Tina Gets Us Into Combat Again

Get the inside scoop from the developers on the Overworld exploration, enemy encounters, and more than!

Tiny Tina'due south Wonderlands creative director Matt Cox knows a thing or two about channeling Tina's unbridled energy into the creation and razzle-dazzling of this most whimsical realm. "I think there's a Tina in all of usa," says Matt. "At the very heart of our teams, we're all creatives—so we don't desire to have a leash on that says 'This is a real-world scenario, so you tin can only do real-world things.' It's such a gift for creatives to exist able to not have that tether. It's not very hard to create for Tina, because the crazy chaos that we all love to dream upwards exists in all of u.s.—she'due south the perfect representative of pure blueprint chaos."

Welcome one and all to the first in a series of Tiny Tina'southward Wonderlands Dev Diary articles, giving you lot a peek behind the Bunker Master's screen so yous can get to know the developers who are bringing Tina's unpredictable risk to life. Matt's here to walk us through some of the most fundamental elements of Tiny Tina's Wonderlands, then strap in and get ready for a crash grade in how all this cluttered fantasy came to exist.

Your adventuring party awaits

If the fantasy trappings, arable dragons, and occasional behemothic dice throws weren't a dead giveaway, Tiny Tina'due south Wonderlands is heavily inspired past the tabletop games that many of united states of america bask playing with friends and family unit. There's something enduringly magical well-nigh envisioning heroic deeds, fearsome foes, and dastardly villains with a tabular array of allies by your side, all imagined via the guiding hand of a master storyteller.

Equally your humble Bunker Master, Tina is in control of your adventure through the Wonderlands—but you'll be hearing plenty from Valentine and Frette, your pals around the table. And of course, the more than the merrier where multiplayer is concerned, whether your coiffure of up to four adventurers prefers cooperation of coopetition (in which loot drops are shared, and often stolen, amongst players).

"One of the all-time things about tabletop games in general is playing with your friends," notes Matt. "Nosotros definitely want to create that awareness in Tiny Tina'due south Wonderlands, and I think a lot of that has to come up through with the table graphic symbol dialogue and the performances of those characters. We have to feel similar they bring a back-and-forth dynamic that really adds to the experience. So from the highest level possible, before you get into any of the big, gamey-game stuff—that's a technical term—y'all need to develop that social dynamic at the table."

The tabletop trappings are reinforced correct from the offset, as Tina enthusiastically encourages you to create a character sheet for the Fatemaker, a fully customizable hero of your personal blueprint destined to fight for her regal majesty Queen Butt Stallion. It'southward not all most looks, either: y'all'll have to choose your class, like the sly Stabbomancer or the frost-wielding Brr-Zerker, and make up one's mind how to spend your Hero Points to pump up stats for survivability, adept spellcasting, and more. "We wanted to make sure that those options were plentiful enough and had the ring of what information technology feels like to create your own graphic symbol, with the allotment of Hero Points and the multiclassing later on in the campaign," says Matt. "Beingness able to express yourself in the game was a giant goal that I retrieve is some other big inspiration from tabletop games."

An overview of the Overworld

Early on on in your shoot-and-loot hazard, you'll run into another unmistakable nod to tabletop gaming: the Overworld, which gives y'all a third-person, bird's-eye-view of your character as they sprint around Tina's meticulously crafted game lath (pay no mind to the haphazard popcorn kernels and that river of soda dribbling out of a tipped-over tin). Here, the Fatemaker'south heroic proportions are shrunken down to exist adorably bite-sized, not dissimilar a painted miniature running amok in a tabletop realm.

"We went through a diverseness of iterations on the ideas of what that Overworld aesthetic was going to be," says Matt. "We fifty-fifty thought about making everyone look like figures on bases that moved with a back-and-forth waddling animation. But I call back we landed on this idea of an exaggerated, scale-agnostic version of the Wonderlands, and information technology was important that players who put a lot of endeavor into their facial customizations and really tailor what their look is to be able to run across that."

And thus, the chibi look of the Fatemaker in the Overworld came into focus. "Since the camera is so far back, nosotros thought 'Let'southward give them the bobblehead look; allow's just blow up their head!'" laughs Matt. "And when we did that, nosotros realized 'This looks like a actually cool bobblehead-type figure, but it also still animates beautifully.' Once we did the head-scaling to be and so big, and with all the other scaling of how the environment looks, with all of the tabletop real-world stuff that'south just on at that place because Tina didn't clean up her board, we actually loved the synergy that everything created."

The Overworld is yours to explore

One time you lot've gotten used to the sight of your Fatemaker's big ol' noggin in the Overworld, yous can start poking around the many nooks and crannies of the game board. Some discoveries might exist minor—a quick dungeon encounter here, a smattering of aureate-filled chests at that place—but you could end up stumbling onto an entirely optional expanse that some adventurers might miss altogether.

These aren't only wink-in-the-pan diversions, either: optional regions like the Tangledrift and the Sunfang Oasis are expansive environments consummate with their own multi-office questlines. "We treat these huge maps similar standalone modules from a tabletop game that experience dissimilar from the master quest," Matt explains. Braving these areas and completing their compact side quests can help ability you up before you lot take on the more difficult trials that expect.

