Borderlands 4 has a new challenge mode where you can battle high-level enemies in the Vault.

The action role-playing first-person shooter looter game (now priced at $70 instead of the previously floated $80) is coming on September 12 on the Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and the Windows PC.

The Vault missions are optional content. You will need to locate the various key fragments to unlock the vaults but it isn’t required for main game progression. They do present challenges and potential good loot.

I visited 2K’s Hangar 13 studio in Novato, California, and played a couple of hours of Borderlands 4. I have been writing up my impressions this week. I also interviewed the creative director of the game, Graeme Timmins, about what his goals were for the game and the kind of characters we’ll counter.

Like with GTA VI, there is a lot of pent-up demand for this game. Gearbox’s Borderland 3 came out six years ago in 2019. And Borderlands 4 was in the works even before that title debuted.

It takes place on a planet named Kairos, and players assume the role of a Vault Hunter who must lead resistance against a dictator named the Timekeeper and his army of synthetic followers. The game has a new planet and an all-new cast which has nothing to do with last year’s forgettable Borderlands movie. I found the Vault to be particularly difficult, while the Fadefields were more open and relaxing.

There’s a lot of at stake in this title, as Take-Two acquired Gearbox in March 2024 for $460 million. That’s a lot of cheddar, though it’s much less than the up to $1.3 billion that previous owner Embracer paid for it. I enjoyed playing both the single-player game, the time in the Fadefields section of the game and the very difficult (at least from my perspective) section of the game called The Vault.

In the Vault mission, you have to random vault your way into rocky landscapes that are floating in space. You can purchase weapons, medical and ammo upgrades and then charge vault your way into the landscape. You clear the enemies in the level and then move on to the next vault. If you die, you start over again. For me, this was an endless loop. But others can go on and defeat bigger and badder bosses.

“That boss represents a real big step for bosses in Borderlands,” said Gearbox’s creative director Graeme Timmins, in an interview with GamesBeat. It has multiple mechanics. It’s not just a wall of damage. You have to dodge and grapple. We test you in more ways than just whether you have good guns. That’s a good example of how we’ve leveled up the bosses here in Borderlands 4.”

The point of going into the Vault is that you have to discover it and learn from it.

“We don’t want to give you the answers up front. After a couple of attempts, you should have an idea. This is the type of enemies. They tend to have shields or they tend to have armor,” said Timmins. “You can go and optimize your gear. I really need a shock weapon. I want a corrosive weapon. Maybe I want a piece of gear that helps me spread effects.”

He said you might want to have a Maliwan weapon with ricochet bullets from Jakobs.

“Now you can spread that elemental damage to more enemies by shooting just one. There’s a lot of gear game there. You can further and further optimize your play style and eventually work on that challenge,” Timmins said.

It’s not a punishing game. If you die, you respawn and just spend some cash. Then you try again. You’re never punished for failure.

“It’s just a question of what you can learn from that and how you can optimize your build and try again,” Timmins said.

This planet had been under the role of the Timekeeper for a thousand years. He used those Vaults to lock down humanity on this planet and force them into his little perfect order, Timmins said. The Vault Hunters come looking for a Vault. They find more than just the Vault. They find the Timekeeper. They find this whole civilization. They get wrapped up into the story, breaking this group of people free as well as finding Vaults, Timmins said.

I spent a lot of cash going into the fight before I knew what was going to happen. I do not recommend this. My character had a “Dead Ringer skill” that gave me any combination of Spectres or Reapers. These are companion characters that you send into the fight, either to flank the enemy or distract them from attacking you first. The Reapers are good for melee fighting while the Spectres can do damage from a long range. They were absolutely necessary in the heavy combat with so much going on at once.

As you can see in the video, I fought, died and respawned a lot. I can’t say I learned that much in the combat but I could at least tell in the moment what was working and what wasn’t. So I can believe that you can learn a lot over time, so long as you don’t spend all your cash early on.