Borderlands 4's Gravitar Harlowe reminds me why I fell in love with the series

Gearbox has opened the proverbial Pandora's Box on the last of the four Borderlands 4 leads, 'Gravitar' Harlowe, and I'm immediately put in mind of some of my personal highlights of the FPS series. An ex Maliwan scientist, Harlowe brings all manner of gadget-based trickery to the table. She can connect enemies to make them share damage, lock them in stasis, drag them around and lead them into giant explosions, and all while looking great doing it. If you're a big fan of crowd-control effects, were a Maya main in Borderlands 2, or can't get enough of Mass Effect's Asari Adept, you should be very excited.

The initial reveal of the four playable Borderlands 4 characters didn't actually inspire me that much, but now that we've seen them all in action I am desperate to play every single one. That's a testament to Gearbox's design; for all its narrative and pacing flaws, the fundamental gameplay of BL3 ranks among the best FPS games in recent memory, and I'm hopeful that means we're due something truly special with Borderlands 4.

As someone who enjoyed the first game a lot, Borderlands 2 was a real landmark moment because it came out right as I was switching from primarily console-first to PC gaming. The difference between the two versions at launch was night and day, particularly when it came to the use of Nvidia PhysX to deliver true environmental havoc. Throwing a singularity grenade and watching strips of fabric tear off nearby flags to join the gathering dirt, rubble, and psychos spinning around the vortex felt truly next-gen.

Packing a wealth of gadgets in her toolkit, former Maliwan 'combat scientist' Harlowe is ready to let you control the battlefield in similarly interesting and satisfying ways. There's even a little Maya in here, along with tools that remind me a lot of the beauty of Mass Effect's biotic combos. Locking people in stasis, lifting them up into the sky, sucking them together; you name it, she's got it. Harlowe's core trait, 'Entaglement,' ties all enemies affected by her action skill together, causing them to share any gun or skill damage taken with each other.

In the Cosmic Brilliance tree, we get the Flux Generator. Toss this out to create a field that entangles enemies within it and deals cryo damage to them over time. Any allies nearby will gain overshield, making it an excellent option for offense and defense all in one neat package. In accordance with Harlowe's Maliwan background, it can be upgraded to strip away all elemental resistances on your foes and boost friendly status effect chance. You can even grab it off the floor and toss it again if it doesn't end up landing where you'd hoped.

The Chroma Accelerator, found in the Creative Bursts tree, is a slow-moving, remote detonated nuke. "This is her boss killer," character designer Tommy Westerman says. The rest of the skill tree is filled with ways to ramp up the skill's damage and utility. Take 'Q-Ball' and swap the manual detonation for a bouncing orb that pings around the environment and explodes each time it bumps off something. Grab 'Special Purpose Magnets,' and it'll drag enemies along with it, boosting its potency as it does, making it more of a crowd tool.

In Seize the Day, Harlow gets Zero-Point, which immediately calls to mind one of my all-time favorite action skills, Maya's Phaselock. By default, your target is lifted to float in stasis for a while, but you can activate it again to slam them in the direction of your choice, whether that be other opponents or a stack of explosive barrels. Along the rest of the tree, you'll find ways to cause shots that hit your stasis victim to ricochet to anyone nearby, or store up damage they take before detonating it all in a powerful cryo explosion when you slam them.

As someone who loved using Maya's Sub-Sequence to bounce Phaselock between multiple targets, there's even an equivalent here. 'Inertia' will move the stasis bubble to another enemy if the currently held one dies. This also resets the skill duration each time, albeit with a gradually reducing limit. Crowd-control tools have always been a particular penchant of mine, especially in co-op games - there's no better feeling than tugging together a group for your friends to obliterate all at once, or lording it over a helplessly trapped foe.

"Every time we make a player character, there's always something we have to leave behind that sticks with me and I want to bring into future games," Westerman remarks. "In Borderlands 3, I designed an Amara skill where she runs up, puts an enemy into Phasegrasp, and then kicks them into other enemies. We couldn't really do that in Borderlands 3, but with Borderlands 4 we get to do that with Harlowe."

Borderlands 4 launches Friday September 12. Be sure to keep an eye on our Borderlands 4 release date guide for the latest updates and information ahead of its arrival.

Have you checked the Borderlands 4 system requirements yet? Make sure your rig is good to go, and then take a look through our build guides for Vex, Rafa, and Amon to start planning out your first playthrough.

Now that we have all the information, which character are you going to play first? Come tell us in the PCGamesN community Discord server, and let us know whether you think the new sequel will be everything we hoped.