As Borderlands 4 looms, Randy Pitchford recalls everyone telling Gearbox the original game was “being sent to die” before becoming an genre-defining success

Gearbox’s Borderlands 4 is mere months away, slapping players into the Pandoran moon of Elpis with millions of new guns to find, secret alien treasures to uncover and a brand-new story to play through.

Since the series’ first release in 2009, Borderlands has created five mainline games, a tonne of spin-offs and even a pretty shocking live-action movie, and the series is still beloved. It’s the foundation of the popular looter shooter genre, but Gearbox co-founder Randy Pitchford remembers everyone telling him that the game would fail.

Borderlands was “sent to die”, and lived

Speaking to Industry Giants, Pitchford explained that people just couldn’t understand the merging genres of an RPG and a first-person shooter, and thought that creating such a game for a modern console audience at the time was sending the game “to die”.

“When we went into it, most of the people that we were interacting with and most of the people that were outside back then looking at it did not imagine it would work. Did not imagine it would find an audience,” the Gearbox lead explained.

“I think why it works is, because what Borderlands is to me, is that weird place between things that normally don’t go together. Because that’s what a borderland is.”

GEARBOX HEAD RANDY PITCHFORD

“I remember there was a show a commentator Geoff Keighley did with an analyst, Michael Patcher, and this was before the first game launched,” he continued. “And the topic came up, ‘what do you think?’, and Michael’s an analyst, his job is to predict what happens with markets and he’s like, ‘Borderlands is being sent to die because if you want a shooter, you’ll play Call of Duty and if you want a role-playing game, you’re gonna play Dragon Age’. This was 2009. And so, there’s no customer for it.”

Pitchford explained that even 16-years later, he’s still “befuddled” by the sheer amount of success that Borderlands has seen over the years, perhaps a remnant of being told so many times that Gearbox was making a game that would die-on-impact.

“It shouldn’t [work],” Pitchford said. “It’s really weird, you know? The art direction is crazy. Nobody’s ever been able to break through with a non-realistic art style to that degree. We owned it; the backdrop is sci-fi western, but, to me, I think why it works is, because what Borderlands is to me, is that weird place between things that normally don’t go together. Because that’s what a borderland is.”

Pitchford explained that, at the end of the day, Borderlands is like a “Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, mixing chocolate and peanut butter and it actually tastes pretty good”, and it’s not just because of the core gameplay. Everything in Borderlands is mixed up: it’s an RPG mixed with an FPS, it’s a sci-fi setting mixed with western themes, it’s a comedy and a drama. While not everything Gearbox has done with the series has worked,

Hopefully, Borderlands 4 is another great entry in the series, it certainly seems like it. With the game’s writers also moving away from countless meme culture point-and-laugh jokes and unfunny toilet humour, it might also age well this time.