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Game News Wasteland 3 Fig Update #25: Garden of the Gods

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Tags: Eric Schwarz; George Ziets; InXile Entertainment; Paul Marzagalli; Wasteland 3

inXile have been busy with The Bard's Tale IV, but they've finally found the time to put out a new Wasteland 3 Fig update. The previous update three months ago promised a continuation of last year's "Building the Everest" series which chronicled the development of the game's vertical slice area, but it looks like that's been left behind. Instead the update introduces a new area called the Garden of the Gods, an agricultural site that's been occupied by a gang of raiders. Lead designer George Ziets gives us the overview of this area while systems designer Eric Schwarz describes his approach to designing its combat encounters, and there's a brief video of the place too. I'll quote the latter two here:



Eric here to do a dive into how I approached combat design in the Garden of the Gods - and more generally, throughout the rest of the game. Just a disclaimer that I'll be talking some specifics about combat encounters below, but keep in mind that these details may change before final release as we continue to tweak and tune the game.

When I begin with the design of combat in a location, I will use the story, characters, and other details of a scenario as a starting point. Who are these people? Why is the player fighting them? Are they an organized force of mercenaries, some killer machines gone rogue, or a bunch of punks? What kinds of weapons do they use? Do they have any special abilities? Do they rely on animals or robots to help them out? I try to factor it all in when it comes to conceptualizing the gameplay, as I've found it's often the best way to start building the encounter. It's always a collaborative process between the higher-level narrative and gameplay vision, the level designers working on each scene, and myself on the gameplay systems end.

In the case of the Garden of the Gods, the area is inhabited by the Dorseys that George discussed above. When you encounter them in the game, they've only been in the Garden a short time, so haven't had a chance to set up permanent fortifications. Although this is a relatively early-game location, I still wanted the Dorseys to be enough of a threat to deter a completely fresh team of Rangers. They dress in animal skins, and use mostly conventional weapons geared towards the outdoors - improvised bladed and blunt weapons, sniper rifles, assault rifles, handguns, and occasionally, larger machine guns and grenades. However, these early Dorseys aren't necessarily experienced soldiers either – they're bloodthirsty fanatics – so that means they don't have access to military-grade equipment, heavy armor, and they don't fight using lots of advanced techniques.

Once I've got a sense of what types of weapons the enemies will use, what their abilities are, and what their place in the game world is, and have spent some time building the NPCs in a sandbox test scene, I'll start working on the individual encounter design. The easiest way to start is to simply play through the level, getting a sense for the overall flow – where is the player likely to visit, and in what order? I generally try to scaffold the individual fights so that players get introduced to a specific enemy faction or type, and then we build up from there over the course of the scene. Having a good introduction not only makes the scene flow and play better for players, but it also lets us as designers ramp up the challenge and complexity.

That said, we always want to do what we can to give you more than "just some guys" to kill. In each location, I try to vary things up by using turrets, environmental objects like explosive barrels, elevation like watchtowers and cliff ledges, hostile robots, and more. In the case of Garden of the Gods, the Dorseys are not a brand-new enemy when the player encounters them, but as it's a few hours into the game, we want to start ramping up the complexity and difficulty of the encounters.

For instance, the first fight against the Dorseys is a mid-sized group with a mix of weapon types, and players are able to approach from a couple of different routes: they can either take the frontal assault, or look around to find a way up to the high ground overlooking them for a tactical advantage. The second, larger group the player finds later on has set up tripwires to keep out any pesky intruders, but observant players might be able to find a flanking route. They're also backed up by a mini-boss who makes use of pets – ones which the player might be able to turn back on their master, provided they have the right skill set.

Last, but not least, cover placement is a big part of combat design. Wasteland 3 uses a cover system just like Wasteland 2, and many design points inform how cover gets arranged, including the enemy weapon types, whether a location is indoors or outdoors, and the kinds of tactical opportunities we want to provide. The environment also contributes to how we design the layouts of our combat spaces. In an outdoor space like Garden of the Gods, you probably aren't going to find many heavy fortifications, but there's plenty of more spread out, natural cover, like rocks, snowbanks, and tree stumps that have you leapfrogging from point-to-point. Additionally, most cover in the game is destructible, so the type and relative strength of cover is also a factor for players to consider. All of these produce different combat dynamics.

That's just a taste at the kind of process we have when building combat in a scene. Of course, we continue to iterate from there many times over for just about every fight in the game, and we'll be balancing and polishing everything throughout development.

Also included in the update are a couple of photos of George and the team hard at work, and a short Q&A with details about multiplayer, dialogue, vehicles and more. There's nothing in it about what comes next, though. I'm guessing there probably won't be another one of these until Bard's Tale IV is released.
 

Shadenuat

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I am not sure about solar panels, winter and plants together in one picture.

It's interesting that Eric turned to be their go-to encounter designer.
 
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Trashos

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Please try to upgrade the AI, so that enemies can make better use of cover (and don't just rush towards the rangers).
 

Darkozric

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The first images for WL3 were made by Chris Bischoff (Stasis-Beautiful Desolation), compare it now with this 8 sec 320p abomination update...
It's a disgrace for Inxile and Fargo that a 2-man mini studio ( The Brotherhood ) with very few collaborators doing a better job. In general Fargo's Kickstarter era has failed in my opinion, Numenera proved a broken promise, wasteland 2 wasn't so bad in comparison to the new generation hand-holding casual RPG's, but still it was very mediocre and with bad graphics, the first photos of W3 they've showed us have 0 relation to what I see now in this video, and of course the new Bard's Tale that looks like a friendly-user casual game with spamming abilities and designed for tablets/handhelds and not with PC in mind. I'm not expecting anything from this studio anymore, I'm sick of fiascos in general. The only developers who have not disappointed me so far are Ron Gilbert with Thimbleweed Park, Big Finish Games with Tex Murphy and of course the Bischoff brothers with Stasis and the much anticipated Beautiful Desolation. The rest of them they can go to the Farmer's market and sell some potatoes.
 
