Borderlands Fans Want to See Big Vault Hunter Upgrade in BL4

Key Takeaways

• Borderlands 4 is releasing in 2025 with Vault Hunters once again serving as the main playable characters.
• Fans hope for playable Vault Hunters to have a more direct impact on game cutscenes for BL4.
• BL4 Vault Hunters have not been revealed at the time of this writing.

Borderlands fans are hoping that the upcoming Borderlands 4 will allow Vault Hunters to have a more direct impact on the game’s cutscenes. Borderlands 4 was announced at the most recent Gamescom Opening Night Live event. It was confirmed that Borderlands 4 will feature a brand-new planet for players to explore instead of series mainstay Pandora, and that players will once again be playing as Vault Hunters.

The Borderlands 4 Vault Hunters have yet to be revealed, and it’s unclear exactly when they will be revealed to the public. However, Borderlands 4 is releasing in 2025, and so fans can expect new information on the looter shooter to come to light in the months ahead. Past Borderlands Vault Hunters have been quite varied, and so it’s hard to guess exactly what the BL4 Vault Hunters will bring to the table.

Time will tell what the Borderlands 4 Vault Hunters have in store, but in the meantime, many fans are hoping that, whoever they are, they have a more direct impact on cutscenes in the game. By and large, Borderlands games have presented Vault Hunters as essentially stand-ins for the players. Even though they have all been distinct, defined characters, Borderlands Vault Hunters aren’t really presented as such in the cutscenes of the games where they’re playable, with their individual personalities going unrecognized and unacknowledged by other characters. Other Borderlands characters are the ones with the more direct impact on the cutscenes and story, with fans like Reddit user BananHannah2005 feeling that the Vault Hunters are reduced to “cameras” for the cutscenes.

Borderlands Fans Want BL4 Vault Hunters to Have an Impact in Cutscenes

This has been true for Borderlands games since the very first one, with the Vault Hunters getting more fleshed out as characters in entries where they’re not playable. For example, the Vault Hunters from the first Borderlands game pop back up in subsequent installments with proper speaking roles as NPCs that drive the story forward. Based on the response to the Reddit thread, it seems many Borderlands fans are tired of this approach and hope to see the playable Vault Hunters be more involved with the story and its characters.

One way that Gearbox could potentially circumvent this criticism would be by letting players make their own Vault Hunters. The complaint mainly seems to stem from the fact that Borderlands Vault Hunters are already named characters with defined traits and characteristics, which makes it seem weird that their individuality isn’t properly acknowledged by the other characters in the games and are instead referred to with generic terms. Letting players make their own characters would perhaps make this approach feel more natural.

It remains to be seen exactly how Gearbox Software is going to handle Borderlands 4‘s Vault Hunters. As previously stated, there isn’t a lot that we know about the game at this juncture beyond that it’s no longer set on Pandora and that Vault Hunters are once again the main playable characters. Since Borderlands 4 was shown off at the Geoff Keighley-hosted Gamescom, fans may be keeping their fingers crossed that it will pop back up at The Game Awards on December 12, but there are no guarantees that will come to pass.