After Wasteland 3 was released in August, Brian Fargo was interviewed about the game for a number of podcasts. Now it's our friend Matt Barton's turn to join in. Matt was apparently too busy to split the interview, so it's presented as one huge episode. For the first 55 minutes of the episode Brian was joined by lead designer David Rogers. Together they answered questions about topics such as Wasteland 3's toaster repair skill, humor in games, working with VR, David's past work on the US military simulation game America's Army, making Wasteland 3's Collector's Edition, and the challenges of working during the COVID pandemic. Brian and David are pleased with how Wasteland 3's moral dilemmas turned out, though they admit that certain elements had to be cut when they become uncomfortably close to contemporary real-life politics. On the mechanics side, David explains how inXile made the game's combat flow faster by implementing concurrent movement for enemies and making battles more lethal in general. He intends to continue tuning it, including by making enemies less likely to waste their attacks on the party's animal followers.


The interview part of the episode is followed by a lengthy 40 minute Q&A segment with Brian Fargo. Here he answers questions about topics such as the making of Wasteland 1, future games from inXile and upcoming Wasteland 3 DLC, working with Krome Studios and with Chris Bischoff, the advantages of becoming a part of Microsoft, the possibility of making Meantime after all (sounds unlikely), inXile's experience with the Unity and Unreal engines, the failure of Bard's Tale IV and the fate of the Bard's Tale franchise, the possibility of a Torment: Tides of Numenera Director's Cut (no way), and more. It's a decent enough interview, but I hope Matt returns to his episodic format when he can. His next interview will be with the aforementioned Chris Bischoff.