Hey Vault Hunters, Brace yourself as Gearbox states that Borderlands 4 is the most ambitious game in the franchise yet and a significant next step in the evolution of the Looter-Shooter genre. One of the ways they are going to level up their game is by creating the most expansive skill trees we have ever seen in a Borderlands game. I’m MentalMars and let’s dive into the insane possibilities that await us on Kairos.
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Borderlands 4 Skill Trees
Senior Project Producer on Borderlands 4, Anthony Nicholson, confirmed in a Famitsu interview that they are creating the deepest and most diverse skill tree. Their goal is to give us players an unprecedented level of expression through our builds.
We can expect a broad set of options that also work well during co-op as we can create synergies no matter which Vault Hunters we match up.
Skill Tree Synergies
Just hearing that makes me excited about what Gearbox has in store for us. The fact that Anothy mentions Synegries makes me curious because this can mean many things. This could allow players to match up with a Team healer that empowers less skilled players and together conquer challenging content. This way the game becomes more accessible for those types of players but also allows certain content to be more challenging for the skilled players.
I’m sure someone will find a one-shot build again but for the folks that don’t have the skill, knowledge, or time (I’m looking at you GamerDad), it’s good that they can have a wingman that carries them through the game if this means more fun for them.
But when I hear synergies, I would love to see additional Augements that are exclusive to a specific teamup. For example; if we take FL4K from Borderlands 3 and they throw out their Gravity Snare and you have Zane on your team, Zane’s Drone fires an Airstrike at the target area another example could be that Amara adds the Elemental Damage she has selected to the zone. This allows a team to empower each other.
I think not every Vault Hunter should stack onto the same Action Skill and create a scenario where you have 3 effects stacking on top of each other. I assume it would be Overpowered if Moze also dropped a nuke in there. Therefore each Vault Hunter should augment a different Action Skill on each Vault Hunter and I believe team compasitions would become a lot more interesting.
Multiple Action Skills
It was also stated that we would have broad skill trees, and my brain interprets this as characters being jacks of All Trades instead of classes defined by a classic archetype.
I do think we will be seeing multiple Action Skills on each character. We have seen the Brute Vault Hunter wield 2 elemental axes and perform that dash punch, The Double Dip Assassin Dude swing 2 blades and wield 2 guns, and the Siren character shoot a deathly orb and summon a grim reaper. I only spotted 1 Action Skill for our Maliwan Mechanic and that’s the nuclear disco ball.
Initially, I found it weird that we saw 2 melee characters in the Borderlands 4 reveal trailer but if Gearbox is set on creating broad skill trees, I can see them shaking up the formula where there isn’t just one Melee Character like Brick or Krieg but that skill set is just one Skill Tree on these new Vault Hunters.
That way every Vault Hunter could be the Melee, Companion, or Gunner Class. This gives them a broad range of capabilities but the GBX Developers need to make sure they all play differently by offering them unique gameplay mechanics because if everyone can do the same things, no one will feel special.
I kinda felt that way about the 4th Skill Trees in Borderlands 3. Yeah, they added new ways to play specific characters providing skills they were lacking but those were also the defining character traits. Yes, you can do this with this character but you won’t have access to these things, creating strengths and weaknesses, which made each Vault Hunter feel unique and fun to play with.
Skill Tree Design
Creative Director, Graeme Timmins did confirm that their goal is to create 4 new playable heroes in Borderlands 4 that offer new (gameplay) experiences. Whereas Axton was a linear upgrade from Roland by improving the capabilities of the turret. They want to provide a twist like they did with the soldier class in Borderlands 3 by turning that turret into a giant mech.
Graeme Timmins also spoke about providing a variety of abilities within each playable class. He used Amara (BL3) as an example here as she has these “fire & forget” abilities but with the Designer’s Cut DLC they gave Amara a “management” ability. They want to do this with the Borderlands 4 characters as well, where you have these different types of skills that offer various experiences and play styles.
So how does this reflect upon the skill trees?
If every Vault Hunter becomes a Melee, Companion, and Gunner Class then it’s easy to see that reflected in the deeper skill trees as those skills that would normally be divided over 3 skill trees are put into one.
We have seen GBX add a few more skills to the Skill Trees with each game and Borderlands 3 added all these Action Skill Augments to each side of a Skill Tree. Simply making the skill trees bigger with minor Passive skills isn’t interesting as it’s just level scaling. Having Game Changing perks that unlock or augment your abilities i much more fun. Allowing for more build diversity.
In previous games, you could reach the capstone skills on multiple skill trees creating a bit of an all-around build. If GBX added an additional 3 tiers to each skill tree that could allow us to double down on a specific tree, creating a defined class. Taking a character from being good in scoring critical hits to an elite sniper.
Because with the release of each Borderlands game, we have seen game design move away from this character excelling in SMGs to this character having these generic gun bonuses.
While that makes sense to a general audience by not forcing them to play a certain way, a focused set of skills could provide that additional layer of build diversity for devoted players who put 1000 hours into the game.
But maybe that’s just my classicly trained gaming experience and that doesn’t hold up these days but if GBX implements that build presets feature they were working on in BL3 it would be easy to switch up your build, maybe even on the fly.
