Borderlands 4 | The “When”, “Where” and “How” on everything about Gearbox’s next big launch

This is it, folks: Borderlands 4 is almost here.

As Gearbox and 2K Games’s latest outing on the eponymous co-op first-person shooter franchise nears its release date, Borderlands 4 still has a lot of questions to be answered. Plus, even though we still got a review of it, we gotta stop talking about Hollow Knight: Silksong eventually.

So read on to find out everything related to Borderlands 4!

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The plot (and the playable cast)

According to all official information, Borderlands 4 is set in a new place called “Kairos”: a hidden — effectively prison — planet once governed by a Timekeeper who controlled citizens with an iron grip through the synthetic army called The Order.

The game’s chaotic event (it’s Borderlands: every game has a chaotic event) this time came when a rogue moon teleported from Pandora pierced Kairos’s veil. This was set up by Borderlands 3, if you recall: essentially, publisher 2K Games places the timeline roughly six years after that breach. The world is arranged into four seamlessly connected zones, with dynamic weather and “next to no loading”.

As for the playable characters, here’s what we know:

• Vex — A Siren with a rough-and-tough upbringing even before gaining her powers, Vex is cynical and sarcastic pessimist who sees the worse on everything, but also shows empathy and belief in helping others to strive. As with all Sirens, she wields supernatural phase energy that causes a lot of damage to a lot of ground on the battlefield, as well as channeling that energy to increase her own powers or summon minions to fight alongside her.
• Rafa — Born in microgravity, Rafa has severe alterations to his bone density, which is why he would never survive anywhere else. This, however, did not dissuade him from his desire for exploration, which led him to sign up to Tediore’s military force. Now bearing an exo-suit, it didn’t take long for him to realize that his military overlords never intended to make do on their part, so Rafa just…took off, exo-suit in tow. As a fighter, he’s probably your main DPS, combining a fully melee-capable capacity with some fast-paced moves that allow him to hit a target very quickly, and right where it hurts the most. He can also, however, be more strategic and take out enemies from afar with his plethora of mid and long range weapons, all built into his exo-suit.

I do not care, however, for him stealing my nickname and 2K Games will hear from my lawyer about this.

(Editor’s note: wh–what lawyer? No, they won’t!)

• Harlowe — A former Maliwan combat scientist, with a penchant of breaking things down to understand how they work—kinda like my 11-month-old niece except Harlowe has guns. According to the official lore, this tech drive made her an outcast amongst her Traunt relatives, but also gave her ample room to improve as a Vault Hunter. In combat, she’s a heavy-duty, high-impact crowd controller that employs clever contraptions that cause Cryo and Radiation damage to enemies, as well as buff up allies. She can, also, isolate individual targets by suspending them in a stasis bubble, effectively bringing creative strategies to the playing field.
• Amon — Oh, yeah, we got a tank, people. And a rather stereotypical one at that: raised in what Borderlands 4’s lore refers to as a “Vault monster-worshipping cult”, Amon saw said monster be released only for the creature to kill everything, everywhere around him. Now as a sole survivor, he made his personal business to kill beasts unceremoniously. As with every gruff-older-warrior-who’s-seen-too-much type, Amon is introspective, not really much welcoming and behaves like a battle-hardened asshole experienced soldier. Oh, and 2K Games refers to him as a “warrior-poet” for some reason. As a tank, Amon is highly-adaptable, using drones for both offense and defense, as well as bringing a big arsenal of tools that allows him to utterly destroy his opponents, be it pummeling them with his Forgehammer, bisecting them with Forgeaxes or protecting himself with a Forgeshield. Especially if it means killing monsters. He really, really hates them, you guys.

Oh, and by the way, these are the new faces: Borderlands 4 will have some returning characters too—Zane, Moxxi and Claptrap (fun fack: Mike HATES Claptrap!) are all confirmed, although we still don’t know in what capacity.

The new, shiny stuff

Borderlands 4 will mostly feel like an improvement over its predecessors. Judging by every trailer we’ve seen, the idea is to give players something familiar to play with (especially veteran players) while also offering good doses of new stuff to entice new users.

Here are every system changes 2K Games has promoted so far:

• Weapons & loot systems
  • Licensed Parts: weapons can spawn mixing parts from multiple manufacturers for hybrid behaviors.
  • Three new manufacturers: Order (charged blasts), Ripper (fully automatic), Daedalus (reliable, multiple ammo types).
  • Enhancements replace artifacts and grant manufacturer-linked bonuses.
  • Legendary rework: legendaries are rarer by design — drop rates reduced to make them feel special. Loot in co-op is instanced per player.
• Combat & items
  • Ordinance slot: grenades and heavy weapons live in an ordinance slot and use a cooldown system instead of consuming ammo.
  • Repkits: a charge-based healing system; upgrading Repkits can give benefits like shorter Action Skill cooldowns.
• Traversal & gameplay flow
  • DigiRunner: a customizable hoverbike/personal vehicle for traversal.
  • Silos: map activities that can grant fast travel points and vault key fragments; collect fragments to open Vaults of Legends — challenging side dungeons.
  • Replay feature: redo missions and boss fights without loading an old save.
• Movement & HUD
  • New mobility: glide, double jump, climbing, point grapple, dash, slide, zip lines and an air-to-ground melee.
  • No traditional minimap at launch — instead a compass bar and an optional combat radar (shows targets and vertical info) were implemented after fan feedback.

