Despite being released less than a week ago, Tiny Tina's Wonderlands has shown to be a very worthy spiritual successor to Borderlands 3 because of a much more chaotic gameplay flow that combines guns with spell casting and melee attacks. While a whacky combat system was been a unique feature of Borderlands games, Tiny Tina's Wonderlands also builds on other main aspects of the series, such as the amount of freedom players have while choosing their class. Actually, Borderlands games will often have a selection of characters to select from, referred to as Vault Hunters, each using their own skill trees and specializations.
Tiny Tina's Wonderlands changes that by permitting players to pick a starting class out of six before later picking a second class out of the remaining five, effectively having two fully-functioning classes at once, limited only through the quantity of skill points offered at the current level cap. Another fantastic change that Tiny Tina's Wonderlands brings is that players aren't relegated to customizing existing characters with collectible cosmetics, as they can instead create their own hero. This occurs through the game's very well-built character creator, which makes Tiny Tina's Wonderlands really an RPG than any Borderlands game continues to be thus far.
Why Tiny Tina's Wonderlands' Character Creator is So Good
While the character customization procedure for past Borderlands games was still nice to an extent, with several skins, heads, and colours open to change the appearance of one's Vault Hunter, the characters still didn't necessarily seem like the players' own. It is because they were predefined teams of characters using their own personalities and backgrounds, which often came into play when it comes to their in-game abilities too. As such, having the ability to produce a brand-new unique character in Tiny Tina's Wonderlands, providing them with a backstory and attributes, helps make the experience more immersive.
Tiny Tina's Wonderlands' character creator is among the most advanced in the industry at the moment, because it features all sorts of customization options. Players can choose their character's physique, pronouns, voice, overall size, hairstyle, skin color, facial features, decorations, armor, and more. This extensive degree of freedom allows players to create all sorts of characters, with lots of fans of other franchises adding established characters to Tiny Tina's game. Not just that, though, but players can also customize their characters beyond the creation process via collectible things like in the Borderlands games.
The fact that the character creator in Tiny Tina's Wonderlands enables the customization on most facial parts, as well as allowing players to opt-out from the symmetrical look for most of them, makes the process further than many other games do. Gearbox's attention to detail also shows in the fact that the masculine and feminine body types are referred to as "That One" and "That one," respectively, further demonstrating that the character's gender is not the focus. With Tiny Tina's Wonderlands being a fantasy RPG, players also have the options for non-human skin colors and facial features, which is great.
The way a Borderlands MMO Could Take Benefit of Tiny Tina's Wonderlands' Character Creation
Because the customization process is really different and detailed, this can be used by Gearbox as a springboard for future releases, and particularly so for any hypothetical Borderlands MMO. Nevertheless there is no official confirmation of the Borderlands MMO finding yourself in the works or even conceived like a possibility, it might create a lot of sense given the course of events within the mainline series, which is now going through the past of the universe and also the eldritch beings it has. Borderlands 3 put a lot of emphasis on the Destroyer from Borderlands 1 and also the figure of the Creator, its antithesis, making the previous endless destruction and also the latter unbound creation.
Borderlands 3 also introduced a new Guardian left through the Eridians to protect the earth Nekrotafeyo, with whom players eventually have a confrontation in the Director's Cut DLC. This Guardian is the Seer, who describes Borderlands' Sirens as chaos incarnate because of how they can tear apart causality and also the timeline of events. This might tie into Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel's impending war, that was predicted by another Guardian: the Watcher. They are likely connected within the series' lore in a way that makes this large-scale conflict one which may be the perfect premise for any Borderlands MMO.
With this in your mind, if a Borderlands MMO is ever to make, it might most surely allow players to make their own characters instead of choosing from preset Vault Hunters. If so, utilizing a character creation process that closely resembles those of Tiny Tina's Wonderlands would seem sensible. Not only that, but it's also possible that Tiny Tina's Wonderlands is really a stepping-stone within this direction, as Gearbox made it probably the most RPG-like game of the franchise.
Furthermore, although Tiny Tina's Wonderlands doesn't directly tie in to the events of Borderlands 3, seeing how it's set in the past before Tina was raised, it does have its connections. Probably the most relevant ones is that of Izzy, a personality that players meet on their own journey, who seems to be tied to Borderlands 3's Mancubus. It's entirely possible that an additional game will be needed to fully expand the Borderlands universe before an MMO turns into a possibility, but a personality creator like that of Tiny Tina's Wonderlands would be a perfect fit for that series' future.
Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands can be obtained now on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.
