Gearbox boss Randy Pitchford told Gamescom 2025 that Borderlands 4 will finally run on hardware that can match the team’s big ideas, so the world will open up, loading seams will vanish, and mobility will get a considerable boost, including a double-jump.
Pitchford explained how the team had to create narrow seams in prior games to hold a big world together, and that current hardware changed the math for them. Pitchford said, “With Borderlands 4 – when you talk about evolution – I think we’re finally able to have a point where the technology and the hardware has caught up to the ambition of what our game is.” He seemed relieved and excited at the same time.
Gameplay will feel wider and more continuous. No load times. It feels huge. Players will be able to summon personal vehicles that can “haul ass across the environment and go for miles without load time,” Pitchford said. That idea made me grin because vehicle runs that keep you in the world are kinda satisfying…
Pitchford also talked about mobility experiments and movesets and then praised the classic double-jump. He asked out loud, “Where in the rules of physics can I leap into the air and, out of mid-air, jump again?” and then answered his own thought with joyful honesty. Why add a double-jump? It changes how you traverse fights and platforms and it sounds like a lot of fun.
Historical note: the double-jump has been around since 1984, according to Guinness World Records, but Pitchford made a case that Borderlands 4 will use it in a world that now supports huge, seamless maps and bigger mobility ideas.
Quotes and off-the-cuff lines kept popping up during the interview and Pitchford leaned into the loopy vibe that the series has always worn. He said Borderlands sits between surrealism and realism and that those contradictions are how the series finds its identity. That makes sense to me!
Curious what will change in combat and exploration when maps are truly seamless? Wondering how double-jump will feel on higher-end rigs and consoles? Sound off below and tell me what you want to try first in Borderlands 4.
