Out of all the changes made within Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, the switch to a T rating was one of the most unexpected, though it did not have a negative impact on the game by any means. It actually had a big upside, as it allowed younger gamers to become invested in the Borderlands spin-off, growing the potential audience significantly. With Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands’ sales success ensuring that it could become its own franchise, sticking to the T rating for future games makes sense.
However, while a T for Tina approach worked well for the colorful world of The Wonderlands, it would be detrimental to the mainline Borderlands games. As such, while Borderlands 4 should consider pulling from Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands when it comes to its classes, melee weapons, and the Chaos Chamber, the ESRB rating should remain M for mature.
Why an M Rating is Crucial for Borderlands
For the most part, Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands’ combat feels as strong as ever despite the T rating. With so many fantasy creatures being featured, players are able to blow crabs to pieces and remove bones from skeletons, ensuring that the shots players land still feel impactful. However, the T rating does have one downside when it comes to gameplay: combat with human enemies. Here, players’ weaponry feels a lot less impactful, as blowing off limbs or making enemies bleed would have gotten the game a mature tag.
It feels a bit strange to decimate goblins and trolls but have human enemies just fall to the floor or fade to dust when their health bar is depleted, but with human enemies being quite rare in Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, this is not too problematic. However, Borderlands 4 does not have that luxury. Bandits are an iconic enemy and have appeared on the cover of every mainline Borderlands game, and players spend a lot of time fighting Psychos in the mainline series. As such, they can not feel as strange to fight as the humans do within Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands.
Being able to melt enemies with corrosive weapons or blow off limbs has always been a staple of the Borderlands franchise, as visceral combat suits the tone of the games incredibly well. It makes Borderlands’ all-important guns feel stronger, and the same can be said for the Vault Hunters’ abilities. With human enemies being a minuscule portion of what players fight in Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, a sacrifice could be made to get the game down to a T rating. With Borderlands, though, losing the blood and gore in the game’s combat would be a far tougher sell.
An M rating also allows for more freedom when it comes to jokes and storytelling, too. For instance, someone like Mad Moxxi seems like a no-go for Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands due to her innuendo-filled dialogue, which likely explains why she didn’t appear. Losing out on Moxxi and sexual jokes in future Borderlands games would be a shame, as would the lack of any comedic moments that rely on gorey deaths. From a story perspective, something like the flashbacks to Krieg’s origins in the Fantastic Fustercluck DLC would have been less impactful, as the horror of what he went through could not be fully shown to the player if Borderlands 3 had a T rating.
With Tiny Tina being a teenager during the events of Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, it makes sense that her fictional world would not be overly dark and violent. The “real world” of Borderlands has always leaned into mature themes, though, so swapping to a T rating like Wonderlands would make Borderlands 4 feel disconnected from its predecessors. While an M rating will likely still happen, hopefully Gearbox is not motivated to abandon the more mature Borderlands style following Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands’ strong performance commercially. Combat feels better, darker stories can be told, and more options for jokes are possible with an adult focus.
Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.