The Borderlands saga is celebrated for many aspects, including its cooperative gameplay, distinctive art style, and comedic elements. It`s equally renowned for its memorable player characters, who often utilize advanced technology or psionic powers to decimate adversaries. Harlowe, one of Borderlands 4`s recently unveiled playable characters, perfectly embodies this tradition, and Gearbox has now offered detailed insights into their unique playstyle.
Given their background as a combat scientist for Maliwan, a prominent weapons manufacturer within the Borderlands universe, Harlowe commands an impressive arsenal of gadgets. This character excels at leveraging high-tech armaments for effective crowd management, frequently applying debuffs or outright incapacitating enemies to gain a strategic advantage for themselves and their team.
Harlowe`s Core Abilities
One of Harlowe`s primary abilities is the Chroma Accelerator, which launches an unstable energy sphere. This sphere drifts forward, plowing through groups of enemies, inflicting cryo damage upon anyone it passes. Players can detonate it at any moment to unleash radiation damage or allow it to burst upon impact. This skill can be further enhanced to ricochet erratically between targets, accumulate damage over time before its eventual explosion, and even increase its gravitational pull to draw in foes.
Additionally, Harlowe can deploy a flux generator that emits a freezing energy field, ensnaring caught enemies. This entanglement ensures that other foes afflicted by the same debuff share incoming weapon and skill damage, creating a devastating chain reaction. The generator can also acquire a variety of new properties, such as an expanded radius, secondary area-of-effect triggers, and the capacity to simultaneously empower allies and weaken opponents.
Harlowe`s most visually striking tool appears to be their Zero-Point ability, which suspends enemies mid-air within a vibrant, high-tech bubble. While foes are trapped, Harlowe can fire upon them or, by pressing the action skill button again, violently slam them in the direction they are facing – an action that promises endless satisfaction. Further upgrades can allow this ability to provide healing to Harlowe or their teammates, attract ricocheting bullets to suspended enemies, or generate a singularity followed by a cryo explosion when an opponent within a bubble is slammed.
Release Information
For those eager to plan their Harlowe builds, a preview of their skill trees is already accessible. Fortunately, the wait to experience the game firsthand won`t be long. Borderlands 4 is scheduled for release on September 12 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC, with a Nintendo Switch 2 port arriving approximately one month later on October 3.