Vault Hunter Archetypes Borderlands 4 Needs to Recreate

Game ZXC

Borderlands

By Anthony Bussing

Published Jan 14, 2024

Highlights

Borderlands 4 should feature a mech character class that allows players to control their own walking tank, following the success of Moze in Borderlands
The addition of a true melee character in the franchise is overdue, as there has yet to be a designated melee-based Vault Hunter, despite off-meta melee builds in Borderlands
The tradition of having a support/medic character class, like the Siren, should continue in future Borderlands games, as these characters offer potent support capabilities and encourage cooperative multiplayer.

Borderlands 3’s Vault Hunters will be hard to top, but future Borderlands franchise games can still pull this off if they play their cards right. One way to do this is to recreate some of the best character classes and archetypes that the Borderlands franchise has seen so far.

Between fan favorite Vault Hunters from the Borderlands franchise that deserve to return or popular character archetypes among RPGs in general, the sky is the limit for Borderlands 4. At the same time, expectations for the franchise are also sky-high, so it might be best for Borderlands 4 to recreate some of the most fun power fantasies for its playable characters.

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Vault Hunter Classes That Borderlands 4 Should Feature

Mech

Moze from Borderlands 3 was the ultimate mech power fantasy, even proving to be stronger than most vehicles in the Borderlands franchise. Not to mention, players could also turn Moze’s rideable mech into an autonomous, mobile companion, so this character effectively replaced the older sentry-gun classes with a more useful and powerful action skill. While Moze set a high bar to compete with, future Borderlands games still deserve to have Vault Hunters who can control their own walking tank.

Melee

Brick was an insanely powerful hybrid of unarmed melee and heavy explosive weapons specialist, but there still technically hasn’t been a true melee character in the Borderlands franchise. There have even been off-meta melee builds for some of the recent characters in Borderlands 3, but the lack of proper melee weapons in the franchise is due for a change. Especially after Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands featured melee weapons, it’s time that the mainline Borderlands franchise added melee weapons, which is a great opportunity to also add a designated melee-based Vault Hunter outside of Vault Hunters with melee abilities like Krieg and Amara.

Medic

Traditionally, Borderlands’ Siren characters have always served as the resident support/medic character classes, so this archetype is bound to return, and rightfully so. Very few Vault Hunters in the Borderlands games encourage cooperative multiplayer quite like the Siren characters, given their potent support capabilities. Whether the Siren class in future Borderlands games continues the tradition of being the designated medic class or becomes its own distinct thing, this character archetype shouldn’t be forgotten.

Playable Enemy-Character

Kreig from Borderlands 2 and Handsome Jack’s Doppelganger from Borderlands the Pre-Sequel are a sweet treat for franchise veterans to get to play, especially considering how powerful these Vault Hunters are. Playing as enemy characters is almost always a fun trope, no matter what their kit turns out to be, so future Borderlands games should make this a recurring tradition.

Randomizer

Claptrap from Borderlands the Pre-Sequel is arguably both the strongest and the weakest Vault Hunter in the Borderlands franchise, because of how unpredictable this character’s action skills can be. Activating Claptrap’s action skill will randomly trigger one of many effects, either being extremely helpful or self-deprecating, which provides a surprisingly fresh experience for each playthrough. This character is one of many prime candidates when it comes to returning Vault Hunters in the Borderlands franchise that deserve to be playable in multiple games.

Summoner

The Necromancer class from the Diablo franchise is among the strongest examples of a summoner archetype, so Borderlands should consider taking notes on what makes Diablo’s Necromancer class so powerful. Fl4k from Borderlands 3 scratched the surface of this kind of character class, but their limited amount of minions was quite low in hindsight, and as a consequence, builds that focus on Fl4k’s minions often get overshadowed by this character’s critical-hit builds. What could truly make this archetype more of a distinguished class in future Borderlands games is branching out into necromancer territory to be able to convert fallen enemies into temporary allies.