Tiny Tina's Wonderlands overworld map has missions, secrets, and random encounters

Tiny Tina's Wonderlands will introduce the first overworld map in Borderlands' series history, giving players a retro-inspired way to search for secrets outside of missions.

Ahead of the new Tiny Tina's Wonderlands trailer at The Game Awards, Play Magazine spoke with the developers at Gearbox about bringing their unique brand of shooting and looting to a full-fledged, fantasy-themed game. One of the biggest changes reworks how players get around the world. Rather than traveling from one zone to the next with an occasional trip back to your ship to head to another world, everything in Wonderlands is connected via the overworld map. It's your very own "third-person living tabletop," as creative director Matt Cox puts it.

The overworld map is, for the most part, constructed like a high-end miniatures map complete with terrain - but since Tiny Tina is running things, the detailed models are also accompanied by a cheese puff here and some spilled soda there. You'll control a mini-sized version of your character as you move from one mission to the next, and you may be rewarded for roaming off the beaten path.

“You’ll be able to discover our plot maps that way, and some additional investigation and exploration will reveal side-maps that have their own main quests and storylines that are self-contained, that are semi-related to the main story, but kind of a little chunk of the world all of their own,” senior producer Kayla Belmore explains. There are also wandering monsters to encounter out there, though, so you won't ever have to go too long without some first-person combat.

You can find even more new details about Tiny Tina's Wonderlands in Play Magazine's eight-page spread, including teasers of its tabletop-inspired approach to character creation and advancement, as well as just how all of this fits in with the rest of the Borderlands story.