The Borderlands series is well known for many things, including its emphasis on co-op, unique visual style, and humor, but it is also quite famous for its distinct player characters, who often use advanced tech or psychic superpowers to lay waste to enemies. Harlowe, one of Borderlands 4’s new playable characters, is no different, and Gearbox has finally provided some insight into how they play.
Harlowe has a bunch of toys at their disposal considering their past as a combat scientist for Maliwan, one of the Borderlands universe’s weapons manufacturers. They seem to be particularly great at using this high-tech weaponry for crowd control, often debuffing or straight up incapacitating enemies to create advantages for themself and their team.
For example, one of Harlowe’s main abilities is the Chroma Accelerator, which fires an unstable ball of energy that drifts forward and plows through crowds, all the while dealing cryo damage to anyone it floats past. Harlowe players can also detonate it an anytime to deal radiation damage or seemingly wait for it to burst on impact. This skill can be further upgraded to bounce haphazardly between enemies, store damage overtime to be dealt when it eventually explodes, and it can even be given a greater gravitational pull.
Harlowe can also throw out a flux generator that emits an freezing energy field, and enemies that are caught in it are also entangled. This means that other enemies with the same debuff share weapon and skill damage dealt to them, like a chain effect. Additionally, it can gain a slew of new properties, including a greater radius, secondary area-of-effect triggers, and can even be used to simultaneously buff teammates and debuff enemies.
Harlowe’s flashiest tool appears to be their Zero-Point ability, which suspends enemies in mid-air via a colorful, high-tech bubble. They can fire upon enemies trapped in them, but they can also press the action skill button again to slam these foes in whatever direction Harlowe is facing, which sounds like something I may never tire of. It can also be upgraded to provide healing to Harlowe or their teammates, attract ricocheting bullets to suspended enemies, or create a singularity and subsequent cryo explosion upon slamming an opponent in a bubble.
If you want to start planning your Harlowe builds, there is already a preview of their skill trees available, but you also won’t have to wait too long to play the game for yourself. After all, Borderlands 4 is releasing on September 12 for PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC, with a Switch 2 port coming about a month later on October 3.