Borderlands 4’s Gravitar Harlowe jogs my memory why I fell in love with the collection

Gearbox has opened the proverbial Pandora’s Box on the final of the 4 Borderlands 4 leads, ‘Gravitar’ Harlowe, and I’m instantly put in thoughts of a few of my private highlights of the FPS collection. An ex Maliwan scientist, Harlowe brings all method of gadget-based trickery to the desk. She can join enemies to make them share injury, lock them in stasis, drag them round and lead them into large explosions, and all whereas trying nice doing it. If you are an enormous fan of crowd-control results, had been a Maya predominant in Borderlands 2, or cannot get sufficient of Mass Effect’s Asari Adept, you have to be very excited.

The preliminary reveal of the 4 playable Borderlands 4 characters did not truly encourage me that a lot, however now that we have seen all of them in motion I’m determined to play each single one. That’s a testomony to Gearbox’s design; for all its narrative and pacing flaws, the basic gameplay of BL3 ranks among the many finest FPS video games in current reminiscence, and I’m hopeful which means we’re due one thing actually particular with Borderlands 4.

As somebody who loved the primary sport rather a lot, Borderlands 2 was an actual landmark second as a result of it got here out proper as I used to be switching from primarily console-first to PC gaming. The distinction between the 2 variations at launch was evening and day, significantly when it got here to using Nvidia PhysX to ship true environmental havoc. Throwing a singularity grenade and watching strips of cloth tear off close by flags to hitch the gathering filth, rubble, and psychos spinning across the vortex felt actually next-gen.

Packing a wealth of devices in her toolkit, former Maliwan ‘fight scientist’ Harlowe is able to allow you to management the battlefield in equally fascinating and satisfying methods. There’s even slightly Maya in right here, together with instruments that remind me numerous the fantastic thing about Mass Effect’s biotic combos. Locking folks in stasis, lifting them up into the sky, sucking them collectively; you identify it, she’s bought it. Harlowe’s core trait, ‘Entaglement,’ ties all enemies affected by her motion ability collectively, inflicting them to share any gun or ability injury taken with one another.

In the Cosmic Brilliance tree, we get the Flux Generator. Toss this out to create a subject that entangles enemies inside it and offers cryo injury to them over time. Any allies close by will achieve overshield, making it a superb choice for offense and protection multi function neat bundle. In accordance with Harlowe’s Maliwan background, it may be upgraded to strip away all elemental resistances in your foes and enhance pleasant standing impact probability. You may even seize it off the ground and toss it once more if it would not find yourself touchdown the place you’d hoped.

The Chroma Accelerator, discovered within the Creative Bursts tree, is a slow-moving, distant detonated nuke. “This is her boss killer,” character designer Tommy Westerman says. The remainder of the ability tree is crammed with methods to ramp up the ability’s injury and utility. Take ‘Q-Ball’ and swap the guide detonation for a bouncing orb that pings across the setting and explodes every time it bumps off one thing. Grab ‘Special Purpose Magnets,’ and it will drag enemies together with it, boosting its efficiency because it does, making it extra of a crowd software.

In Seize the Day, Harlow will get Zero-Point, which instantly calls to thoughts one among my all-time favourite motion abilities, Maya’s Phaselock. By default, your goal is lifted to drift in stasis for some time, however you possibly can activate it once more to slam them within the route of your alternative, whether or not that be different opponents or a stack of explosive barrels. Along the remainder of the tree, you may discover methods to trigger photographs that hit your stasis sufferer to ricochet to anybody close by, or retailer up injury they take earlier than detonating all of it in a strong cryo explosion once you slam them.

As somebody who beloved utilizing Maya’s Sub-Sequence to bounce Phaselock between a number of targets, there’s even an equal right here. ‘Inertia’ will transfer the stasis bubble to a different enemy if the at present held one dies. This additionally resets the ability length every time, albeit with a regularly lowering restrict. Crowd-control instruments have all the time been a selected penchant of mine, particularly in co-op video games – there is not any higher feeling than tugging collectively a bunch in your buddies to obliterate unexpectedly, or lording it over a helplessly trapped foe.

“Every time we make a player character, there’s always something we have to leave behind that sticks with me and I want to bring into future games,” Westerman remarks. “In Borderlands 3, I designed an Amara skill where she runs up, puts an enemy into Phasegrasp, and then kicks them into other enemies. We couldn’t really do that in Borderlands 3, but with Borderlands 4 we get to do that with Harlowe.”

Borderlands 4 launches Friday September 12. Be positive to keep watch over our Borderlands 4 launch date information for the most recent updates and knowledge forward of its arrival.

Have you checked the Borderlands 4 system necessities but? Make positive your rig is sweet to go, after which have a look via our construct guides for Vex, Rafa, and Amon to start out planning out your first playthrough.

Now that we’ve got all the knowledge, which character are you going to play first? Come inform us within the PCGamesN community Discord server, and tell us whether or not you assume the brand new sequel might be every little thing we hoped.