Beyond tone it is the individual moments I remember most when playing a great RPG. The curiosity of wondering how things might have changed based on my actions kept me engaged and wanting to re-play. And our job as designers is to make sure that the different scenarios that play out based on your choices cause real consequence. There is a small moment in the new Rail Nomads camp in which you hear a boy calling out for help as he is drowning. This time it would be a lack of action that could cause his death. Do you swim out to middle of the lake and save him or ignore his plea? And what happens when you are spotted ignoring his plea by a local resident? Do you shoot him before he can let others know of your behavior? These are situations that play out in the Wasteland. Each area has so many combinations and permutations of playing that it is almost statistically impossible for two players to have the exact same experience playing through the game for the first time. This design philosophy is what made the first Wasteland so great and why people continued to play it decades later.

[...] The composer, Mark Morgan has now turned his attention to the music that the player hears while exploring in the Southwest. We asked for the music to have that bleak, edgy, lonely vibe mixed in with a dark western ambient. It's unusual to be working on music this early in the process but once again it allows for iteration time and for us to be as creative and nuanced as possible. Another excellent benefit of having fans fund the game.

The sample of the music is at the bottom of this update.

We have been very focused on getting the writing wrapped up by end of October so that we can do a table read of the entire game. Things are on track for about 95% of it which will allow all of us to get in a room for days on end to step through the game play. We look for flaws in logic, world consistency, keyword consistency, adding personality, adding ways to solve problems, creating visual cues, extra word descriptions, etc. It is quite a bit of work but it is a process that creates cohesion so that it feels like one world. There is so much content that the only way to grasp it all is to sit in a room for days for everyone to absorb. And quite often the best moments will come from the random ideas that spring forth from it all.

One of the qualities that makes for a strong technical director is their ability to build systems around the philosophies and aims of the game itself. John Alvarado has done an excellent job for us in the past and continues to do so for Wasteland 2. At the end of this update is a write-up by John that dives a bit deeper into the programming side of creating a deep RPG.​