Borderlands 4 will have 30 billion guns – yes, really.
Mind-Boggling Choice of Weapons
The Borderlands series was always known for being a looter shooter heaven, allowing players to farm all kinds of content and repeatedly clear various areas and bosses in order to obtain rare loot in the form of weapons and gadgets.
Grinding for better gear to make the character stronger and more capable of facing more threatening enemies has always been a key aspect of the franchise, and it’s not going to change in Borderlands 4. In fact, the grinding aspect will be elevated to a whole new level, thanks to the sheer number of weapons we’ll have available in the game to utilize and master, which is confirmed to be over 30 billion.
Sounds impossible? It sure does, but there’s no witchcraft involved, and everything becomes clear once you learn how it’s going to work.
The Importance of Procedural Generation
It’s not the first time a Borderlands game has boasted about the size of its arsenal. The original game had an already impressive “87 bazillion” guns, which was later explained to mean “well over 17 million”. Borderlands 2 upped the game and brought that number even higher, although it was simply marketed as having “millions of guns”. Borderlands 3 started using “billions” to brag even more.
And while all these numbers surely do sound impressive and are technically correct, there’s a catch that artificially inflates the total count: procedural generation.
In traditional FPS games, you’d have a base weapon and optional customization in the form of attachments, like scopes, magazines, silencers, and so on, allowing you to change the weapon’s performance according to your current needs and personal preferences.
In Borderlands games, weapons are procedurally generated on the fly by combining various elements, such as attachments and different fire modes, to create a unique gun with different weapon stats that can’t be customized any further, except for cosmetics such as alternative skins or trinkets introduced in Borderlands 3. Whatever drops from the enemy is the final gun, and you must decide for yourself whether it’s worth keeping or not.
As you might have already guessed, each such generated variant of a weapon is, technically speaking, a unique weapon that adds to the total count, even if the differences between variants are barely noticeable. The exact same weapon that drops with and without a scope counts as two different weapons.
Borderlands 4 Guns – What Made the Count So High?
Borderlands 4 managed to up the numbers even higher by introducing a new Licensed Parts System. Previously, weapons from different manufacturers had their own pool of available attachments to choose from. In Borderlands 4, these restrictions were removed, which means that now you’ll be able to find weapons that combine different quirks. For example, imagine a Maliwan weapon that rolls with Jakob’s part, allowing it to ricochet on critical hits.
Players are concerned about whether it will take away from what made weapons from each manufacturer feel special. With that being said, the visuals are confirmed by the game’s art director, Adam May, to stay in line with players’ expectations about the weapon’s behavior. It was a priority for the team to make sure that just by looking at a weapon, players could get an idea of how it works. A “sleeker, more angular, more aggressive-looking” weapon will most likely fire rapidly and use smaller bullets, while “bigger, rounder, and more bulbous” weapons will most likely fire rockets.
About the Game
Borderlands 4 is an upcoming Action FPS RPG from Gearbox Software, continuing the looter-shooter experience for which the series is known. The game will have a seamless, fully open-world environment with no loading screens and will introduce some new tools to make exploration even more enjoyable than before. It will also feature a set of brand-new Vault Hunters for players to choose and play as.
The game is scheduled for release on September 12 (PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S).
Nintendo Switch 2 version should be available on October 3.