Borderlands 4 Dev Talks Character Design

With the September 12th release date of Borderlands 4looming on the horizon, developer Gearbox Software has been gearing up to deliver the most ambitious Borderlands game to date.

Featuring new characters, much-anticipated additions to gameplay, and a story that takes place five years after the events of Borderlands 3, we are thrown into the brand-new world of Kairos, ruled by the tyrannical Timekeeper with an iron fist alongside his gilded, oppressive Order.

Borderlands 4 Price Surprises Everyone After Randy Pitchford Comments

The base version of Borderlands 4 will only cost $69.99, but you’d better fork over that cash for its Deluxe Editions.

Recently, in mid-May, I was fortunate to attend a hands-on event for Borderlands 4 at the 2K headquarters in Novato, CA, and experience a preview version of the game for a few hours. Between playtesting sessions, I was able to sit down with one of the developers and ask some burning questions I had.

The developers also released a behind-the-scenes video providing brief insights into the design philosophy behind making the badass Vault Hunters that we’ll be playing in Borderlands 4. To help supplement this, the following is the face-to-face interview I had with Adam May, the Art Director at Gearbox Software.

Character Design Interview With Art Director, Adam May

Q: What was the design process for the Timekeeper?

We specifically wanted to make each of our characters—our main villains, feel different every single time. There are some visual similarities. They’re both pretty buttoned-up looking and everything.

And so this character is much more serious, much more dark, and more structured in his thinking. I mean, he’s called the Timekeeper for a lot of reasons you’ll learn a lot about throughout the narrative. But he is a very, very different character.

He’s definitely twisted and dark in his own unique ways, but you get a better introduction to his character and how he actually evolves through the story as you actually play the campaign. In my opinion, [he is] the scariest, the most diabolical, most sociopathic… You’re really going to get to learn more about his motivations.

Another thing we always try to pay attention to is that we don’t like one-note characters. And so, he does actually have a different side to him that does get exposed to you as you play through the game, and you learn a little bit about his motivations that makes it even more interesting.

Much like how Hyperion’s sterile corporate aesthetic reflected Handsome Jack’s facade and the Children of the Vault reflected the Calypsos’ grungy vibes, the Order’s architecture also reflects the Timekeeper’s personality—even the deeper, darker secrets that he keeps hidden.

If you look at the architecture and everything, it was one of the things we struggled with quite a bit in the beginning, because Borderlands is about messing things up. We take the art and break it all and reassemble it.

But if you look at the structures he’s built, they’re the most symmetrical and pristine and perfect ones ever. We do that on purpose at the front of the game so that as you get deeper into it, you get to see it all messed up, and the dirty, gross underbelly of what’s actually going on in his kingdom.

Q: What was the creative process for designing Vault Hunters?

It ends up being a big company thing. I mean, there’s no way we can make Vault Hunters [alone]. Not everybody wants to chime in and share their thoughts and opinions. So, what we try and do is—the way I judge my success at it when I’m working with a team is we try to design characters that are actually very, very different from each other.

We want to give as much of that hero fantasy fulfillment as possible. So the way I judge my success myself is just how I can go around and ask each of the different developers, “Which one is your favorite?” We’ll put them all in a lineup and everything.

Usually, the way it goes, I actually ask them which one’s your least favorite, too. They’ll pick out who their favorite is and then tell me who their least favorite is.

And if I do that enough times and I get exactly opposite answers, where one was their favorite and the other one was the least and the other guy says the opposite, then I know we’re in a good spot, because each one of them is supposed to appeal to a different kind of promise—a different archetype.

And then we try and lean into those archetypes to make them unique and special for whoever it is we’re trying to appeal to. So really, the main goal is to fulfill as many hero fantasies in the process [as possible].

Q: What can you tell me about Vex’s design process?

You can tell she’s our emo queen. [Hot Topic] is actually a really good way to describe it. We wanted to fulfill that witch fantasy, emo witch vibe. There are a lot of folks who actually toss [Reapers and Specters] around. [Vex is] one of the things that the design team did that I really love about this one.

In the past, in the previous games, we made heroes, Vault Hunters, that were kind of focused around the specific play style. If you wanted somebody who had more approachable mechanics and everything, you’d pick one character.

But if you wanted complexity and real depth, you’d pick a different character. And this time, they have three very, very diverse trees with very different action skills, with a gradient of those things in each one of them.

So, each character has a very easy kind of “fire-and-forget” thing, where if you’re somebody who just wants to throw out your bird and then just kill everything on the scene and then not have to think twice about it, we have a skill for each one of them like that. But then we also have ones that involve more energy management and timing, where you’re fine-tuned to the whole thing so that you can feel like a total badass.