The Gearbox opened the Provevial Pandora’s Box at the end of the four Borderland 4 I have Reed, “Gravita” Harlow, and soon some of my personal highlights in mind of the FPS series. Marywan scientist Harlow brings all sorts of gadget-based tricks to the table. She connects enemies to share damage, locks them into Stasis, drags them to lead them to a huge explosion. If you’re a big fan of crowd control effects, were Maya mains in Borderlands 2, or you can’t get enough of Mass Effect’s Asari Adept, you should be very excited.
The first release of the four playable Borderlands 4 characters wasn’t really that inspiring me, but now that I’ve seen all the action, I’m eager to play everything. This is proof of the design of the gearbox. For all its narrative and pacing flaws, the basic gameplay of BL3 ranks as one of the best FPS games in recent memory, meaning that it’s because of something really special in Borderlands 4.
As someone who enjoyed the first game a lot, Borderlands 2 was a real landmark moment as it came out quickly, mainly because it had switched from console first to PC games. The difference between the two versions at launch was day and night and day, especially when it came to using Nvidia Physx to provide true environmental havoc. Throwing a handren bullet of singularity and participating in a gathering of psychos spinning around a vortex to see strips of fabric to tear a nearby flag, it really felt like the next generation.
Packed with a wealth of gadgets in her toolkit, Harlow, a former Mariwan “combat scientist,” will be able to control the battlefield in an equally interesting and satisfying way. Here you will find the little Maya, along with tools that remind you of the many beauty of Mass Effect’s biological combos. Rock people with Stasis, lift them up into the sky, suck them together. You give it a name and she has it. Harlowe’s core trait, “Entaglement,” links all enemies affected by her action skills together, allowing them to share gun and skill damage with each other.
The lustrous tree of the universe gives you a flux generator. Throw this to create a field inside it that will induce cryogenic damage over time. Nearby allies will earn overshields and become an excellent option for attack and defense in one neat package. Follow the background of Marywan in Harlowe, you can upgrade to remove all elemental resistance of your enemy and increase your chances of friendly status effects. You can also grab it from the floor and throw it again without landing where you wanted it.
Chroma accelerators in the Creative Burst Tree are slow moving, distant, explosive nuclei. “This is her boss killer,” says character designer Tommy Westerman. The rest of the skill tree is filled with ways to enhance the damage and utility of the skill. Take the “Q-ball” and replace the manual explosion for bouncing orbs that ping around the environment and explode. Grab a “special purpose magnet” and drag enemies, increasing their effectiveness, and becomes a tool for crowds.
On Seize the Day, Harlow earns zero points. By default, you lift your targets and float in Stasis for a while, but you can slam them in the direction of your choice, whether it’s another opponent or an explosive stack of barrels. Along the rest of the tree, find a way to cause a shot of your stasis victim attacking a nearby person on a Ricochet, or collect the damage they have done before exploding it all with a powerful cryo explosion.
As someone who loves to use Maya’s subsequences to bounce Phaselocks across multiple targets, there’s an equivalent here too. “Inertia” moves Stasis bubbles to another enemy if what is currently held dies. This will result in a gradual reduction in limits, but it also resets the skill period each time. Crowd control tools have always been my particular preference, especially in cooperative games. There is no better feeling than a friend pulling a group together to erase everything at once, or controlling it by a helplessly locked enemy.
“Every time we create a player’s character, there’s always something we have to leave behind something that we clings to, and I want to bring it to the game of the future,” Westerman said. “In Borderlands 3, you design Amara’s skills, and she runs, puts her enemies in the Pasegrasp and kicks them to the other enemies. In Borderlands 3, you couldn’t really do that, but in Borderlands 4 you do that in Harlowe.”
Borderlands 4 will be released on Friday, September 12th. Please note the Borderlands 4 Release Date Guide for the latest updates and information before arrival.
Have you still checked the requirements for your Borderlands 4 system? Make sure your rig is good, then look at the VEX, RAFA and AMON build guides to begin planning your first playthrough.
Now that we have all the information, which character do you play first? Please tell me about PCGamesn Community Discord Server. Please tell us if you think a new sequel will be everything we wanted.
