Borderlands 4

Hands-On With All Four Vault Hunters

by Brian Shea on Jun 25, 2025 at 02:00 PM

Following the events of Borderlands 3, where Lilith teleported Pandora's moon, Elpis, to another part of space, a previously cloaked planet was revealed to the universe. A few years later, four Vault Hunters crash-land on this planet, Kairos. Unfortunately for them, Vault Hunting is illegal, which immediately paints a target on their back.

Kairos is ruled by the Timekeeper, who desires order at any cost. As such, a quartet of rabble-rousing Vault Hunters doesn't quite fit into that plan, so it quickly becomes a fight for survival and a battle of resistance for the crew. The Vault Hunters are the window into the world of Kairos for the player, and as such, they are designed to navigate the world in different ways.

"The way we've always looked at Vault Hunters is they're the heroes of their own stories," senior project producer Anthony Nicholson says. "If they were in any other game, they could be the hero. But in Borderlands, we have four of them brought together, and they're all their own individual badasses. So, we want them to be different personality-wise, with different motivations, different statures, and different backgrounds, for why they're doing what they're doing. Some Vault Hunters do it because they love killing stuff. Others are out for revenge. Others are on defensive missions. And that's how it's been for the whole franchise. But it was really important to us to make sure that each of them felt like their own, they could stand on their own."

At launch, players can choose from four Vault Hunters, each from a specific archetype. From the mainstay Soldier and Siren archetypes to Borderlands 4's new Gravitar and Forgeknight classes, players have extremely distinct, complex characters to choose from. "Something Randy [Pitchford, Gearbox president and CEO] taught me that I've latched onto over time is, 'What are the fantasies we want to give players that they can fulfill in our world?'" creative director Graeme Timmins says. "Even starting back on Borderlands 1, one of those was the Soldier archetype. We want players who can just come in, pick up a gun and know it's going to shoot bullets, and have a good time. And so, we've always had our Soldier archetype. And Sirens started as a representation of a mage fantasy or sorceress fantasy. [...] It really comes down to what is the fantasy fulfillment that we want to give players that we think have a broad audience for, and then still finding a way to twist it, to make it unique, still make it Borderlands, and make it badass."

I was the first person outside Gearbox or 2K to go hands-on with all four of Borderlands 4's Vault Hunters. You can read about everything I learned, as well as get additional insight from the developers, below.

Amon

Forgeknight

Amon

Amon is the hulking brute of the Borderlands 4 Vault Hunter roster. Standing at over seven feet tall, his movement is noticeably more tank-like than the other playable characters, but he can still run, jump, and traverse the world as well as the rest of the Vault Hunters.

"Amon is a run and charge straight into battle type of person," Nicholson says. "He's our brute. He's the one with high health, damage, a lot of melee attacking, but of course, he has guns, so he can do both."

Amon's Action Skills lean heavier into melee and projectile gameplay, and his trait allows him to have a second Action Skill associated with each primary one. Crucible allows him to throw elemental axes at his enemy with its secondary Action Skill giving him a multi-elemental throw. Meanwhile, his Onslaughter Action Skill gives him a powerful, flaming punch with a secondary Action Skill seeing him slam a hammer into the ground to deal fiery AoE damage. His most unique Action Skill could very well be Scourge, where he summons a shield that can absorb damage, then pay it back to enemies with a projectile whip. In Scourge, he also can spawn a wall of fire that blocks incoming enemy fire and provides cover for you and your team.

"What's interesting about Amon is he's probably our most elemental-based character," Timmins says. "I know in the past, Sirens have been the touchpoint for elemental gameplay, but Amon has more of a focus on elements than even Vex, our Siren."

Harlowe

Gravitar

Harlowe

Harlowe’s abilities center around a mechanic called Entanglement. When enemies are afflicted with this rainbow-glowing ailment, damage dealt to one spreads to impact all enemies currently Entangled. Her Action Skills apply it in various ways. With Zero-Point, Harlowe can use telekinesis-style powers to lift an enemy off its feet and suspend it in mid-air. Then, Harlowe can slam the affected enemy into objects, the ground, and even other enemies, with any enemy hit by the floater also impacted by the Entanglement. Her Chroma Accelerator Action Skill lets her charge up an explosive unstable energy pocket that blasts forward, Entangling any enemy caught in the line of fire or the enormous radius. Finally, Flux Generator sees Harlowe drop a pulse mine that Entangles any creature caught in the wide radius.

"She's crowd control, and there are a lot of different augments and abilities that will help when you have co-op partners [with] Entanglement," Nicholson says. "If I [Entangle enemies], that's a signal to my co-op buddies, 'Hey, look over there. There's somebody who's susceptible. But you can take it and slam it on each of the individual people, and now, while everybody else is shooting at them, everybody's sharing the damage, and they're all going to die."

