Highlights
- Borderlands 4 needs to address the issue of vehicle survivability on higher difficulties for a smoother gameplay experience.
- The game could shake up series standards by breaking away from the traditional cast of four Vault Hunters.
- With a lot of moving parts to balance, attention needs to be paid to the details of character design, writing, and weapon effects.
There’s one issue that has been a recurring problem for Borderlands, and the next game could be the one to finally do something about it. The next Borderlands game is going to have a lot of details to balance on its plate as is. Between character design and skills, weapon effects, and the writing of the story itself, the game will have a lot of moving parts. However, other aspects of the game will need some attention paid to them. In one case, something could become either a big asset for Borderlands, or a liability.
There are many series standards that Borderlands 4 could break, each of which would have a major impact. The series’ replayable, level-scaling world is a big example, getting tougher each time the player beats it. Likewise, the series has also featured a consistent cast of four Vault Hunters for the player to play as in each main game, with the exception of Borderlands 2 offering two extras as DLC. Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands already showed how that could be overhauled with its character creation system, though. Borderlands 4 has several options that could be taken to shake up the Borderlands series’ status quo.
Alongside Pandora, One Planet Feels Like a Shoo-In For Borderlands 4
A planet that has now been present in both Borderlands 3 and New Tales From the Borderlands seems like it will easily find its way into Borderlands 4.
Borderlands 4 Is Going To Need Better Scaling For Vehicles
Vehicles Are a Huge Help For Crossing Long Distances in Borderlands
Vehicles are a useful tool thanks to Borderlands being a series with plenty of optional content. With Scooter’s Outrunners being the most prominent example, vehicles serve the obvious utility of helping the player move much more quickly across the world. In addition, they also have their own weapons, as well as armor that can keep the player protected while driving. Thanks to this, players can use a vehicle’s weapons to take down enemies to save ammo, as well as slamming the vehicle itself into them. Given how big some areas of the Borderlands games can be, a quicker traversal option will always be welcome.
Higher Difficulties in Borderlands Make Vehicles Less Viable
Unfortunately, vehicles in Borderlands have one severe flaw. When it comes to higher levels of difficulty in Borderlands games, their utility falls off significantly. The increased damage that the player takes on higher difficulties carries over to vehicles, so they end up becoming a lot more fragile. The fact that it’s harder to fight in a vehicle compared to on foot only deepens this issue. This weakness for vehicles could instead force players to travel these same large areas by foot, making the journey longer and more tedious as a result. Borderlands 4 has plenty of reasons to address this glaring issue.
This issue of survivability is especially true for True Vault Hunter Mode, an enhanced difficulty only available in New Game Plus.
Borderlands 4 Should Dial Up Its Vehicles’ Survivability
Borderlands 4 could fix the issue with vehicles in a few different ways. One option would be to replace Borderlands‘ vehicles with Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands‘ overworld, which proved effective in that game. However, if that option seems too extreme, then a few adjustments to vehicle stats could be made instead. One big help would be letting the armor or health of the vehicles scale with the difficulty level, making them more capable of putting up with punishment from enemies.
That way, they could still retain their role as reliable transportation without necessarily diluting the difficulty of the game’s more challenging levels.
The falling utility of vehicles on higher difficulty levels is an issue that Borderlands 4 should make fixing a priority. While there is a decent argument for Borderlands 4 to play it safe and not mess with the formula too much, fixing old problems is rarely ever a bad thing. Vehicles are almost always going to be a valuable utility in Borderlands because of the size of the maps, but their utility drops off harshly on higher difficulties. Borderlands 4 could finally give vehicles a greater ability to survive against harsher challenges.
