Gearbox has started a series of Borderlands 4 character deep-dives over on its YouTube channel, with Vex the Siren being the first to receive a brief gameplay overview and a longer, animated backstory trailer (below). The latter is not at all what I would’ve expected, but yup, it looks like I’ll be playing as the Siren Vault Hunter once again.
Siren origin stories vary dramatically across the Borderlands lore tapestries, and Vex may have the most surprising manifestation yet. Her character trailer, “Purple Friday,” feels like a much gorier, moderately more violent version of every retail worker’s secret fantasy: finally giving rowdy customers a piece of your mind. And in this case, also a piece of their mind, freshly spooned out of what used to be their skull.
Tapping into Siren powers to survive (read: eviscerate) a stampede of capitalism-crazed shoppers simply was not on my Borderlands 4 bingo list. Vex tells the rest of the Borderlands 4 crew that, yeah, it just kind of happened. RIP her apparent work crush. But hey, she got a cool purple cat out of it.
That cat, one of the summons available to Vex via one route of her Siren skill tree, gets more screentime in the gameplay montage. With every new Borderlands game, I wonder if I’ll end up doing my first playthrough with someone besides the Siren this time. And with every new Borderlands game, I inevitably don’t.
Sirens, now including Vex, have the kind of crowd control, color, and mage-like power fantasy that I gravitate toward. The Incarnate side of Vex’s abilities, with an action skill that briefly grants her a reaper’s form complete with wings and an Eldritch Blast, just looks like home to me. Eldritch Blast proved mighty handy in Baldur’s Gate 3, so surely it’s good here, too.