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Bigg Boss

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The first images for WL3 were made by Chris Bischoff (Stasis-Beautiful Desolation), compare it now with this 8 sec 320p abomination update...
It's a disgrace for Inxile and Fargo that a 2-man mini studio ( The Brotherhood ) with very few collaborators doing a better job. In general Fargo's Kickstarter era has failed in my opinion, Numenera proved a broken promise, wasteland 2 wasn't so bad in comparison to the new generation hand-holding casual RPG's, but still it was very mediocre and with bad graphics, the first photos of W3 they've showed us have 0 relation to what I see now in this video, and of course the new Bard's Tale that looks like a friendly-user casual game with spamming abilities and designed for tablets/handhelds and not with PC in mind. I'm not expecting anything from this studio anymore, I'm sick of fiascos in general. The only developers who have not disappointed me so far are Ron Gilbert with Thimbleweed Park, Big Finish Games with Tex Murphy and of course the Bischoff brothers with Stasis and the much anticipated Beautiful Desolation. The rest of them they can go to the Farmer's market and sell some potatoes.
I hate to agree but what the fuck is this shit? Nothing like what we saw before.
 
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J_C

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The first images for WL3 were made by Chris Bischoff (Stasis-Beautiful Desolation), compare it now with this 8 sec 320p abomination update...
Chris made a still concept art IIRC, while this is in-engine. Of course the former looks bettert than the video.
 

Bohr

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The first images for WL3 were made by Chris Bischoff (Stasis-Beautiful Desolation), compare it now with this 8 sec 320p abomination update...
Chris made a still concept art IIRC, while this is in-engine. Of course the former looks bettert than the video.

While it was always clear they were just on board for some bullshots, I recall a number of people (including on this forum) getting excited thinking there was a lot more to the collaboration, possibly due to the usual hype-mongering from Fargo (eg this from 2016)

InXile has also teamed up with Brotherhood Games, which is comprised of brothers Christopher and Nic Bischoff. While they’re also working on the Stasis and Cayne isometric adventure games, fans might recognize their work from a few clever experiments that showed Fallout 4 and BioShock Infinite from an isometric perspective. With their help, InXile intends to bring a new level of graphical polish to the wasteland.

"It looks great. It’s lightyears above where Wasteland 2 was, and it’s all in-engine," Fargo said. "The other thing is that it’s great for conversations, a la Fallout 4. The camera is going to come down and you’re going to see and hear people speaking their lines, which really helps drive the immersion.
 

i.Razor

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Lights definitely looks better than in WL2. Seems Bischoffs might still taught them something.

WL2 < WL2 DC < WL 3
 
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What is their obsession with shitty 3D anyway? It is obvious that their 3D efforts are just mediocre. Contracting the right talent for 2D backgrounds would elevate the game by a significant margin.
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
What is their obsession with shitty 3D anyway? It is obvious that their 3D efforts are just mediocre. Contracting the right talent for 2D backgrounds would elevate the game by a significant margin.

So far, their 3D games are looking better than their one 2D game (Torment).

Don't you think that the sort of environmental interaction that Wasteland prominently features (blowing stuff up, using cover, fiddling with containers and traps etc) is better suited to 3D?
 

croitav

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So far, their 3D games are looking better than their one 2D game (Torment).

Don't you think that the sort of environmental interaction that Wasteland prominently features (blowing stuff up, using cover, fiddling with containers and traps etc) is better suited to 3D?

kill yourself
 
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What is their obsession with shitty 3D anyway? It is obvious that their 3D efforts are just mediocre. Contracting the right talent for 2D backgrounds would elevate the game by a significant margin.

So far, their 3D games are looking better than their one 2D game (Torment).

Don't you think that the sort of environmental interaction that Wasteland prominently features (blowing stuff up, using cover, fiddling with containers and traps etc) is better suited to 3D?

Not necessarily. JA2 had all of that, so there is that.

3D production pipeline seems to be easier on the resources side but nothing is a good enough remedy for the extreme ugliness that is 3D perspective. That "cliff" takes up half the game screen, jumping at he camera like a sore thumb. Parallel projection or at least an extremely low field of view for the camera must be the default go-tos of all 3D isometric games.
 
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I am not sure about solar panels, winter and plants together in one picture.

The plants are potted, meaning they probably see constant maintenance, as do the solar panels, against the snow. Other than that, provided that the sun reception is good, solar panels work more efficient in cold.
 

Roguey

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What is their obsession with shitty 3D anyway? It is obvious that their 3D efforts are just mediocre. Contracting the right talent for 2D backgrounds would elevate the game by a significant margin.

So far, their 3D games are looking better than their one 2D game (Torment).

Don't you think that the sort of environmental interaction that Wasteland prominently features (blowing stuff up, using cover, fiddling with containers and traps etc) is better suited to 3D?

Torment was 3D models with a paintover pass. :M

I think Brother Shill mentioned something about true 2D being more expensive, though it depends on the level of detail. Of course
Cheap 3D will always be bottom-rung for me, compared even to cheap 2D.
 

IHaveHugeNick

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I guess they took post-apo larping a bit too hard and started making the game on WW2 era computers, because that's the only explanation for how after 2.5 years all they have to show is a fucking 8 second video running at 10fps and 360p.
 

lophiaspis

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Why has nobody yet made a CRPG with Rimworld style graphics, or maybe a little more realistic but the same fidelity level? To me Rimworld has more immersive graphics than any of these sub-Uncanny Valley pathetic AAA wannabe Shitstarter 'renaissance' turkeys.
 

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