Wreak havoc across the dangerous new planet Kairos when Borderlands 4 launches on September 12, 2025! In today's special Gameplay Showcase presentation, Creative Director Graeme Timmins and Senior Project Producer Anthony Nicholson showed off the deepest ever look at Borderlands 4's explosive, carnage-filled gameplay. Check out two of our four new Vault Hunters, all kinds of new gear, the deadly regions you'll explore on Kairos, and much more!
Following the cataclysm seen in our Teaser trailer and the contentious clash of our First Look trailer, the tyrannical Timekeeper is here to admonish us as we meet our four new Vault Hunters in this pulse-pounding Gameplay Trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4qeqPZJTaE
Ever since Gearbox created the looter shooter genre nearly 16 years ago, every Borderlands game has continued to refine the formula, delivering more loot and action with each entry. Borderlands 4 is hands-down the best, most ambitious Borderlands game to date.
This all-new adventure is the perfect entry point for new players—and for existing players, you'll find the awesome gameplay you know and love cranked up to 11, with new movement abilities, the biggest and baddest enemies yet, a vast new planet to explore, and of course, billions of guns to loot. See for yourself in our Gameplay Deep Dive:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUNd0bHHWlo
Wreak havoc as a Vault Hunter
The Borderlands games are set in an unforgiving sci-fi universe, where life is cheap and guns are plentiful. You play as a Vault Hunter, a badass mercenary on the hunt for alien Vaults, wielding wild guns and devastating abilities. In the Gameplay Deep Dive, you can get to know two of our four all-new Vault Hunters: Vex the Siren, who uses supernatural phase energy to empower herself and can conjure deadly minions, and Rafa the Exo-Soldier, a former Tediore trooper who wears an experimental exo-suit capable of digistructing an arsenal of weapons. You can check out all four Vault Hunters—Vex, Rafa, Amon, and Harlowe— on our new Borderlands 4 Game Info page.
Each Vault Hunter class in Borderlands 4 offers a unique playstyle that empowers you to choose from three signature abilities that serve as your Action Skills. We're delivering our most advanced skill tree system yet, letting you enhance your Action Skills with special augments and capstone abilities. You can choose from three branching paths of passive abilities that enable an incredibly wide variety of distinctly powerful builds.
Every Vault Hunter also has a unique Trait that shapes their playstyle; for instance, Vex's Trait makes her Action Skills attune to the element of the weapon she currently has equipped, incentivizing an arsenal of elemental weapons to shock, burn, or freeze enemies based on the situation.
Playing as a Vault Hunter should make you feel like an unstoppable force on the battlefield, unleashing Action Skills to control the flow of combat and blasting through enemies with an arsenal of outrageous weaponry. You can also flex even more skill expression during battle with a wide range of new movement abilities, including gliding, dashing, double-jumping, and point-grappling!
Welcome to Kairos
In Borderlands 4, you're dropped into the middle of Kairos, an all-new planet rife with warring factions, deadly fauna, and desperate inhabitants. For thousands of years, the oppressive Timekeeper kept the planet hidden, controlling its inhabitants with cybernetic implants called Bolts and an army of synthetic soldiers known as The Order.
But six years before the events of Borderlands 4, a rogue moon suddenly teleported into Kairos' orbit, shattering the planet's protective veil and plunging the world into chaos. Now the denizens of Kairos have started rising up, with some even ripping their Bolts right out of their skulls. That's the situation our four Vault Hunters have crash-landed into: a planet with a population primed to explode, and you're the spark.
In your quest to ignite a revolution against the Timekeeper, you'll meet unique factions that you'll need to recruit to your cause, including a slew of new characters and some returning faces that'll be instantly familiar to Borderlands fans. Fan-favorite characters like Claptrap, Moxxi, and Zane are returning—but you'll also meet a new cast of charming allies and loathsome adversaries that await you on Kairos. Get a sneak peek of some of the NPCs you'll encounter over on the Borderlands 4 Game Info page!
To help you get around Kairos' sprawling, seamlessly connected spaces, you can now summon a personalized Digirunner vehicle at will and jet-boost your way towards the horizon. Kairos is a world that exudes craftmanship and encourages you to explore it at your own pace—with the option for guidance provided by your ECHO-4 robot buddy—as you take on new enemies, encounter world events, and discover hidden treasures.
