Terminally ill Borderlands fan says his trip to Gearbox to play Borderlands 4 'was truly an amazing experience'

Caleb McAlpine, a terminally ill "die hard Borderlands fan" who asked in October for a chance to play Borderlands 4 while he still can, has confirmed on Reddit that Gearbox came through in a big way, saying his experience at the studio was "just awesome."

"Gearbox flew me and a friend down first class the 20th of this month and we got to tour the studio and meet an amazing bunch of people from some of the devs of all of the Borderlands games up to Randy [Pitchford], the CEO," McAlpine wrote. "We got to play what they have for Borderlands 4 so far and it was amazing."

McAlpine said Gearbox put him and his friend up at the Omni Hotel at The Star, the headquarters of the Dallas Cowboys NFL team. "The hotel wanted to do something nice as well and got us in on a VIP tour of the entire facility," McAlpine wrote. "Needless to say me being a Lions fan I got to talk a lot of smack lol."

McAlpine's journey to see Borderlands 4 began in October when he asked the Borderlands 3 subreddit for help contacting Gearbox to ask if there was any way to make it happen. Redditors passed along his request to Gearbox chief Randy Pitchford, who quickly got in touch with McAlpine and said "we're going to do whatever we can to make something happen."

"When I received an email from Randy I couldn’t believe it," McAlpine told GamesRadar at the time. "It was awesome to see the CEO of Gearbox emailing me and telling me that he would do whatever he could to help me out. I was just floored to be honest. In a good way. I never expected anything like this. It almost felt like a dream to be honest."

Just an update, Thank you everyone from r/borderlands3

In his update, McAlpine also expressed his gratitude to everyone who helped get his request to the right people. "I don’t know if I will be around when the game comes out but I just want to say thank you to all of you for all of your love and support and for helping in making this happen," he wrote. "It truly was an amazing experience and it was just awesome."