5 across both graphics modes; the lack of a motion blur toggle and no Field-of-View slider – all of which can and do have an impact on the game's sense of movement and momentum. Hopefully these issues and more are all resolved in due course.
With that said, lets take a trip back to 2009 where everything started. The big claim to fame with the original Borderlands was the fact that the game featured a near infinite number of different weapons to pick up, collect and use.
Of course, a majority of these were simply alterations of a smaller subsect of guns comprised of random stats, but the incentive to collect and find your favourite gun aided in the sense of replayability – and ultimately satisfaction upon obtaining your desired ‘god roll’ weapon.
The gunplay itself was relatively floaty and lacking somewhat when it came to feeling the impact of the weapons themselves. Fortunately, the sheer variety of guns and their effects meant that the act of shooting still felt satisfying enough to keep players…playing.
In terms of movement and traversal however, Borderlands still had a long way to go. While perhaps less noticeable at the time, navigating the lands of Pandora is quite the slog, especially today. Of course, there were tech limitations at the time, necessitating the explorable lands being split up into segmented zones. Loading screens aside however, Borderlands 1 still felt somewhat sluggish due to the movement options available to players – or lack thereof.
Being a ‘modern’ shooter, Borderlands 1 did include many of the fundamentals: you could walk, sprint, crouch, jump, hip-fire, aim down sights, melee and shoot. Beyond this however, players wanting to navigate the zones of Pandora had to make do with poorly-controlled spawnable vehicles which could only be summoned at specific spots – or for those playing as Lilith – could use her ultimate ability ‘Phasewalk’ for a temporary boost in movement speed.
When compared to its contemporaries, Borderlands 1 DID do enough in the gameplay department to keep fans playing. More than 15 years later however and it has not aged too gracefully.
The same could be said for a majority of its sequels, with Borderlands 2 essentially serving as a more complete version of the first game (upping the variety on all fronts – including some movement skills for certain Hunters – while giving us a highly compelling villain to fight), and the Pre-Sequel being a spin-off of sorts.
That being said, the pre-sequel in particular did give us our first look at new movement tech, with its moon-based setting allowing for low-gravity areas.
It wasn’t until the launch of Borderlands 3 in 2019 however when we would see our first proper overhaul of the series' core gameplay.
Thanks to its longest development cycle yet and the added horsepower of the 8th console generation, Borderlands 3 brought a lot of new to the gameplay department. Beyond the additional suite of guns, grenades, Vault Hunters and enemies, Borderlands 3 introduced the biggest evolution in its movement and traversal yet.
Now, alongside the ability to walk; run; jump and crouch, you could also mantle objects; slide and do a big slam. Many of these are now fundamentals in first-person shooters and as such need little explanation. It is worth noting however that the slide in particular did feature a degree of momentum depending on the angle of the decline – certainly nothing new by that point but welcome nonetheless.
While the slam attack is pitched primarily as being…an attack, it also serves as a nice and quick way to get to lower levels of a zone; and thus can be counted in the list of new movement tech additions.
Last but also least in terms of base mechanics, you’ve got new vehicles which allow for greater movement and handling; albeit with pretty much all of the same limitations as the previous games.
Beyond certain Vault Hunter skills which can boost movement, Borderlands 3’s Shield mods feature various flow-buffing boosts, including the possibility for increased movement speed, increased slide speed and enhanced slide distance.
Though relatively small in stat terms, these mods could allow for much improved traversal of the game’s zones – and if used correctly could be more effective than even the vehicles.
Speaking of the zones, Borderlands 3’s maps include a greater deal of verticality alongside fewer invisible walls which CAN make navigation more fun and rewarding, if you use the game’s new jumping and slamming capabilities.
That said, while the zones may be more detailed and complex, they still feel rather limiting, with momentum being halted often thanks to loading screens and some older design mentalities.
Once you’ve completed Borderlands 3’s main campaign you gain access to its post-game content, which includes the new Mayhem Mode. Though there is much more to the system than I will be touching on, for our purposes the primary modifier is in how it vastly speeds up movement and combat based on certain parameters.
While all of the core movement mechanics remained the same, them being amped up to 11 meant that each encounter would now feel even more action-oriented, fast paced and controllable but in a chaotic kind of way.
