Wasteland 2 Interview with Brian Fargo at VG24/7
Wasteland 2 Interview with Brian Fargo at VG24/7
Interview - posted by Crooked Bee on Tue 16 October 2012, 16:55:02
Tags: Brian Fargo; inXile Entertainment; Wasteland 2InXile's Brian Fargo has given an interview to VG24/7, the topic being, of course, Wasteland 2. Various snippets from this interview have been teased throughout the past week, but now you can read the thing in full. Have a few tidbits:
And yeah, be sure to read it in full.
It’s been a while since Wasteland 2 surpassed its funding goals. What stage of development are you at currently?
Brian Fargo: Right now, we are tracking really well on the development of Wasteland 2. By the end of October, we will be wrapping up all of the level designs. At that point, we’re going to do a full script run-through to make sure there aren’t any holes that were missed. We’ll then continue on with full production.
In the mean time, we are also implementing many of the core systems into the game. We currently have prototypes of the overhead map, combat, attribute, skill systems as well as full party movement. We’ve started scripting and creating task lists of all tools we will need to deliver the experience we want.
Do you have a final plan for the scale of the overhead map?
The world is certainly much larger than we had originally anticipated. Our first design was set up when we were hoping to get $1,000,000 to make the game, but we ended up clearing more than $3 million.
There are currently over 15 main areas that the player can visit along with many smaller maps that they can explore. All of this content is highly re-playable as well. I feel very comfortable saying that no two people will experience the same story on a play-through. It is a very ambitious design from a cause and effect point of view.
What I really love about the characters – particularly the player’s companions – is that they aren’t always honest. Some will steal from the group, betray you and so on. How much of a say will players have when customising their group, and can companions suffer perma-death?
Well, when you start the game, you will create four rangers that you spec with the attributes and skills you want. Along the journey, you’ll also run into many other companion NPCs that can join your party.
Each of these NPC’s has a different personality and will have their advantages and disadvantages. Some might be incredibly annoying but have an useful skill that you might not want to live without. It’s all about choices and trade-offs in Wasteland.
We will indeed have perma-death in the game. If you make a bad decision and get a party member killed, they won’t come back. We committed to creating an old-school RPG experience and we are definitely looking to make this a hard core experience.
Once you’ve recruited a companion NPC into your party, you now control them in combat along with your other rangers. We have over 30 skills that can be acquired in the game and no one ranger will be able to be effective in all of them.
Success in the Wastelands is centred around creating and using a team that works well together based on the strategy you’re using. I might also add that many of the choices the player make might not be felt for many hours later. This is another way of making the decisions in Wasteland 2 permanent as players have to live with the outcomes they create.
One mechanic that I particularly like is that you’re giving players free reign over the game’s UI, and there will be a ton of customisation in the game itself. Just how far can people tailor the experience to their liking?
Customization is huge in the original Wasteland and in RPGs in general. Obviously you can customize your abilities, but we also are allowing people to import their own character portraits if they’d like.
Taking a page from the customizable UI on games like World of Warcraft, the player will be able to modify the main HUD elements to place them where they’d like on their screen. We are also including a mod kit shortly after the initial release. We feel that this type of game can be easily modded by the community to create tons of extra content that will live on after we’ve finished with it.
Brian Fargo: Right now, we are tracking really well on the development of Wasteland 2. By the end of October, we will be wrapping up all of the level designs. At that point, we’re going to do a full script run-through to make sure there aren’t any holes that were missed. We’ll then continue on with full production.
In the mean time, we are also implementing many of the core systems into the game. We currently have prototypes of the overhead map, combat, attribute, skill systems as well as full party movement. We’ve started scripting and creating task lists of all tools we will need to deliver the experience we want.
Do you have a final plan for the scale of the overhead map?
The world is certainly much larger than we had originally anticipated. Our first design was set up when we were hoping to get $1,000,000 to make the game, but we ended up clearing more than $3 million.
There are currently over 15 main areas that the player can visit along with many smaller maps that they can explore. All of this content is highly re-playable as well. I feel very comfortable saying that no two people will experience the same story on a play-through. It is a very ambitious design from a cause and effect point of view.
What I really love about the characters – particularly the player’s companions – is that they aren’t always honest. Some will steal from the group, betray you and so on. How much of a say will players have when customising their group, and can companions suffer perma-death?
Well, when you start the game, you will create four rangers that you spec with the attributes and skills you want. Along the journey, you’ll also run into many other companion NPCs that can join your party.
Each of these NPC’s has a different personality and will have their advantages and disadvantages. Some might be incredibly annoying but have an useful skill that you might not want to live without. It’s all about choices and trade-offs in Wasteland.
We will indeed have perma-death in the game. If you make a bad decision and get a party member killed, they won’t come back. We committed to creating an old-school RPG experience and we are definitely looking to make this a hard core experience.
Once you’ve recruited a companion NPC into your party, you now control them in combat along with your other rangers. We have over 30 skills that can be acquired in the game and no one ranger will be able to be effective in all of them.
Success in the Wastelands is centred around creating and using a team that works well together based on the strategy you’re using. I might also add that many of the choices the player make might not be felt for many hours later. This is another way of making the decisions in Wasteland 2 permanent as players have to live with the outcomes they create.
One mechanic that I particularly like is that you’re giving players free reign over the game’s UI, and there will be a ton of customisation in the game itself. Just how far can people tailor the experience to their liking?
Customization is huge in the original Wasteland and in RPGs in general. Obviously you can customize your abilities, but we also are allowing people to import their own character portraits if they’d like.
Taking a page from the customizable UI on games like World of Warcraft, the player will be able to modify the main HUD elements to place them where they’d like on their screen. We are also including a mod kit shortly after the initial release. We feel that this type of game can be easily modded by the community to create tons of extra content that will live on after we’ve finished with it.
And yeah, be sure to read it in full.
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