Highlights

  • Borderlands regularly features heartless arms dealers as villains, adding chaos and conflict to the story.
  • Previous games have showcased various gun manufacturers as antagonists, even if some have shown a more sympathetic side.
  • It is likely that Borderlands 4 will continue the tradition by featuring another company in an antagonistic role, maintaining a core element of the series.

Gearbox Software's Borderlands franchise is one of the most well-known and long-running looter-shooter series. With a futuristic sci-fi story spanning across galaxies, Borderlands has built a world replete with rich lore and history. Its settings are populated by ferocious alien wildlife, dangerous lost technology, greedy, corrupt companies, and those who are simply trying to survive against all these hostile forces. Throughout their adventures in the Borderlands universe, its heroes have encountered a number of nefarious villains whose only aims are to get ahead, no matter the cost to the rest of the universe.

Borderlands' villains include slumbering Eldritch entities and poorly organized but relentlessly bloodthirsty groups of psychopathic bandits. But it's the aforementioned companies, all of which are weapons and munitions dealers, that have consistently played an adversarial part to some degree in every game so far. They often coincided with bigger threats, causing further chaos with their short-sighted attempts at maintaining wealth and glory at the expense of safety and common sense. The next title, then, should continue this tradition by having another corporation in an antagonistic role concurrent with the overarching danger.

Borderlands 4 is not officially confirmed at this point, but various reports indicate it is likely in the works.

Borderlands Expect 2024
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Borderlands 4 Should Keep This Fun Story Aspect Intact

Borderlands' Previous Weapons Corporation Villains

The arms dealers in the series are usually depicted as morally gray at best, and unapologetically heartless at the extreme. At least six of the major Borderlands' gun manufacturers have already appeared in villainous positions in both mainline titles as well as DLCs and spin-offs:

Corporation

Antagonist In

Altas

BL1

Dahl

BL1, The Pre-Sequel

Hyperion

BL2, Tales From the Borderlands

Jakobs

BL1 Zombie Island of Dr. Ned DLC

Maliwan

BL3

Tediore

New Tales From the Borderlands

The series began with Atlas as the big bad, although it was a bit upstaged by The Destroyer at the end of Borderlands 1. BL2 is probably the most well-known example, with Hyperion CEO Handsome Jack hiring the protagonists and later brutally betraying them in his scheme to unlock Pandora's legendary vault. Maliwan and Tediore were also major villains, with Tediore in particular being the one pulling all the strings in New Tales.

Not all dealers were always completely evil, however, and a few stories highlighted another side to some of them. CEO Wainwright Jakobs was depicted in a more sympathetic manner, teaming up with the protagonists in Borderlands 3's Guns, Love, and Tentacles DLC. Mr. Torgue, head of his eponymous company, also shows up in a more helpful manner throughout, as he seems to take more delight in spectacularly badass explosions than being outright malicious.

Borderlands 4 Could Have Another Arms Dealer As An Antagonist Again

Although not always the case, the weapons dealers often served as a secondary threat to the main danger, which most often came in the form of the ancient cosmic monstrosities that the bygone Eridian civilization sealed away in the various vaults. In their literal arms race against the competition, many of the Borderlands manufacturers displayed wanton disregard for both the planets' populations and their own employees' lives as they scrambled to beat each other (and the protagonists) to the punch to ransack the vaults' treasures.

This element has so long been a core component of its plots that one of Borderlands' gun makers should almost certainly return in an antagonistic capacity for BL4. It could be one already seen, like Tediore, that is bent on vengeance against the Vault Hunters. Alternatively, it might shift to one that was previously more in the background, such as Vladof, as it attempts to rise above the competition and ends up bumping shoulders with the next batch of Hunters. Either way, Gearbox would do well to continue featuring one of the arms dealers as part of the next story to keep the tradition going strong.