Another year, another Game Awards trailer drop that gets people’s hackles up on Reddit. This time it’s Borderlands 4, a game that has the unenviable task of outdoing both the series’ phenomenal second installment and the highly mixed response to Borderlands 3. No, I’m not going to discuss the movie here, I wiped my memories of it with a Neuralyzer I borrowed from Will Smith.
We already knew a fourth Borderlands title was on the way thanks to a CGI reveal trailer back in August, but this new trailer gave us both some actual in-engine gameplay footage (which, unsurprisingly, looks much like the third game) and our first look at the new title’s four playable Vault Hunters. And boy, some Redditors sure aren’t happy about them.
The main concern, from reading through several lengthy comment chains about these new protagonists, is that they’re simply a bit generic. “Not one of them has the same amount of personality in their look as anything from every game but Wonderlands”, says user u/SmileJakoby, referring to the (pretty mediocre) spin-off title Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands. Another user, u/k_afka_, says: “Those vaulthunters look kinda bland to me, but hopefully they’re more interesting than they appear”.
I get it, I do. These four new heroes don’t fill me with excitement purely based on their looks. Here’s the thing, though: Borderlands has basically never been good at making truly iconic player character designs.
The new Vault Hunters are cut from the same cloth as the old
I’m being serious here: the Borderlands games might feature some visually striking characters here and there, but what makes most of the larger-than-life figures you meet on Pandora and beyond interesting are their stellar voice performances and unusual abilities.
Let’s take a look at the earlier Vault Hunters, for example. Look at these four right here:
Mordecai from the original game is basically just a skinny dude with a goatee, a sword, and a tight-fitting outfit. What made him interesting and likable was his extremely angry pet bird, low-key offbeat humor, and the extra characterization he got in the sequel as a friendly NPC. The same goes for Roland, who was essentially just ‘ex-soldier guy’ in the first game before getting a starring role in the narrative of Borderlands 2. Hell, Brick – who I love – is at first glance literally just a big muscly man in a tank top. Not exactly world-shattering character design there, Gearbox.
Sure, we’ve got some fun ones: the playable Sirens Lilith, Maya, and Amara all look fairly interesting, though again, it’s their magical abilities that make them pop from an aesthetic standpoint. And I can’t ignore Zer0 and his funky holographic faceplate, though what really makes him stick in my memory is his deadpan, exclusively-in-haiku dialogue.
The thing is, the world of Borderlands is full of characters who, in a less violent and unhinged universe, could’ve probably been pretty ordinary people. That’s part of the appeal: you’re not playing as the Chosen One, you’re just some random treasure-seeker who gets wrapped up in a world-saving adventure wearing whatever ragged-ass clothes you happened to put on that morning.
So I’m asking you, unhappy Redditors: give these newbies a chance. Sure, we’re getting those same old tropes – cool guy, beefy guy, techy girl, magic girl – but let’s at least see what cool ways they have to murder people before we pass judgment on them, yeah?
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