Despite being released less than a week ago, Tiny Tina's Wonderlands has already proven to be a very worthy spiritual successor to Borderlands 3 due to an even more chaotic gameplay flow that combines guns with spell casting and melee attacks. While a whacky combat system was always been a distinctive feature of Borderlands games, Tiny Tina's Wonderlands also builds on other main elements of the series, including the degree of freedom players have while choosing their class. In fact, Borderlands games usually have a selection of characters to choose from, known as Vault Hunters, each with their own skill trees and specializations.
Tiny Tina's Wonderlands changes that by allowing 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 by the number of skill points available at the current level cap. Another fantastic change that Tiny Tina's Wonderlands brings is that players are no longer relegated to customizing existing characters with collectible cosmetics, as they can instead create their own hero. This happens through the game's very well-built character creator, which makes Tiny Tina's Wonderlands much more of an RPG than any Borderlands game has been thus far.
Why Tiny Tina's Wonderlands' Character Creator is So Good
While the character customization process of past Borderlands games was still nice to an extent, with several skins, heads, and colors available to change the appearance of one's Vault Hunter, the characters still didn't necessarily feel like the players' own. This is because they were predefined sets of characters with their own personalities and backgrounds, which often came into play in terms of their in-game abilities as well. As such, being able to create a brand-new unique character in Tiny Tina's Wonderlands, giving them a backstory and attributes, makes the experience more immersive.
Tiny Tina's Wonderlands' character creator is one of the most advanced in the industry at the moment, as it features all sorts of customization options. Players can choose their character's body type, pronouns, voice, overall size, hairstyle, skin color, facial features, decorations, armor, and more. This extensive degree of freedom allows players to make all sorts of characters, with many fans of other franchises adding established characters to Tiny Tina's board game. Not only that, though, but players can also customize their characters beyond the creation process via collectible items like in the Borderlands games.
The fact that the character creator in Tiny Tina's Wonderlands allows for the customization of most facial parts, as well as allowing players to opt-out of the symmetrical look for most of them, makes the process much deeper 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 "This 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.
How a Borderlands MMO Could Take Advantage of Tiny Tina's Wonderlands' Character Creation
Because the customization process is so diverse and detailed, this can be used by Gearbox as a springboard for future releases, and especially so for a hypothetical Borderlands MMO. While there is no official confirmation of a Borderlands MMO being in the works or even conceived as a possibility, it would make a lot of sense given the course of events in the mainline series, which is now exploring the past of the universe and the eldritch beings it contains. Borderlands 3 put a lot of emphasis on the Destroyer from Borderlands 1 and the figure of the Creator, its antithesis, making the former endless destruction and the latter unbound creation.
Borderlands 3 also introduced a new Guardian left by the Eridians to protect the planet Nekrotafeyo, with whom players eventually have a confrontation in the Director's Cut DLC. This Guardian is the Seer, who refers to Borderlands' Sirens as chaos incarnate because of how they can tear apart causality and the timeline of events. This may tie into Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel's impending war, which was predicted by another Guardian: the Watcher. These are likely connected in the series' lore in a way that makes this large-scale conflict one that could be the perfect premise for a Borderlands MMO.
With this in mind, if a Borderlands MMO is ever to be made, it would most definitely allow players to make their own characters instead of choosing from preset Vault Hunters. In that case, using a character creation process that very closely resembles that of Tiny Tina's Wonderlands would make sense. Not only that, but it's also possible that Tiny Tina's Wonderlands is a stepping stone in this direction, as Gearbox made it the most RPG-like game of the franchise.
Furthermore, although Tiny Tina's Wonderlands doesn't directly tie into the events of Borderlands 3, seeing how it's set in the past before Tina grew up, it does have its connections. One of the most relevant ones is that of Izzy, a character that players meet on their journey, who seems to be tied to Borderlands 3's Mancubus. It's possible that a further game will be needed to fully expand the Borderlands universe before an MMO becomes a possibility, but a character creator like that of Tiny Tina's Wonderlands would be a perfect fit for the series' future.
Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.