Borderland's 4 has a place that can be fun on embrace

Embracer is not seen exactly at games in the gaming industry. After a ruthless acquisition trip that collapsed under itself when a $ 2 billion deal fell through, the Swedish publishing giant dismissed 17,000 employees, the entire studios ended and suddenly interrupted several games, including a new Deus Ex and Red Guerrilla fraction.

In the midst of the fall, it sold the gearbox and Borderlands to take-two Interactive for less than half of what it originally paid, and this trial would ultimately lay the foundation for Borderland 4 and inspire its change in tone and villain. So when Kotaku got his hands on the sequel and found a place labeled “Embracer's bluff”, it was difficult not to make comparisons with Gearbox's very latest history.

Last year Embracer acknowledged that it plans to use AI in game development, and in Embracer's bluff you can find an evil AI toilet

Borderland's 4 screenshot showing a player on Embracer's scam and looks at a giant trash.

As explained by Zack Zwiezen (who summarized it perfectly: “Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm”), the middle of the city is a gigantic debris, run by a “king mayor” who spends his time in a hot tub, surrounded by sex toys. Unlike many of PoIS who are full throughout Borderland's 4's open world, this has two side assignments, and one of them involves an evil AI toilet, which can easily be interpreted as a Jab at Embracer's first step in AI last year.

Embracer's scam is also full of annoying flying critters that do not stop playing.

The other side of Quest follows a vending machine that kills the person who buys from it; I let you read between the lines on it. Bluff is just the cherry on top. According to the Cambridge dictionary, it means “to deceive someone”, so naming a city “Embracer's Bluff” … Yes, you get the picture.

Of course, all this can be a great coincidence, but with Pitchford who openly admitted that the embrace situation inspired Borderland 4, it is difficult to imagine the team “inadvertently” with the name a literal dumping after their former parent company.