Borderlands 3 vs Tiny Tina's Wonderlands, here's what we got! The Borderlands franchise finds itself in a curious predicament in 2022, in that - depending on how well its latest iteration, Tiny Tina's Wonderlands, does - it might end up bifurcating into two separate sub-series. Fans might be wondering, then: Wonderlands vs Borderlands - which is better? Which should you be playing?

As one might imagine, the answer is a bit more complex than it might seem at face value. Naturally, Tiny Tina's Wonderlands is the newest game in the series, building upon the fantasy theme of Tiny Tina's Assault, and therefore gets to enjoy certain key features that none of its predecessors had. Some of them are rather amazing, too. If you'd like to learn more, just check out our article: 6 Big Reasons To Play Tiny Tina's Wonderlands.

If, however, you're more interested in figuring out the differences between Wonderlands and Borderlands, this is the article to read. We've got a whole bunch of them listed below, you see! Trust us: you'll be interested in learning more about many of them.

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Borderlands 3 vs Tiny Tina's Wonderlands: Learn The Key Differences!

#4: Greater Focus on Customization

With each new Borderlands title, Gearbox has kept steering further and further towards enabling proper character and weapon customization. Veterans will recall that, at first, Borderlands only really offered alternative helmets and "shaders", whereas Borderlands 3 has got full character skins, granular color options, and even weapon skins!

Now, while Wonderlands takes weapon customization a step back (no skins, no trinkets), character customization is downright nuts. Players can tweak their character's looks to the tiniest detail, which isn't something we had expected out of this game at first. Naturally, it fits with the whole Dungeons & Dragons theme, but it's nice to see Gearbox lean so heavily into this particular aspect of the game. Especially since it's arguably unimportant in the grand scheme of things!

Further, Tiny Tina's Wonderlands lets you customize more than just your looks. This is the first time players can create their own character from the bottom up, attaching any class to their character in a Borderlands game. Better still, we can multi-class too! Picking your own class is, without a doubt, the way to go for the franchise in the future.

Much like a dungeon master in a Dungeons & Dragons campaign, Tiny Tina then narrates your adventure as you explore her fantasy world, making adjustments to the story and subsequently to your quest on the fly.

#3: No More Gore, Kinda

This one won't sit well with everyone, we know. Tiny Tina's Wonderlands is a T-Rated game, you see. Historically, Borderlands has been a delightfully dirty and brutal game. Blood, gore, guts, and glory. Lots of all of those in previous Borderlands games. Wonderlands, on the other hand, doesn't actually have any real blood. Just heaps of glory, if you will.

Now, to be fair, an argument could be made that Borderlands loses some of its oomph if you take away the corpses and blood. Looking back at any of the previous Borderlands titles, brutality has always been at the core of combat. Guns punch hard and they do real, visible damage. Whether that's by tearing limbs or by spawning PhysX-enabled pools of blood and gore, the point remains the same.

Wonderlands side-steps this by introducing enemies that don't bleed, generally speaking. Skeletons satisfyingly come apart as bullets hit their shaky bones, and various monsters gib into magical bits of not-gore. It works well enough! It's also different enough to matter.

#2: Way More Focused

Doubling down on the fantasy theme of Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep, another unexpected feature of Tiny Tina's Wonderlands is that it's basically laser-focused compared to most of its predecessors. Make no mistake, there are impressively large levels available for Tiny Tina to play through, but the open world is effectively gone in this game. Whereas previous Borderlands games would often meander and let players move through the world however they want, Wonderlands takes a different approach,

There's a big, open-ended D&D style overworld where players control their own miniatures. Random encounters, enemy camps, and all that good stuff make an appearance here, but merely as bite-sized combat arenas. For better or for worse, the focus is squarely on combat this time around, and we can see both sides of the argument here.

Whereas some players are bound to greatly enjoy this new approach with pure combat, all the time, others may find themselves preferring the old approach of having the chance to take in the sights at one's own pace. And, to be fair, you still can do that. It's just that it feels like the game is steering you away from it. As soon as all the enemies are down and out, you get your loot and load out of the zone. It's good stuff, but also appreciably different.

#1: Entirely Different Vibe

Unsurprisingly, Tiny Tina's Wonderlands goes for a wildly different vibe than most other Borderlands games. Hell, it's quite unlike anything we had seen from Gearbox before. The game has that classic Borderlands theme to it, but the atmosphere can hardly compare. This isn't a bad thing, mind! Like most things on this list, it's just different, and some players may end up preferring it, while others may find themselves yearning for what they had before.

When you take out the established Vault Hunters, take away the blood and gore, and remove abject madness and unrepentant violence from the Borderlands mix, you actually end up with a compelling variant of this universe. Something appropriately fantastical, yet believable enough to maintain its own lovely facade. Sure enough, Borderlands fans will love Wonderlands, but let us tell you: there's a good reason why 'Wonderlands' wasn't just another 'Borderlands' with a unique subtitle.

In the end, what matters is that the game is good. And it genuinely is good. For what that's worth, we believe that Gearbox was right to leave out the sci-fi post-post-post apocalypse behind, even if only for a little bit. The franchise is all the better and more varied for it, and Gearbox's writers get to flex their writing muscles a bit. And - yes - the writing is good again. That alone was a huge relief.

Closing Thoughts

This article has ended up being a bit of an affirmation of our previous discussion on why Wonderlands is decidedly not a Borderlands 4, and why that's perfectly fine in the grand scheme of things. It's hardly surprising that Gearbox may have gotten kind of sick of the regular Borderlands schtick, as well.

And on that note, while Wonderlands is a lovely new iteration of the battle-tested Borderlands franchise, we cannot help but hope to see something different in the future. Something more... ancient, along the lines of Gearbox's original vision of a full Borderlands experience: a dark and gritty looter-shooter with a less distinct visual style.

Besides, even the Enhanced Edition of the first Borderlands game stands on its own two feet. It's a weird, mildly perturbing game (in a good way), and one that Gearbox has arguably strayed very far from by now. The bottom line, then: there's no telling what's in store for the franchise next, but whatever it is, it's probably gonna be pretty darn neat.

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