You may too encounter some collectibles in the Overworld tucked abroad in subconscious corners, like Lucky Dice that increase your luck stat, helping you get detail drops of meliorate rarity. There are too Shrine pieces to collect that unlock passive boons when you've plant all the needed pieces, and Poetry Pages scattered across the land that offer a scrap more lore (read to you by the local bard in Brighthoof) for those seeking to map out the Wonderlands in their entirety. Knocking over bottle caps that litter the game lath will create handy shortcuts that can reduce Overworld travel time if you ever need to backtrack.

Of grade, exploring off the browbeaten path to find these optional areas is not without its perils. When trekking through stretches of alpine grass or dense foliage, an enemy might pop out and charge at y'all, triggering a first-person shootout when they brand contact. But if you're not in the mood for a fight right at that moment, you lot can but dial them into oblivion and continue on your merry style.

"The player will always have bureau on whether or not to engage with these random encounters; very seldom will it really disrupt you," says Matt. "You're going to exist fast plenty to run away, or you can actually melee in the Overworld; y'all can melee the random encounter enemy before they touch you and they'll just explode, and you don't drop into the random encounter.

"Only at the same fourth dimension, we desire the random encounters to be meaningful," he continues. "We want random encounters to make the role player recall 'Oh, I have an opportunity to go get thisouth type of loot!' So we want random encounters to experience like a loot breast experience; the Christmas present or birthday nowadays sensation of 'Ah, what a squeamish surprise!' From a design perspective, we're actually trying to make random encounters something that the player wants to exercise rather than run away from. We've done a lot of work to eliminate that feeling of random encounters beingness a distraction."

Oh, oh, oh, it's magic

Alongside your ever-growing drove of trusty guns, shooting off spells is crucial to maximizing your harm output in Tiny Tina's Wonderlands, with most spells having short cooldowns that permit you burn magic from your fingertips frequently. Some spells will make short work of enemies, roasting them with fire or sending them flying with a mini tornado; others offer more utility, like giving you and your allies a bit of protection or reduced cooldowns.

"The squad has done a fantastic chore of having fun offset, especially with the spells," says Matt. "I think that's a authentication of how we do things in our games, and particularly with Tiny Tina'south Wonderlands—information technology's about having fun first earlier yous showtime addressing residuum. That doesn't mean residual isn't important, but I retrieve players will have the almost fun if we put it at the forefront. The things that are super out-there will probably get Legendary spells. It's a matter of getting all those crazy ideas out there first and and then finding the right identify for them in the rarity balance."

Wondering which spells Matt prefers to fling on the battlefield? "I love using companion classes, which get great with some of the different hydra spells that allow you put little tiny hydras on the ground—their spewing attacks are then ambrosial and savage. Having a pet class plus a bunch of hydras agile via spells is pretty fun," he says.

Slice, dice, stab, and slam

Melee combat completes the combat trifecta of Tiny Tina's Wonderlands, equally you lot're able to keep a dedicated melee weapon constantly equipped in add-on to your guns and spell loadout. Information technology's not likely to take precedence over the guns in your right hand and the powerful spells in your left, but weaving a few close-up strikes into the flow of your firefights can become a long way.

"It's very important for u.s.a. that the stride of our style of shooter remains," says Matt. "And our mode of shooter is very offense-focused; it'due south very forrad-focused. Information technology was important that our melee combat didn't employ a lot of defensive parrying mechanics; there'southward nothing wrong with that, but it'due south not the style of play that fits the step of combat we desire. Nosotros also didn't desire melee to supercede shooting or upstage spells, because guns and spells are the two main modes of damaging enemies."

Instead of treating melee weapons—whether swords, axes, behemothic mallets, or more than—as primary methods of attacking, smacking nearby enemies (similar a bony fellow member of the Skeleton Army) will stagger them to give you a bit of breathing room. You can keep tapping the melee push for a continuous series of swings if y'all're getting swarmed, and trying to melee an enemy that would otherwise be but out of reach volition brand y'all bound forward into a little glide-attack that closes the distance, which can be a crucial tactic for repositioning during an intense fight. "We wanted to make sure that melee was very attainable; it's even so a one-push mechanic, merely it has layers to it," explains Matt.

As you collect and equip progressively ameliorate melee weapons, you'll too notice some impactful modifiers that synergize with shooting and spellcasting. "For example, a successful strike might reduce Action Skill cooldown or spell cooldown, or it tin render ammo," Matt continues. "So if you're multiclassing and dialing in your Hero Points and your passives into spells and melee, mayhap you're going to showtime choosing melee gear that returns spell cooldown to really optimize those relationships. For us, melee is all the same that secondary, offhand thing, but compared to our previous games, we want you to use melee more you might've before."

You'll have a risk to perfect your mix of guns, spells, and melee in combat when Tiny Tina'southward Wonderlands launches on March 25, 2022. Until then, go on your optics peeled for more than Dev Diary articles and updates to the Tiny Tina's Wonderlands Game Guide as yous program your magnificent trip to the Wonderlands!

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Source: https://playwonderlands.2k.com/news/dev-diary-1-welcome-to-the-wonderlands/

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