Borderlands 4 has had its fair share of marketing mishaps, from Gearbox boss Randy Pitchford saying "real fans" would find a way to pay $80 for it to a collector's edition that isn't a collector's edition and doesn't even contain the game. But a new trailer is already at over 100,000 views on YouTube, and Pitchford says we need to get sharing it if we want to see more like it.
The trailer is actually a narrative short film that introduces the backstory of Rafa, a new Vault Hunter. Raised in an asteroid belt, he can't handle planetary gravity without the aid of an exosuit developed by the Tediore corporation.
It plays out a Robocop-esque scene where the exosuit is paraded in front of shareholders, and deadly violence ensues. It's a blunt-but-funny parody of the kind of capitalism we're all too familiar with these days – maybe even a parody of the video games industry itself.
If you like this kind of thing instead of normal commercials, please share and retweet. Those numbers directly impact the decisions made in the suit meetings and conference rooms. https://t.co/3Q1XOHiO0WJuly 30, 2025
Making the parody even more real is Pitchford himself, who tweets: "If you like this kind of thing instead of normal commercials, please share and retweet. Those numbers directly impact the decisions made in the suit meetings and conference rooms." The kinds of conference rooms and suit meetings being explicitly mocked in the trailer...?
We can debate until the cows come home if it's possible to effectively critique a system such as capitalism from within it, but here we are. All I know is I enjoyed the video, it even made me laugh out loud once, which Borderlands has never made me do before, so that's something.
In the meantime, check out all the upcoming games of 2025.
