When creating my party, I was excited to see that I could accurately role-play as myself. I picked “American Indian” for my race and “Indigenous” as my religion. That detail goes beyond just picking a few cosmetic options and setting off for adventure, though. You’re encouraged to write a backstory for yourself and your characters, and while it may be a bit much to hope that the game could parse that information and use it later, the option calls to mind the pen-and-paper RPGs that inspired the original Wasteland. Information as apparently insignificant as whether or not your characters are smokers, and what brand of cigarettes they prefer, have actual consequence. You shouldn’t, however, get too cavalier when building your party, unless you’re looking for an additional challenge. Wasteland 2’s structure encourages extreme specialization. Points that you can allocate to skills are few and far between, and trying to create a jack-of-all-trades usually results in a character that can’t do anything particularly well, especially in the late game. Instead, Wasteland 2 wants you to make characters distinct so that they mutually rely on one another. While that system drives home party cohesion with severe consequences for death, I wish the dialogue system were implemented so that side characters got more attention from time to time; individual party members’ personalities are typically overshadowed by the character you designate as your primary conversationalist.
While Wasteland 2 might be too rigid to allow you to actually play a role in exactly the way you want, nearly everything else is extremely well executed. Most of the areas and towns you’ll explore are small, which may initially seem like a problem, but there’s a lot more going on than you’d suspect at first glance. Nearly every screen in the game has something interesting in it, from hidden safes to secret caves, and most people will not be able to see everything on a first playthrough. Again, that might come off as a problem--forcing you to play more than once, and artificially padding the length--but most of the things you miss aren't necessary. Instead, they're there to help make the world feel whole. You won’t miss them, but they are surprisingly important.
Shadowrun: Dragonfall (Wasteland’s closest recent analogue) suffered from a lack of extras; it was a big game but felt cramped because it was possible to see absolutely everything in every level. The loot system here reinforces the sense of scale. Most items are useless, but many have their own back stories and mythologies surrounding them, while others give you access to entirely new areas. Such specific details go a long way towards making the world feel organic, much in the same way that the thousands of useless wheels of cheese and brooms in an Elder Scrolls game helps bring its world to life.
Click to expand...
