Borderlands 4 designer points to Baldur's Gate 3 as an RPG inspiration for Gearbox's new and improved buildcrafting: "I want to hit the end game and be doing billions of damage"

Good news, RPG fans – you can expect Borderlands 4 to tap way more into the idea of creating unique, personalized character builds, as lead character designer Nick Thurston points to Baldur's Gate 3 and Path of Exile as games that influenced his approach to the upcoming looter shooter.

In an interview with Polygon, Thurston discusses the Vault Hunter Amon, specifically, noting that while "the idea of a brute is very satisfying," it's "also very one-note," which neither Amon – or Borderlands 4 more widely – are. As well as sounding like an interesting character when it comes to his backstory, he "alone has 87 passives," alongside the "Augment and the Capstone system" used to "drastically change the ability that each player has" on their skill tree, too.

As Polygon points out, it sounds like Gearbox's upcoming instalment is leaning a lot more into the "RPG" part of the action RPG genre this time around, and perhaps that's no surprise given that Path of Exile and Baldur's Gate 3 were brought up as personal inspirations by Thurston, who is a self-proclaimed "min-maxer."

He explains: "When I play an action RPG, I want to hit the end game and be doing billions of damage, but I want to do it in the way I want to do. In a lot of cases, there have been times where previous characters in our franchise have been very focused on one thing. But it was always really important to me that if you have this really cool character, you're going to want to use him in a bunch of different ways."

Thurston continues, explaining how Borderlands 4 should feel fresh every time you play thanks to all the different build variations you can lean into. "For me, whenever I'm playing an RPG and my friend picks a class, I don't want to pick the same class. It's like you're already doing this function, why do I need to do it?" he explains.

"In previous Borderlands titles, you could be like, 'If you're going to be Zero and I'm going to be Zero then we're both going to do the same thing.' Maybe that's fine and fun for you, but I really want to be like, we have four Amons in this group and every single one of them has a different build."

Considering that Borderlands 4 has around 30 billion (yes, billion) different guns to play with thanks to its many different weapon parts, yeah, this idea tracks across the board. It definitely sounds like fans are going to be busy next month when Gearbox's next game finally releases.

Gearbox boss Randy Pitchford says Wolfenstein 3D and Diablo influenced the OG Borderlands as the devs aimed to "blend the moment-to-moment fun of a shooter" with the satisfaction of progression.