Borderlands 4 devs on developing for Switch 2 and evolution of 'little pet project'

EXCLUSIVE: Borderlands 4 launches in September, and the devs talked with us about the evolution of the franchise once considered a pet project, working with Nintendo, and much more

In case you missed it, we were able to play Borderlands 4 last month. The game, which takes the original loot-shooter formula to a new location with fresh characters, challenges, and all-new Vault Hunters, is shaping up very nicely thanks to a "nothing is sacred approach" to refining things.

It's likely to be one of the biggest games of 2025, so I wanted to find out how it feels to see what was considered a bit of a 'pet project' for the team at Gearbox.

I sat down with Chris Brock, executive producer on the game (and a Borderlands veteran that's been around since the start), and Taylor Clark, the game's lead writer.

"The Little Pet Project that could"

It's hard to believe that there was a time where Borderlands wasn't synonymous with developer Gearbox. Previously working on Half-Life expansions and ports of games from other teams, Chris Brock reflects on being introduced to Borderlands.

He said: "When I first got to Gearbox, they were, they were showing me around the studio and they were like this is Brothers in Arms, and this is Aliens [Colonial Marines]."

"And this is a thing we're kicking around, we don't know what it's called yet, but it's gonna be a combination of a shooter and a Diablo-style thing"

"To go from there and see the art style change, to see the humour injected into it, to see it take off, has been crazy."

"It's easy to forget that our little pet project has become like this juggernaut," he adds.

"It feels like a real planet"

One of Borderlands' calling cards, aside from its humour and cel-shaded artstyle was its dusty, frontier-like setting on the planet Pandora. And, while the series has experimented with more exotic locales, its latest entry sees it leave its forebears behind.

Clark explains that while the narrative decision to move away from Pandora at the end of Borderlands 3 was made before he joined the company, new location Kairos is the "next stop on the trail" for players.

"In Borderlands 3 it was like, 'let's hop around between like all these different planets'", Brock adds.

"But they're Star Wars planets, right? This whole planet's a swamp, this whole planet is a desert", and we wanted to build a place that felt new and alive and expansive so you could use all these traversal abilities".

Being developed for the latest generation of consoles has afforded the team more opportunities, too, along with an improved engine.

"Between the combination of the two, I feel like we're able to finally execute on the vision we had like 18 years ago when we were working on Borderlands 1," Brock admits.

"We didn't imagine it as this world segmented into zones. That was just kind of how we had to build things, because that's what the tech allowed us to do, right? But now between, the hardware and the solid state drives and then the engine, you know, being more conducive to making this kind of game, we can actually execute on that now".

"It feels like a real planet for the first time," Clark adds.

"Where you can drive and around and go from the grassy areas to the forest, to the mountains and snow, without ever breaking it up with a loading time or anything, it feels like you're really traversing a planet."

Working with Nintendo

I was curious about how Switch 2 development has been going for Borderlands 4. The game was announced before Nintendo's console was, but it's slated to launch on the hybrid system this year.

"Nintendo's a really good partner," Brock explains. "You know, we've been working on it for longer than you might imagine."

"Developing for hardware that's not out yet is always tough, because while we're figuring out, so are they right? But they've been a really good partner. They've been keeping us in the loop to the best they can."

"They've done everything they could to make it as painless as possible," he adds.

Build it beautiful

One thing I was particularly curious about in Borderlands 4 is its approach to character building. With an option to retry encounters to get the specific loot drop you're after, and with the growth of ARPGs and loot-driven games pushing more and more character build options, I was curious as to how much players will be able to "break" Borderlands 4.

"It was definitely an intent to have that go further than we've ever gone before," Brock explains.

|We started Borderlands 1 with one action skill, and you have three skill trees, right? If you're Roland, you're throwing a turret, that's what you do and it's just changing how you interact with that turret, right?"

"We've been trying to give players, over the course of the franchise, more and more ways to differentiate their character from someone else's same character, and I think that this time we've just kind of blown it out and gone crazy with it, which adds to the longevity of the game."

"It adds to the players' ability to express themselves."

New jokes

Speaking of expression, Borderlands has always been as much about humour as it has offering billions of guns for players to find, but the third game faced criticism for a bigger focus on meme-culture.

In response, the team has promised a more "grounded" Borderlands 4, so I asked Clark what that means to the team.

"We were very aware [of the feedback] and we listened to what people say. We pay attention to all of it and take to heart the valid, points that people make. But at the same time, part of it is creative too, in the sense that like, Pandora was kind of a wild west, right?"

"It was this wasteland ruled over by corporations fighting each other. So the more shotgun tone made more sense in the context of Pandora. Now we have moved to this totalitarian planet that is being crushed by this ominous figure from above," he explains.

And we want our tone to feel evolved and true to those stakes. And so I think that you'll find that it's not just Gatling gunning jokes at you, but it's still funny. There's still moments of humor, it's just like, it's, it's, it's leavened, it's paced."

"We're trying to pay as close attention as we can to the dramatic stakes of the moment. We don't want to repeat ourselves as creative people, you want to have characters who feel new and fresh."

"[New character] Rush doesn't feel like anyone else in the franchise, and there's other characters who don't feel like anybody who's ever been [in the series]."

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