Following the events of Borderlands 3, where Lilith teleported Pandora’s moon, Elpis, to another part of space, a previously cloaked planet was revealed to the universe. A few years later, four Vault Hunters crash-land on this planet, Kairos. Unfortunately for them, Vault Hunting is illegal, which immediately paints a target on their back.
Kairos is ruled by the Timekeeper, who desires order at any cost. As such, a quartet of rabble-rousing Vault Hunters doesn’t quite fit into that plan, so it quickly becomes a fight for survival and a battle of resistance for the crew. The Vault Hunters are the window into the world of Kairos for the player, and as such, they are designed to navigate the world in different ways.
“The way we’ve always looked at Vault Hunters is they’re the heroes of their own stories,” senior project producer Anthony Nicholson says. “If they were in any other game, they could be the hero. But in Borderlands, we have four of them brought together, and they’re all their own individual badasses. So, we want them to be different personality-wise, with different motivations, different statures, and different backgrounds, for why they’re doing what they’re doing. Some Vault Hunters do it because they love killing stuff. Others are out for revenge. Others are on defensive missions. And that’s how it’s been for the whole franchise. But it was really important to us to make sure that each of them felt like their own, they could stand on their own.”
At launch, players can choose from four Vault Hunters, each from a specific archetype. From the mainstay Soldier and Siren archetypes to Borderlands 4’s new Gravitar and Forgeknight classes, players have extremely distinct, complex characters to choose from. “Something Randy [Pitchford, Gearbox president and CEO] taught me that I’ve latched onto over time is, ‘What are the fantasies we want to give players that they can fulfill in our world?'” creative director Graeme Timmins says. “Even starting back on Borderlands 1, one of those was the Soldier archetype. We want players who can just come in, pick up a gun and know it’s going to shoot bullets, and have a good time. And so, we’ve always had our Soldier archetype. And Sirens started as a representation of a mage fantasy or sorceress fantasy. […] It really comes down to what is the fantasy fulfillment that we want to give players that we think have a broad audience for, and then still finding a way to twist it, to make it unique, still make it Borderlands, and make it badass.”
I was the first person outside Gearbox or 2K to go hands-on with all four of Borderlands 4’s Vault Hunters. You can read about everything I learned, as well as get additional insight from the developers, below.