Highlights
- Borderlands Collection: Pandora's Box is a digital package that includes all three core games, Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, and both Tales From The Borderlands iterations.
- Tiny Tina's Wonderlands, a popular spin-off game, was not included in the collection, which disappointed fans who appreciated its whimsical and chaotic world.
- Even though the spin-off's storyline isn't essential to the original Borderlands plot, Tiny Tina's Wonderlands shares connections with the franchise and deserves recognition.
Borderlands has earned a reputation for its humor, absurd weapon designs, diverse characters, and unique blend of sci-fi and fantasy elements. These dynamics have built an empire for the influential looter-shooter franchise, and several mainline games and spin-offs later, it can be challenging for new fans to catch up with every bit of Borderlands lore. To accommodate new players and invoke nostalgia in the franchise faithful, 2K and Gearbox Software introduced Borderlands Collection: Pandora's Box, a digital-only package containing every piece of the Borderlands tale; all three core games, Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, and both Tales From The Borderlands iterations. However, the omission of Tiny Tina's Wonderlands from the collection has raised a few eyebrows in the fan base.
The wait for Borderlands 4 has stretched on for a while, and Gearbox introduced Tiny Tina's Wonderlands to serve as a stopgap. The medieval fantasy-themed spin-off based on the Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep DLC from Borderlands 2, and its distinction as a separate game gave the developers more creative freedom to reel fans in. Tiny Tina took center stage, and Wonderlands offered a whimsical and chaotic world teeming with magical creatures and mayhem while slotting in some of the funniest Borderlands jokes into its gameplay, earning it a respectable reception. Since Tiny Tina's Wonderlands is just as much a detour from the mainline series as New Tales From The Borderlands, it deserved an inclusion in the Pandora's Box collection.
Tiny Tina's Wonderlands Exclusion From Borderlands Collection is a Missed Opportunity
In the Borderlands 2 Dragon Keep DLC, Tiny Tina played the role of a bunker master for a game of Bunkers and Badasses (Borderlands' rendition of Dungeons and Dragons), and witty references to other series like Lord of the Rings dominated the dialogue. For Tiny Tina's Wonderlands, Gearbox focused on scaling the fantasy aesthetics even higher, creating magic spells and classes for players to use. While the spin-off broke off from the mainline series in some spectacular ways, the storytelling was full of peak Borderlands humor, which is a major part of what fans look for in DLCs or offshoots.
The exploration of themes of friendship, grief, and imagination throughout the game's narrative made it widely praised by critics and fans alike, and this is why the exclusion of Tiny Tina's Wonderlands from the collection is surprising. 2K and Gearbox Software might argue that the spin-off was omitted in the collection because the storyline diverges from the original Borderlands plot. However, this explanation falls short, as players can see firsthand that Tiny Tina's Wonderlands fits into the overarching narrative. Its events occur between Borderlands 2 and 3 on the canonical timeline, right after the Attack on Dragon Keep DLC, and some of Borderlands 3's technology was also present in the spin-off.
Tiny Tina's Wonderlands shares a few characters with the Borderlands franchise, such as Brick and Mr. Torgue, proving the offshoot has more than cursory connections to the series. Even in the hypothetical situation where Wonderlands' storyline differed from the mainline series, the Tales From the Borderlands games have followed a unique narrative path in both editions, with the choice system influencing the spin-off's epilogues and emphasizing character relationships. Therefore, because of their inclusion in Borderlands Collection: Pandora's Box, Tiny Tina's Wonderlands should also have appeared in the bundle.
No matter the developer's reason for Tiny Tina's Wonderlands exclusion from the Pandora's Box collection, it's a real shame for the spin-off not to make the cut. The game deserves just as much recognition as any other Borderlands-based title or DLC. Hopefully Tiny Tina's Wonderlands gets to be part of a future collection for a truly all-encompassing Borderlands saga.
Borderlands Collection: Pandora's Box is available now for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S.
