Borderlands 4
Intense overall intensityWhat's in it
The player's guns, grenades and skills kill human and creature enemies in constant combat, with blood spray and bodies that burst apart, rendered in a cel-shaded comic style.
The player's weapons and critical hits dismember and explode enemies, leaving destroyed bodies, rendered in a stylized cel-shaded art style.
The game's own script uses frequent strong profanity, including 'fuck', in dialogue and quest text.
Alcohol appears on screen in bar and settlement scenes where characters drink; the player does not gain gameplay effects from substances.
Named characters die on screen, and the plot centres on a planet whose population is surveilled and controlled by an authoritarian ruler.
The player steals, breaks into guarded facilities, and attacks the ruling regime's forces as the core rebellion storyline.
Character dialogue and quest text include open innuendo and sex jokes; nothing sexual is shown on screen.
Some characters wear revealing, cleavage-baring costume designs; no actual exposure is shown.
Some zones and enemy designs use grotesque, unsettling imagery, but nothing hunts the player or is timed to startle.
The game is a one-time purchase with no in-game real-money purchases.
Alien wildlife is fought and killed as ordinary combat and loot play, with no emphasized butchery or cruelty.
Dialogue and lore reference captives being brutalized by bandit clans and the ruling regime; the acts are not carried out on screen.
Who can reach your kid
What it is
Borderlands 4 is a first-person looter shooter set on the alien planet Kairos, where the player, as one of four new Vault Hunters, fights to free the population from an authoritarian ruler called the Timekeeper. Play revolves around near-constant gunfights against human enemies and alien wildlife, collecting randomly generated weapons, levelling up skills, and completing missions alone or in online co-op. The violence is heavy and frequent in a cel-shaded, comic-book art style: enemies bleed, and strong weapons or critical hits blow bodies apart. Dialogue carries frequent strong profanity and crude sexual jokes, alcohol appears in bar scenes, and the story includes oppression, character deaths and references to cruelty by bandit clans and the regime. Online play supports voice and text chat with other players; there are no in-game real-money purchases.
How it's framed
The game frames its violence as over-the-top action comedy: enemies are mostly bandits, hostile soldiers and monsters, kills are rewarded with loot and experience, and destruction is played for spectacle and humor rather than gravity. The story casts the player as a rebel liberating an oppressed population from a tyrant, so fighting is framed as resistance against a controlling regime, while the writing keeps an irreverent, joking tone even around dark subject matter.
Details
- Developer
- Gearbox Software
- Publisher
- 2K
- Released
- Sep 11, 2025
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