One cool thing we saw is the fact that Borderlands 4 will bring something called a “Per-player difficulty”: essentially, when playing co-op, each player will choose their own campaign difficulty, without penalizing or making it too easy for the rest of the crew.

Which platforms will it come out on (and the general launch plan)

Everywhere.

Every listing we saw shows Borderlands 4 coming out in pretty much any and every current-gen platform under the Sun PC (Steam & Epic stores), PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch 2 (although the latter will be a port, and will come around at a later date).

Crossplay is supported at launch as long as you have a Gearbox Shift, and there will be a day-one patch specifically tailored to improve PC performance. However, it is important to note that cross-save and cross-progression will not be available at day one (although Gearbox confirmed plans to add it later).

As for you FPS freaks out there, console performance targets are listed as “60 FPS” on PlayStation/Xbox; Switch 2 appears to target 30 FPS although this is yet to be confirmed.

PC requirements, preload and the exact PC launch windows

We’re making this section exclusively for PC players as it has a good chunk of info that the other platforms don’t have. If you’re not a PC player, read on (or check out our Deals page and get yourself a gaming machine, dude!). So, first and foremost, check out the specs needed for Borderlands 4:

All in all, that’s a pretty moderate list of components, fortunately.

As for preload and launch times—again, for PC—they’re listed below:

• Wellington — Sept 12, 4:00 AM NZST.
• Sydney — Sept 12, 2:00 AM AEST.
• Tokyo — Sept 12, 1:00 AM JST.
• Singapore — Sept 12, 12:00 AM SGT.
• London — Sept 11, 5:00 PM BST.
• New York — Sept 11, 12:00 PM ET.
• San Francisco — Sept 11, 9:00 AM PT.

As we’ve stated above, a day-one patch will also come specifically for PC, so plan your gaming session accordingly.

Other platforms’ preload/launch times

Officially, Borderlands 4 release date is listes as September 12, 2025 for PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. Switch 2 users will have to wait until October 3, 2025 to get their hands on this, but all preload and launch times are available below:

• Console (PS5 & Xbox Series X/S) local-midnight pattern (Sept 12):
  • Wellington / Sydney / Tokyo / Singapore / London / New York — 12:00 AM local on Sept 12.
  • San Francisco — Sept 11, 9:00 PM PT (document shows this offset).
    
• Switch 2 (Oct 3 local-midnight pattern):
  • Wellington / Sydney / Tokyo / Singapore / London / New York — 12:00 AM local on Oct 3.
  • San Francisco — Oct 2, 9:00 PM PT.

You might have noticed that the PC will get in on the action somewhat earlier than consoles and Switch 2. That’s because consoles will use a globally-standard midnight pattern, while PC is a bit more “region-varied”. Either way, the difference in availability is not too harsh so it shouldn’t matter if you’re looking to play.

Three editions to choose from

As with most mainstream game releases, Borderlands 4 will also come with several edition options for you to choose. Fortunately, our own Mr. Manfredo’s fears are deterred, since the game will come out at the standard seventy bucks tag, instead of the eighty announced a few months ago.

All in all, there are three of them, with each pricing and benefits listed below:

Standard Edition — $69.99

• Base game
• Gilded Glory Pack
  • 4 pieces of legendary gear
  • 1 Vault Hunter head
  • 1 Vault Hunter skin
  • 1 weapon skin
  • 1 ECHO-4 drone skin

Deluxe Edition — $99.99

Everything in Standard, plus:

• Bounty Pack Bundle
  • 4 unique areas, missions and bosses
  • 4 Vault Cards with unique challenges & rewards
  • New gear and weapons
  • New Vault Hunter cosmetics
  • 4 new vehicles with new cosmetics
• Firehawk’s Fury — 1 weapon skin

Super Deluxe Edition — $129.99

Everything in Deluxe, plus:

• Vault Hunter Pack
  • 2 new playable Vault Hunters
  • 2 new map regions
  • New story missions & side missions
  • New gear and weapons
  • New Vault Hunter cosmetics
  • New ECHO skin cosmetic
    
• Ornate Order Pack
  • 4 Vault Hunter skins
  • 4 Vault Hunter heads
  • 4 Vault Hunter bodies