Borderlands 4 is just around the corner, and there’s been a wave of exciting new updates. Today, I want to share something especially cool: the inclusion of what Gearbox is calling “Dynamic Events.” I had the pleasure of sitting down with Associate Creative Director Grant Kao. In just half an hour, his enthusiasm for the feature was infectious, which only added to my own admiration for the team.
Adding to the excitement in the room, a newly minted edition of Game Informer’s first new issue featured Borderlands 4 on the cover. I made sure Grant could see it, reinforcing my fandom of the studio he represented. After numerous fan-driven off-topic questions that I’ll cover later, I asked him if there was anything he was especially eager to share about the new system.
“I love the dynamic events because it’s a feature that helps augment all the things about the seamless world that we want, from storytelling to the reactive gameplay whenever a player does things to [Borderlands 4] and also just providing emergent things for players to do on the fly.”
In Borderlands 4, variety will matter
Importantly, with dynamic events, the team at Gearbox isn’t trying to replace fan favorite side quests or main story moments with filler. Rather, they hope to provide a fresh batch of optional content that’s genuinely fun — whether you’re grinding for weapons, gear, or simply enjoying the adventure.
Building on this, Borderlands 4 aims to always give you something meaningful to do. Instead of repeating the same missions or mobs again and again for that perfect drop, you can dive into activities that are actually fun and keep things feeling fresh every time you play.
To further enhance gameplay, they’re rewarding a variety of builds. It won’t be all about solo clearing a boss with the best hypothetical one-shot class build.
“We know there are builds that will be for how quickly you can kill a boss. And now we have builds that can be, like, how fast do you mob? You know, how fast do you go through and just wipe out 10 plus enemies in an encounter?”
I want to go real fast, Grant, real fast. Dynamic events stand out for their rare repetition within a single playthrough, offering consistently new experiences for players.
I asked, “Will these dynamic events be set in stone in each place? If you pass the same place regularly, will the same dynamic event appear in that area, or are they random?”
Grant answered, “I wouldn’t say they’re truly random, because true randomness is actually very difficult to achieve. There is a set of parameters and conditions that basically read off a player’s data in some form or fashion.
Even [an enemy] has six different variations (excluding enemy types), and talking to someone has multiple variations. Variation is king.
Grant Kao, Gearbox Associate Creative Director
“Then there’s a set of conditions that determines different buckets of events that could happen. So, there are different variations. Even a kill enemy has six different variations (excluding enemy types), and talking to someone has multiple variations. Variation is king.”
He continued, “And, if you’ve done that event more than once, we record that too, and then you might want a more dynamic experience out of it. We respect the fact that players have done this more than once, and players are here with more than one player, so what can we do and pull from that pool?”
Playing with friends will also mean upping the ante across the board. There will be more enemies, greater health pools, and more explosions. Of course, there will also be more Claptrap screams: “With dynamic events, I assume there’s scaling?”
“100 percent, yeah. There’s more increased, sorry to cut you off (he was incredibly eager to answer this question). There’s increased density, there’s also increased differentiation in mob type, so sometimes you might have more elite or badass enemies.”
“And those enemies, you know, require more coordination and target priority. So, yes, increased density and increased difficulty in some cases, for instance, due to world events,” Grant clarified.
What’s even better is that the game will account for who’s played what and where, tracking accomplishments and ongoing objectives to tailor the experience. As a result, the dynamic events will react to you and your friends, providing living and breathing content tailored to what’s happened within your game worlds.
“So, we will vary things up heavily, based on different sets of parameters,” he said in short.
And, of course, I had to ask about loot: whether the increase in scaling would result in a larger pool of loot for the players involved.
As to whether adding more people to the chaos will generate more loot, Grant said, “All loot is instanced to the player, in the way, so, there’s no increase, through the content reward, but there is an increase in totality, because you have 4 players all getting their own loot. And then you can share it with your friends, if you get your loot.”
Sounds like I need to get a group of willing friends who want to farm some legendaries to give myself the best chance of farming that beloved meta-level weapon for my build.
You have 4 players all getting their own loot. And then you can share it with your friends, if you get your loot.
Grant Kao, Gearbox Associate Creative Director
Speaking of some legendaries, you can expect a wide array of them to be available through the dynamic event loot pool. While farming one specific item will come down to an array of levers and switches we’re likely never to figure out, we’ll still be drawing from an overall legendary pool for players.
“Dynamic events, being dynamic in nature, would have been hard for the core player to target one specific event with one specific dedicated loot pool. So we shied away from doing that,” Grant explained.
Grant continued, “Instead, what we did was we made sure that the loot pool inside any chest that you could acquire from a dynamic event could touch whatever legendary we wanted to touch. So, you know, there are three kinds of tiers to events.”
There are three tiers of dynamic events in Borderlands 4: ambient events, activity-driven events, and world events. Each tier offers different experiences and rewards throughout the game.
“There are ambient events, where, like. We don’t really want you to think this is an event. We want you to just look at it and think this is just a normal part of the world. You don’t feel like you’re engaging in this activity, but if you follow along, or if you are a very keen observer, you could, maybe, be rewarded for that,” Grant said.
To me, that sounds like a level of paying attention that some gamers will surely pass by. However, I’m here for it. I’ll definitely take every advantage I can over the 9-5 gamers that will be grinding this game 24 hours a day.
“Then there’s the second tier, which is more activity-driven, asking the player to do multiple steps of things, or asking the player to go find a thing, or spend some time on this event. And that also can touch different, you know, legendary pools across it, mostly biome-related, loot in the world.”
So, if you’re searching for specific items within a certain pool, these activity-driven spots will likely attract you most frequently. Still, nothing is guaranteed, and the cream of the crop will come from the highest-tier dynamic event in the game.
Finally, there’s the world event, which is a very large spectacle-filled event that’s unique per zone.
Grant Kao, Gearbox Associate Creative Director
These world events provide opportunities to earn the rarest legendaries and cosmetics across the game’s loot pool.
Dynamic events are exactly what I’ve been waiting for in Borderlands 4. They promise to keep the endgame fresh, ensure every farm run is unique, and reward attentive and skilled players. As a long-time fan, I’m excited to dive in and see just how much more engaging my favorite zones can become.
With less than two weeks before the game launches, I, along with millions of others are eagerly awaiting our chance to get our fingers into the world of Borderlands once more.
