Check out the Borderlands 4 gameplay reveal – everything we now know

Gearbox has shared a first real look at Borderlands 4 gameplay with a dedicated State of Play stream hosted by Sony. Borderlands 4 is set to launch on 12th September 2025 for PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 2 and PC, with the release date having been brought forward by two week.

Check out the gameplay deep dive, played on PS5 Pro.

Hosted by Creative Director Graeme Timms and Senior Project Producer Anthony Nicholson, the gameplay deep dive saw the duo walk us through some of the missions we’ll see as you rampage across Kairos, the new weapons that can be generated, new and returning characters and Action Skills.

Borderlands 4 Setting and Story

Borderlands 4 takes us to the planet Kairos, a world that’s dominated by a ruthless dictator known as the Timekeeper, with an army of synthetic followers known as the Order. You, of course, will play as a Vault Hunter searching for mythical alien treasures in a race against time against the Timekeeper to uncover it.

Set after the rogue moon is teleported away from Pandora at the end of Borderlands 3 and into the orbit of Kairos, the planet has suffered devastating effects that have thrown the enforced order of the Timekeeper into disarray. The ordinary populace that had been happily controlled by their rulers.

Campaign & Co-op

Borderlands 4 has a new lobby system that allows for full cross-play between platforms.

Local split-screen is returning.

And you can set independent difficulty levels for each player.

Obviously you’ll want to play through the main story, but Borderlands 4 has full mission and boss replay, so you can revisit parts of the game and don’t need to use saves to fight bosses a second time.

World Activities

The demo took us to the frigid zone of Terminus Range, one of four zones that are featured in the game as large open worlds to explore. Dynamic weather effects and dynamic events can take place to give you fresh activities.

The main mission here was to break into a secret blacksite in the mountains on the hunt for Lillith, but along the way a silo that needed to be hacked to unlock the tech within and boost the rebellion (and provide zipline points to shoot you up into the sky with he balloon that emerges).

Finding Vault Key Fragments can eventually unlock access to a high level dungeon with challenging combat and the top tier loot rewards.

New Vault Hunters

Two new Vault Hunters were revealed: Vex, the new Siren in the game who uses supernatural Phase energy to either empower herself or summon purple spectral creatures to fight alongside, and Rafa, a former TDR soldier with an experimental exo suit, who can unleach arc knives around them in a swirl pain.

Each Vault Hunter has three Action Skills to choose between, giving a unique unlock tree that can be further tweaked using Cap Stones. These can be amended on the fly or fully respec’d back at town.

Each character also has a passive Trait. For Vex, her summons can attune to the elemental damage of the weapon in her hand, so you can have a fire cat running around alongside you.

Weapons

All weapons and gear comes from one of eight manufacturers, with Jakobs, Maliwan, Vladog, Tediore and Togue returning alongside the new Order (charge and release), Ripper (full blast), and Daedalus (multiple ammo types) manufacturers.

In a great new twist, weapons can be customised with Licensed Parts from different manufacturers to lend properties of one to another and give you more control over how they work.

Enhancements replace Artefacts from previous games, providing specific boosts to weapons that include parts from a certain manufacturer.

A separate gear slot is reserved for Ordinance, your heaviest weapons like launchers and machine guns. These are not ammo-limited but instead are available on a cooldown to make them constantly useful.

Looting

Gearbox has heard the complaints over Borderlands 3’s looting, and looked to completely rebalance the system. In particular, Legendary weapons in Borderlands 3 were too common, while other good to great weapons were too difficult to find. So loot found in crates should generally be more rewarding now, while Legendary weapons are less frequent and should feel much more special.

Loot will be instanced for each player, so no worries about rushing to snap up the best stuff.

Movement and Combat

There’s a bunch of new movement abilities that work both while exploring the world and when in combat. Glide, double jump, dash, grapple, they give a lot of freedom.

These really came to the fore in a huge boss battle that forced the pair to keep jumping around and moving to dodge purple blasts of energy.

You also always have access to a personal Digi Runner hover vehicle that can be customised with fresh paint jobs, and also gives you another offensive option with its guns.

You can also fast travel to friends if you get separated.

That’s everything we spotted in the quick-moving gameplay deep dive, and Borderlands 4 is looking pretty good if you ask us! Stay tuned for more, with a tease of a first hands on in June, leading up to release in September.