Tiny Tina's Wonderlands is a new spin-off in the Borderlands series. The new game builds off the success of the Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep DLC for Borderlands 2 that took the game's looter shooter mechanics to a fantasy world within an in-universe tabletop RPG. With clear roots in Dungeons & Dragons, the DLC brought a breath of fresh air to the series. That is exactly what Tiny Tina's Wonderlands is attempting to do as well, while also aiming to keep the game feeling familiar for longtime fans of the series.
Not very much is known about Tiny Tina's Wonderlands. The developers have confirmed that the game will still feature the absurd loot that the series is known for, including guns. However, fans do not know what the game's story will feature, how exactly the game's classes and spells will work, or what enemies players can expect to face throughout Tiny Tina's Wonderlands. Surprisingly, it seems that players may not even see Borderlands's iconic Psycho enemy in the game.
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Psychos have played a massive role in the Borderlands series thus far. The enemy quickly became an iconic part of the entire series with the vault symbol emblazoned on its map and a psycho featured on the cover of the first four games in the series. Psychos are melee-based enemies that shout nonsensical sentences at the player while charging them with giant pizza-cutter-like buzzsaws. Psychos are also very important for the flow of combat in Borderlands.
The series' combat thus far has primarily focused on gunplay augmented with skills to take down enemies from range. Psychos fill an important gap in this setup by charging players to keep them on their toes and force them out of cover and react to a more aggressive enemy type. While the Borderlands games have all been connected to one another in other ways, psychos have remained an integral part of the design of the series.
This made it all the more exciting when players got the opportunity to play a psycho in Borderlands 2 through the DLC character Krieg. Krieg allowed players to enjoy the mad ramblings of a psycho, while his action skills saw him transforming into a badass psycho that was practically un-killable under certain builds. Krieg was a very well-received character by the Borderlands 2 community, as he captured the spirit of the series while also bringing a fun new way to play the game. While Krieg did have an appearance in Borderlands 3, he was not featured nearly as much as many fans hoped, which could foreshadow the fate of psychos in Tiny Tina's Wonderlands.
The worries over the inclusion of psychos in Tiny Tina's Wonderlands stem from the game's cover art, being the first in the series to not feature a psycho in any way. Instead, it features Tiny Tina riding a massive dragon while wielding a gun and a sword. Even Tiny Tina's usual psycho mask headband is replaced with a pink bunny-eared wizard's hat. The worries were then spurred on by a trailer showcasing the enemies and villain of Tiny Tina's Wonderlands did not feature a psycho at all, which is extremely rare for the series.
It is particularly odd because psychos could logically appear in the game. Tiny Tina's Wonderlands takes place at an interesting place in the series' timeline, but the game's framing as a tabletop RPG session being run by Tiny Tina allows it to bring in any element from previous games. With Tiny Tina's character and backstory featuring psychos so heavily, it would only make sense for her to want to bring them into her game.
This is especially true with how Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep was used to explore Tiny Tina's grieving process over the death of Roland and Bloodwing in Borderlands 2. With Tiny Tina's parents being killed by Handsome Jack after being captured and sold by the psycho Flesh-Stick, it would make sense for Tiny Tina's Wonderlands to show the character grappling with her history with psychos through the game.
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However, there are also many other elements of the usual Borderlands formula that Tiny Tina's Wonderlands will be changing or doing away with completely. One of the biggest changes is that the game will allow players to customize their own characters and multiclass to change their playstyle. While the specifics of these systems are not known, there are many fan theories about Tiny Tina's Wonderlands that could explain what players should expect.
Multiclass changes could end up being very welcome changes to the series' usual formula. When combined with the game's confirmed melee weapons, the skills and loot that players can expect to find will undoubtedly be unlike anything else the series has tackled before. This includes new armor loot that could add even more chaotic abilities to the game's frenetic and wild combat encounters.
The game's combat will also be greatly changed by Tiny Tina's Wonderlands' new spells. Gearbox has confirmed that spells will play a big role in how players approach the game, but it is still unclear what exactly they will look like. It seems plausible that spells will take the place of the action skills that have defined classes in the series before, which will likely be going away in Tiny Tina's Wonderlands. Either way, spells are a great way for the game to change up its combat, while the possibilities for how it could impact builds could be limitless. There is still a lot that players want to know about Tiny Tina's Wonderlands, so, hopefully, more will be shared about the game soon.
Tiny Tina's Wonderlands is planned to release in early 2022 for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
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