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Borderlands 4’s New World Kairos Redefines The Franchise

September 12, 2025

Borderlands 4 is easily one of the biggest games of the year, and it’s an exciting addition to the ongoing franchise. While the game isn’t perfect, it does scratch that itch that early Borderlands games like BL2 used to, and in my view that is largely thanks to the introduction of Borderlands 4’s brand-new world and setting, Kairos.

While Pandora is a beloved staple of the franchise, and the other various planets we visited in Borderlands 3 were exciting and original to some extent, Kairos is a fresh slate that incorporates all the lessons learned from the previous games. Kairos is large and diverse, but still feels contained and doesn’t overwhelm. Kairos feels like a nice balance from all previous Borderlands map designs.

Kairos Was The Right Move For Borderlands

BL4 Strikes A Better Balance With Its Design Philosophy

Borderlands‘ iconic world of Pandora was an incredibly unique and fascinating world that presented players with a vast landscape of opportunity and originality. The first time you set foot on Pandora was memorable, and Borderlands 2 managed to expand on the world of Pandora in meaningful and compelling ways.

Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel gave players their first real experience in a different world than Pandora, even if it was just Pandora’s Moon, Elpis. Elpis had strong potential, but ended up being a bit lackluster compared to Borderlands 2, and the zero-gravity mechanics were frustrating at times.

Borderlands 3’s worlds were diverse, but suffered from overcomplication and terrible map UI that made navigating the game somewhat of a burden. But Borderlands 4’s world and map design are a breath of fresh air when comparing them to previous games. The world of Kairos is designed more or less as a huge circle, and with seamless map transitions, each region feels distinct yet connected.

Kairos’s layout creates a natural progression of the game, providing myriad checkpoints, convenient quick travel locations, silos, safe houses, etc. for players to fast travel easily throughout the world. Once discovered, everything is within reach, and backtracking isn’t nearly as cumbersome as in some previous installments.

Borderlands’ Story Was Limited By Pandora

A New World Opened Up New Possibilities For Story Development

No matter what you end up thinking about Borderlands 4’s story (which I will not detail at all here to avoid spoilers), the move to a new world was undoubtedly the right decision for the narrative. With a clean slate, it doesn’t necessarily need to tie heavily into previous games to tell a compelling tale, and as long as it maintains thin connections to the previous games, just about everything else is fair game.

Borderlands 4has its fill of fan service cameos by beloved characters, but it doesn’t overly rely on them to try to make the story more interesting. Ultimately, Kairos was an excellent choice for this chapter of the Borderlands saga. It captures the iconic feel of Borderlands 2 in many ways, while also giving players something completely fresh.