From Order patrols to world bosses, there’s always something to shoot and loot as you explore Kairos. You'll also come across short gameplay experiences and new activities that auto-grant a tracked mission whenever you discover them—like Silos, which house old, decommissioned Order tech that you can hijack for the Crimson Resistance with the help of ECHO-4.
Once you've reclaimed a Silo, it will reveal the approximate location of a Vault Key Fragment. Collect enough fragments and you'll unlock a hidden Vault—a high level dungeon with challenging combat and serious loot. Reclaimed Silos release a hacked communications balloon that you can zipline up to start gliding through the air towards your next objective, and they can also be used as Fast Travel points!
Wreaking havoc across Kairos is awesome alone and even better with friends—which is why it's easier than ever to jump into co-op multiplayer via our improved lobby system, with drop-in/drop-out action for up to 4 players online and full crossplay at launch.* Borderlands 4 is designed for co-op from the ground up, with instanced loot for each player, dynamic level scaling, individual difficulty settings, and the option to Fast Travel directly to other players to keep the party together and having fun through the whole campaign.
Gearing up for a fight
In the new gameplay footage, you can watch Vex and Rafa go on the offensive across the Terminus Range, where one of the Timekeeper's generals, Vile Lictor, has been conducting nefarious experiments. You'll need to break into his secret blacksite with the help of Amara, an allied Siren and former Vault Hunter (who you might've played as in Borderlands 3).
You can also see the destructive power of some deadly weapons from Borderlands 4's eight unique manufacturers: Order, Ripper, Daedalus, Tediore, Maliwan, Jakobs, Vladof, and Torgue, each boasting their own devastating strengths. Longtime Borderlands fans will notice that three of these manufacturers are brand new, with fresh characteristics:
- Order guns focus on precision with high-powered bursts
- Ripper guns charge up to go fully automatic
- Daedalus guns are easy-to-use and incorporate multiple ammo types
- Tediore guns are reloaded by tossing them as grenades
- Maliwan guns specialize in elemental damage to burn, freeze, and shock
- Jakobs guns can fire bullets as fast as you can shoot with ricochets on critical hits
- Vladof guns have a high rate of fire and huge magazines
- Torgue guns have heavy-duty explosive rounds that can switch to sticky projectiles
With the new Licensed Parts system, you can find guns that incorporate the behaviors and abilities from multiple manufacturers into a single weapon, fueling our wildest loot variety yet. In addition, Borderlands 4 reworks the approach to the iconic Legendary guns that have unique effects you won't find on any other piece of gear. In Borderlands 3, Legendaries dropped too often, devaluing them and making other loot feel less special overall. In Borderlands 4's new system, not only do all guns feel great, but now Legendary drops will truly be special events.
Farming coveted gear is much more intuitive now that you can replay entire missions or use Moxxi's Big Encore Machine to fight bosses whenever you'd like. Speaking of bosses, Borderlands 4 makes them bigger and better than ever—like Vile Lictor himself, a monstrosity you can glimpse at the end of the Gameplay Deep Dive. These boss fights will put all your new skills, gear, and abilities to the ultimate test, requiring that you think quickly and adapt to whatever each boss throws at you.
There are also new gear slots to specialize your builds even further:
- Ordnance, a shared slot for Grenades and Heavy Weapons like rocket launchers, recharges on a cooldown to keep you locked and loaded during especially tough encounters
- Enhancements, which replace the Artifact slot seen in Borderlands 3, augment your weapons based on their manufacturer, rewarding you with extra firepower when you optimize your gear loadout
- Repkits add utility by letting you heal yourself or activate temporary buffs to help turn the tide of an intense battle
We're incredibly excited to unveil more Borderlands 4 when we host our first hands-on event this June, with tons to show off ahead of the full launch on September 12, 2025! Wishlist Borderlands 4 now and stay tuned as we reveal more in the coming months!
*Online play requires an Internet connection and a SHiFT Account. Terms apply.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1285190/Borderlands_4/