Gearbox Software is pushing the next installment of its hit franchise to the next level as Borderlands 4 is utilizing the power of Unreal Engine 5 (UE5). EPIC Games’ engine has recently become even more popular in the video games industry as multiple high-profile game studios switched to UE5 over their own proprietary game engine.
Gearbox Software is creating the most ambitious Borderlands in the franchise’s history. Unreal Engine 5 allows them to create the Seemless World that lets you travel to any location without loading times.
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Gearbox Software <3 Unreal Engine
Gearbox Software has over 2 decades of experience with EPIC’s engines as they already used UE2 to develop Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30. Their following titles all used various versions of the game engine.
| Gearbox Software Games | Unreal Engine Version | Release Date |
|---|---|---|
| Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 | UE2 | 2005 |
| Borderlands | UE3 | 2009 |
| Borderlands 2 | UE3 | 2012 |
| Battleborn | UE3 | 2016 |
| Borderlands 3 | UE4 | 2019 |
| Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands | UE4 | 2022 |
| New Tales from the Borderlands | UE4 | 2022 |
| Borderlands 4 | UE5 | 2025 |
While Gearbox Software uses Unreal Engine, they always add/enhance/augment it to create the game they envision because the art style and all the gameplay mechanics don’t come straight out of the box. This allows them to create the game we all know and love, however, while Unreal Engine 5 promises some stellar new tech that has players and developers excited, it also raises some concerns.
Unreal Engine 5 Concerns
Unreal Engine 5 has amazing new features that empower game developers to craft amazing worlds. Back on May 27, 2021, Randy Pitchford stated that the new Unreal Engine 5 was built for a new kind of next-generation Borderlands game.
| Unreal Engine Tech | Brief Description |
|---|---|
| Lumen | Great dynamic lighting and reflections |
| Nanite | Only load the necessary details on assets. High details for objects that are close and minimal detail for objects in the distance. A great feature for optimization. |
| Megalights | New Shadow Rendering Tech. Cast shadows from lots of lights. Great for all those holograms GBX is using in BL4. |
Gamers all over the world were excited to see the Tech Demos that EPIC Games was showcasing, however, when the first UE5 games were released, many games suffered from performance issues. The powerful new tech was designed for optimization but still requires a lot of computation power, resulting in stuttering games.
From what I heard, EPIC hasn’t been addressing these problems and Developers are lowering the internal rendering resolution, which then gets upscaled, to combat the issues, however, this results in blurry visuals and not the amazing worlds that were showcased in the Tech demos.
The Future of Borderlands on UE5
Borderlands fans who were initially cheering for UE5 because they thought it would deliver the best game are now questioning if Gearbox Software should have stayed with UE4 due to the concerning UE5 performance.
Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands ran better than Borderlands 3, therefore, you could assume the next game would also run better. Gearbox Software is dropping support for old-gen consoles, giving them more resources to create an amazing experience, however, UE4 is kinda abandoned software by EPIC Games at this point and newer systems are running into shadowing issues. So staying on UE4 might also not be a good idea if Gearbox Software and 2K Games want to support the game for a long time.
The poor performance issues by UE5 are mainly occurring in the games that adopted the game engine early. The experts from Digital Foundry are positive about UE5.4 and higher.
Borderlands 4 could become a showcase for EPIC’s latest version of Unreal Engine 5 like they were a showcase with UE4 when Randy Pitchford showed off their Borderlands 3 Tech Demo.
My Take
I think the future is forward in this case. Abandon-ware isn’t the solution. I’m cautiously optimistic. Borderlands 4 might be squeezing every bit of power out of the current consoles but it’s also kinda becoming a tradition that Borderlands initially releases on the current-gen consoles and shortly after gets ported to the next-gen consoles that offer a smoother experience. Hopefully, Nvidia’s 50XX video cards drop before Borderlands 4’s release but the game shouldn’t rely on that.
