Borderlands 4's new gun manufacturer system offers "more opportunity for surprise," even if Gearbox acknowledges that the previous system was pretty good.
Speaking to GamesRadar+, executive producer Chris Brock noted that with Borderlands 4, Gearbox is trying to overhaul movement and exploration, similar to the way that it attempted to overhaul gunplay in Borderlands 3. But that doesn't mean that shooting and looting isn't in the studio's crosshairs too
Five weapon manufacturers are returning to the Borderlands universe, alongside three new manufacturers. But Gearbox is adding the idea of 'licensed parts' to Borderlands 4, that allows behaviors from different manufacturers to appear on the same guns. "We give all these parts different behaviors and just let the system do its thing," Brock explains.
"The way we've done guns before is great," he continues, "but with the way we're doing it now there's more opportunity for surprise." Grabbing a new weapon and finding it's got a whole new effect might have its pros and cons - in his Borderlands 4 preview, Josh West said that getting a good roll still feels good, but the inability to tell if something actually fits your build is a tougher sell.
I do wonder how this will feel to players. The 'one billion guns' line that Gearbox rolled out for Borderlands 3 and Tiny Tina's Wonderlands felt a little overwhelming, even if I knew I was never going to see more than a tiny fraction of the total permutations. Adding even more randomization to that does seem like it's a good way to make the big number get even bigger, but there's a chaos to that randomization that might feel too much.
Responses from the Borderlands fan fest demo do seem to have been positive, but there's obviously no sense of true endgame in a thin slice of gameplay like that. I hope the system works well, but I do still fear the wrath of the Borderlands die-hards if it doesn't.
Elsewhere, things are a little more simple, with Borderlands 4 returning to some of the "simpler" mission design of Borderlands 1.