I thoroughly enjoyed Harlowe’s Entanglement abilities. Though I loved feeling like a Jedi as I lifted an enemy into the sky, slamming them around as I continue blasting away with my rifle, nothing topped the satisfaction of detonating a massive explosion to wipe a corner of the map. When you combine the wide radius of the pulse mine with a strong gun, Harlowe proves to be a one-woman wrecking crew for big crowds pretty quickly.

Rafa

Exo-Soldier

Rafa

Rafa is built to be more of a run-and-gun character. The Exo-Soldier makes heavy use of his digistruct abilities, which allow him to store a virtual blueprint and create new weaponry on demand. Using this, he fills out his Action Skills with auto-aiming turrets, a Samus-from-Metroid-style arm cannon, and even dual arm blades. This allows him to be among the most versatile and approachable Vault Hunters in Borderlands 4.

"Rafa has all of the digistruct abilities, and so he can do big damage on a couple of things, but he can also get really close in with his blades," Nicholson says. "One of the things that he is really good with is his elementals, his corrosive. You can really spec into that and destroy your enemies with corrosive, or switch that up and hit with some other hack-and-slash type things."

Rafa's Apophis Lance gives him an arm cannon that lets him blast piercing energy shots, and his Peacebreaker Cannons can auto-target enemies in the heat of battle. However, his Arc-Knives let him briefly go into melee mode to get up close and personal. His trait, Overdrive, buffs Rafa's movement and damage while using his Action Skills.

Vex

Dark Siren

Vex

Vex is the Dark Siren of Borderlands 4. Rather than being highly focused on elemental damage like more traditional Sirens, Vex's kit is more geared towards summoning. But the elemental side isn't completely phased out, as her summoned entities take on the elemental affinity of whatever gun she equips.

"Vex is able to change the elements, and she's who I have mained a lot," Nicholson says. "The ability to add a Siren whose trait or affinity is elemental has been really cool to see because you can put out those Specters and Reapers, but if you're fighting two different enemy types, you can change the element if you have an element on your gun."

In Dead Ringer, she can either summon up to three melee-focused Reapers or turret-style Specters, while Phase Phamiliar lets her call a beastly minion called Trouble that can teleport and deal AoE damage on command. She also has the Incarnate Action Skill to choose from, which creates explosions that damage enemies and buff Vex. And with her Phase Covenant trait, her Action Skills are imbued with the elemental abilities of her currently equipped gun.

Despite each character having these set Action Skills and traits, players can shape their Vault Hunter of choice to their preferred play style thanks to more customizable skill trees than every previous Borderlands game. "In this game, we have the idea of trunks and then branches underneath it; in the previous game, it was pretty much trunks and they would branch slightly," Nicholson says of the skill tree. "But now, there's multiple opportunities you have to spec into the type of player that you want. What we wanted to do was make sure that whenever you chose one of those Vault Hunters, now you have three different skills that you can choose from, but each of them also has multiple augments and capstones that are very different. [...] All of those things speak to what we want you to be able to do in building out the type of character that you want to be and be the Vault Hunter that you want to be. We could all play the same Siren if we wanted to, but we're probably going to have completely different builds."

Those different branches you can take go a long way to customizing your character's play style to be as complex or approachable as possible. "I would say Amon is our most complex," Timmins says. "But he still has those axes that you get them in your hand and you're just gonna freakin' toss 'em. So, even with all that depth that he has, he still has a very approachable design for his Action Skills. I don't think there's any one character that is like, 'Oh, that's too much for me.' Literally every player should be able to play every character and have fun. I think this will be the hardest time for people to choose their main. I really think that they're going to sit down and want to play a character, then be like, 'I want to try this other one,' go back and start another character, and keep doing that until they've hopefully gotten four characters all the way to the end game by the time they're done."

Timmins' assertion that players will have a difficult time choosing their main in Borderlands 4 rang true for me. Each time I stepped away from the game and a developer asked me what I thought, my first reflex was to say the character I just played would be my main. In past Borderlands titles, a clear favorite Vault Hunter always emerged after early play sessions. But with Borderlands 4, I can honestly say that each one feels unique while also bringing something exciting and fresh to the table. I legitimately felt like a child who always said the thing he most recently had was his favorite. Even now, weeks after my visit to Gearbox, I struggle to pick a favorite.

If you're excited to dive in and figure out which Vault Hunter will be your favorite, luckily, you only have a few months to wait. Borderlands 4 will be released on September 12 on PlayStation, Xbox, and PC, with the Switch 2 version arriving later. However, if you want to learn more today, be sure to subscribe and access our issue hub for tons of exclusive information.

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