Exactly. Settings exist for a reason, but so many gamers think that if a game doesn't run well at the maximum settings, it's not worth playing. These UE5 games can be twice as demanding at maximum settings (which are usually labelled 'EPIC'), compared to high settings, but often, I can't even tell the difference in graphics fidelity, so I usually run UE5 with high or very high settings.
I've even noticed that some UE5 developers hide the true Epic settings on purpose, so as not to anger gamers with higher requirements. For example, Silent Hill F: many gamers said that this game runs well for a UE5 title, but try editing the .ini files and turning on the true Epic settings, and performance melts exactly to Borderlands 4 levels.
Another good example: Dying Light The Beast. The developers didn't want to anger gamers, so they didn't include RT at launch. Gamers were happy with the overall performance, but look at benchmarks now. The requirements went from normal to shockingly bad.
But I think gamers are willing to forgive developers high requirements if they can get decent performance/quality on their PC and that's the case with Dying Light The Beast. Even without RT, the game still looks fairly good and the performance remains good.
The problem with Borderlands 4 is that most gamers on PC (Steam's survey suggests that most gamers have a 3070, 3060 or 4060) just cant get good picture quality / graphics fidelity / performance, so the game looks and runs like a crap. Borderlands 4 feels like a game built for the next generation of GPUs when it comes to it's requirements. Even the current high-end GPUs like the RTX5090 need to use DLSS at higher resolutions, and you still need to lower some settings to achieve a high refresh rate. But what if you don't own a high-end GPU? Well, there's absolutely nothing you can do....
Or maybe you can do something about it
. If I had a GPU that was too weak to play this game and I want to play it badly, I could consider playing Borderlands 4 on my CRT monitor in glorious 768p, 600p, or maybe even 480p because even such low resolution look very good on a CRT monitor. Even the 3060 should be able to run 480p in Borderlands, especially with DLSS on top of that
(I dont know of DLSS works on such low resolution, so I might try). I'm laughing, but I tried playing a few modern games on my CRT monitor and RTX4080S, and I had a very good experience, so it's not a bad idea IMO.
But yes, it seems like Gearbox made some bad decisions and prioritised their artistic vision over the interests of gamers. Gearbox wanted to significantly improve the graphics fidelity compared to previous games, so they opted for real-time lighting. After all, Borderlands has always featured dynamic time of day (TOD) and static (pre-baked) lighting just cant look good in such a game. Even if they had tried to pre-bake the lighting for different times of day, it would have required hundreds of gigabytes of storage, so IDF of that's even possible (Borderlands 3 levels werent as big, yet the game size was huge, over 100GB if I rememeber correctly).
I think gearbox should aim to achieve at least 1440p (upscaled to 4K) at 60fps on PS5 hardware, and from that scale even higher settings / effects on PC. This would probably mean that Gearbox would need to scrap real-time lighting, but most gamers would understand that and still be happy with results. Take Arc Riders, for example. This game doesn't use RT, but people still seem to enjoy it.
But looking at Borderlands 4 from my own perspective as someone who can play the game on a decent PC, I can say that Gearbox's decisions make sense. Despite the same cartoon graphic novel, real-time lighting makes a noticeable difference compared to the previous game and if I use DLSS and tweak some settings I end up with similar framerate as borderlands 3 at maxed out settings without DLSS, and it's not like there's a huge difference between native 4K and reconstructed 4K. Borderlands 4 is a true masterpiece from my perspective. In a few years, when more people are able to run this game decently, I'm certain that the number of Borderlands 4 fans will grow a lot.
