Borderlands 4
Engine: Unreal Engine 5
Genre: First-Person Shooter, Action RPG, Multiplayer
Platforms: PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S
Release: 2025
Lead Mission Designer
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Led a team of 8 mission designers to build the main mission campaign and side mission stories (over 120 total) for our flagship open-world title while advocating best practices and player experience goals
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Co-developed a proprietary scripting suite in Unreal Engine 5, including tools for gameplay scripting, voiceover, combat encounters, cinematics, and other Core-Tech systems to support multiple projects
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Refined and coordinated pipelines for mission content among several disciplines including writers, systems designers, cinematics designers, animators, content artists, and audio engineers
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Managed co-development teams building activities, systemic content, and levels as a primary point of contact
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Presented milestone review videos to directors and the full team
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Pitched, designed, and built the first main mission of the game leading a multi-disciplinary strike team
RESPONSIBILITIES
Main: Guns Blazing
In addition to my role managing the Mission Design team, I was personally responsible for pitching and building the first main mission of the game, Guns Blazing. My work encompassed all gameplay scripting, combat encounters, authoring of custom UI prompts, NPC choreography, voiceover and cinematic implementation, and integration with the new character game flow.
This mission had to introduce many core concepts including basic gameplay and controls, a wide variety of key narrative information such as our new setting and villains, but also new gameplay elements never before seen in Borderlands, such as grappling and swimming.
From my original pitch throughout development, my key pillar for this mission was that it "shouldn't feel like a tutorial": from the second the player gets control, the player should feel the same high-paced action they could expect from the rest of the game. Players already familiar with action games should feel their momentum unconstrained by tutorialization.
Throughout development I led a weekly meeting of all relevant directors and developers (both internal and external, approximately 40 total) giving regular status updates and triaging priorities on an accelerated schedule.