The biggest downside with this increase in movement speed is that it primarily applies to combat scenarios – with some of the boosts necessitating an enemy kill in order to activate. In this way, Borderlands 3’s late game movement tech was somewhat backwards in nature.
While I do appreciate being able to hop from one side of the arena to the other all the while raining down bullets, rockets and whatever else I have in my arsenal, non-combat areas felt even more comparatively sluggish as a result.
All in all, Borderlands 3 was easily the biggest jump (and slam) we’d seen in gameplay for the series up to that point, but it still left plenty to be desired. Cut to another 6 years later and Borderlands 4 is finally upon us; bringing with it a ton of new additions, highly-requested quality-of-life improvements and – most importantly – brand new movement tech.
One of my biggest gripes with Borderlands 3 was its continued use of relatively small zones which necessitated loading screens to navigate between them. Across the game, BL3 featured 6 different regions, each of which included multiple zones within them (up to a dozen in some cases).
Borderlands 4 has now cut this down to just 4 open-worldish regions which should not only allow for fewer stop-and-go instances, but offers more space for the game’s new movement mechanics to come into play.
Inspired by the likes of Destiny (another looter-shooter), Borderlands 4 now allows you to summon/digistruct a personal sparrow-like vehicle whenever you’d like. Alongside improved controls and manoeuvrability, this new system means that players will no longer have to trek to the nearest Catch-A-Ride garage in order to select a vehicle, spawn it, and then start heading to wherever you wanted to go. While certainly a game-changer in terms of convenience, the greatest additions are saved for the player characters themselves.
One of the best ways to boost a game’s sense of mobility is by giving players a grapple hook…and so Borderlands 4 has done exactly that. Not only does this have beneficial implications for combat itself, but of course you can now zip from area-to-area in any direction. Though this could make some platforming redundant, its benefits are far more all-encompassing.
The second primary piece of new equipment is the jetpack, which offers far more than just a single additional movement technique. Thanks to the influx of opportunities it presents, players can now double jump; glide omni-directionally; and dash for near-complete aerial freedom.
As is the case with the best movement-focused titles, Borderlands 4 allows you to chain your new abilities together in order to make for even greater moments of momentum. You could fling yourself in the air with a grapple, double jump for added height and distance; air dash forwards; follow it up with a glide/hover and end it all in a slick slide.
Of course, each of these mechanics present ample new opportunities during combat too, but on pure movement-feel, Borderlands 4’s potential is almost as infinite as its guns.
In many ways, the looter-shooter genre lives and dies with Borderlands. While there have been a few entrants into the space, Borderlands 4’s main contemporary in both budget and size is Bungie’s Destiny 2. Unlike Borderlands however, D2 is a free-to-play experience which focuses heavily on additional monetisation; and in being a live-service, sucking up as much of the players’ time as possible is the real goal.
Ergo, the loot in Destiny 2 is designed with a hefty focus on balance, extreme levels of grinding, and artificial limitations and time-gating in order to keep you coming back. In many ways, Destiny 2 is as much of a looter-shooter as it is an MMO – which is to say not much at all.
Bungie's idea of a loot chest
Despite this, D2 did have some things going for it over the Borderlands series pre-BL4. Aside from the act of running and perhaps sliding, Destiny 2’s movement far exceeded Borderlands, with players able to utilise various different types of assist abilities; from triple jumps to a directional glide and the iconic blink…albeit none at the same time.
Destiny 2 even has a dodge of sorts, which was better than the nothing Borderlands 3 gave you. Of course, as I touched upon earlier, Destiny 2 also eventually added a grapple hook as part of its Strand sub-class.
Although not really relevant to this conversation, D2 also featured Bungie’s highly satisfying first-person gun combat (though even the older Borderlands 3 was more than serviceable in that respect).
With the release of Borderlands 4, I can think of very few reasons as to why I would want to play any other looter-shooter. In the 6 years since Borderlands 3 came out, the genre has evolved very little, leading to fears that Gearbox would rest on its laurels.
Fortunately, Borderlands 4 (in my eyes) presents the full and complete package – and so I look forward to spending the next 250+ hours zipping across the planet Kairos…once the console FOV problems are fixed that is.
KitGuru says: Are you a fan of the looter-shooter genre? Is good movement in a game important to you? Why aren’t there many major looter-shooters out there? Let us know your thoughts down below.
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