Game News Wasteland 2 Kickstarter Update #34: Gamescom Demo Video, First Dev Diary Released

Is there any other video coming in shortly, maybe backers exclusive or something?

I do not understand why Brother None can`t just spill the beans on the overall level design trend.

 

Yeah, this is what worries me the most, too. I can only hope the demo isn't fully indicative of the entirety of the game in this regard.

 

Note sure why people are getting so upset over the hexes-squares change. The Codex's top 3 RPG combat engines are usually JA2, ToEE, and KoTC. None of which have hexes, two of which use squares.

 

Squares are fine, but hexes would definitely have advanced the combat in the game. Because of this I would like to know why hexes were removed.

 

I also have some comments on some of the issues discussed here. Going to compare to Fallout because it's relevant (seeing how Fallout was originally supposed to be Wasteland 2).
1. Interface aesthetics. The main "toolbar" is MUCH better now than before, considering it's at least their third version of it. It finally matches the level of Fallout in terms of pleasing the eye.
2. Combat. I guess it's okay as far as turn-based, cover-based overhead view games go (*cough* XCOM Enemy Unknown *cough*).
Liked (besides the core mechanics like AP, etc)
- descriptive comment box like in Fallout ("...brutalizes Deathclaw for 34 points of damage, forcing the mighty giant to fall on its knees...")
- better blood effects than before
Disliked:
- Little to no GORE. Alright, this is a really BIG issue for me. Fallout had really satisfying death animations, which I could never grow bored of, even watching them for the 946th time. This... doesn't.
- Weak sounds. Guns sound boring. Yells/grunts kind of tame, too. To draw a comparison to Fallout - it had the tastiest sounds, from firing an SMG in burst mode to the explosion of guts and death screams that it led to.
3. As people mentioned - the theme park / corridor "level" design, masked as an open world area, with conveniently placed encounters, scripted events, etc. This is also a downer for me. I really hope the game has large open areas like in Fallout, where you can actually get lost.

In conclusion, I've shifted from being really optimistic about this game to trying to expect the worst, and hoping for the best.

 

I can imagine that after watching that encounter screen for 50 times it will start to get annoying. Wanna kill 2 bugs real quick? Wait 3 seconds for the combat to start...

In Fallout combat started within a fraction of a second.
In Wasteland 2 it takes about 2.5 - 3 seconds for combat to start....

It might be nice for boss battles, but that is about it IMO.

 

I mean, honestly...what's wrong with the screen simply freezing and your AP indicator lighting up or something? OR SOMETHING?!?!

 

Holy fucking shit! Are you complaining about a 2 seconds long animation? This is such a little, miniscule time, it passes by the time you notice it. And it is not like you will be constantly fighing in the game. You can't bear a 2 seconds long animation every 10-15 minutes?

 

Plus, most likely we`ll be able to turn it off

 

It's annoying. Is there a single person who actually loves it when it comes up and goes 'fuck yeah! it's ass-kicking time!'? If not, now would be a good time to inform inXile that it sucks and ask to replace it with something better (aka remove it entirely). It's not like it adds anything.

 

Probably not.

Because it is much more amusing to me to watch people draw conclusions about the total game from this one minuscule glimpse. It's 1/3rd of a small area. I think we did the math back at GamesCom and came up with it being 1/8th of 1/75th of the game. Somewhat facetious, perhaps, but true.

I kid. In all honesty, I prefer to show, don't tell on cases like these. Talking about areas will never be as convincing as showing them.

But want me to talk? Sure. I think Wasteland 2 area design is very diverse. There are towns, there are canyons (this is Arizona after all) with more "rollercoaster"-like layout, there are combat-driven areas, there are underground maze-like levels, there are more open fields, all connected by a world map. There's just a little bit of everything. I can't speak to the overall balance/trend, I just haven't played enough of the game (I'm usually too busy to really pour hours into Wasteland 2). I just booted up the games a few times to load in different scenes in Arizona and California, and immediately ran into several open hub areas, towns with houses to enter, people to speak too, small side-missions to do. But keep in mind I've only explored the game, I haven't played it nearly in-depth enough, but I've already run into a bunch of different types of areas.

So why use this area to demo in particular? Well, because
a) it is significantly more polished and bug-free than other areas (some still heavily use placeholder graphics or have weird glitches, alpha is alpha), and we wanted to show an area running in-engine, not some faked trailer. We were running the scene straight from the Unity editor during press showings, so not constantly running into bugs is good.
and b) it accomplished what we wanted from the demo area, which was show a variety of skill usage and solutions, opportunities to talk long and short-term consequences, alternate paths, and show some dialog and combat, all in a 20-minute run.

That's very hard to do in an RPG demo, ideally you want everyone to spend hours with it, but that's not feasible for a press showing or even for a backer video, realistically. But this does all of that in a very dense package (probably too dense, I would expect the pacing and rhythm in the final game to feel more natural, and encounters like the goats-minefield to be tweaked to make more sense (that specific encounter was tossed in literally a week before we showed the demo, initially that area was intended to be used to show the use of Perception)). The goal was not to show a hub area, with lots of talking and small side-missions, or we would have picked one of the locations that has that. Was it picked because it is the best representation we can give of the game in 20 minutes? Well, kind of, for some elements of the game? The game is big enough and diverse enough that you can't give a single-area partial representation and go "the entire game is like that", each area is too different visually and gameplay wise. This shows some of the things the game does well, and I think it's a good, fun area to play through (it helps to play it, when you have freedom to look around more), but in no way does that mean every area is like that, it's just one style among several.

 

The complaints about the linear structure of the map they demonstrated are valid and I can understand the dissatisfaction with the removal of hexes in favor of squares (even though I personally don't care about this one) but all this rage over that tiny ENCOUNTER BEGINS animations I'll never understand. It reeks strongly of this "INDEX FINGER TOO BIG 2/10 WOULD NOT BANG" logic. Must be a neckbeard thing.

 

Maybe you guys are just very short tempered, but it is not more annoying than the Fallout combat indicator. And that was not annoying. It is amazing what things you guys nitpicking on.

 

Yes, keeping Your mouth shut seemed like a perverted try to make us cry and it`s completely understandable that it`s better to show than talk about, hence my question about new vids.

It`s not about bichting as I wrote earlier, but I believe that most of those who post here care about the way the game is going to turn out, and have certain expectations. By expectations I mean the fact that a bunch of people is just waiting for Wasteland 2 with anticipation and hope that this is going to hit the spot.

Thank`s for taking the time to write this elaborated answer.

 

It's not the kind of thing that anyone should complain about after the game is released, because it's too minor, but why not mention it now, when it can be easily removed? Does it add something or make the game better in any way? If the answer is no, then it needs to go.

It's kind of like the interface. I've never complained about the old one, although I wasn't crazy about it, but the new one is a huge improvement. If you like it, than thank all those people who complained about such minor things.

 

Yes, please complain about everything. It's more useful to get that feedback than not to. Though I am sure it'll be easy to make the start combat screen optional for people who hate it (not a promise or anything, but seems like it'd be easy enough).

 

First of all, I am not complaining - that is just my feedback.

And yes, 3 seconds is a very short period of time. And maybe I am wrong and it isn't annoying at all, I dunno. I haven't played the game (yet).

 

Hah, yeah, this is funny. After the first video many people said it might seem cool, but it will piss off everybody after seing it for 68th time. Well, then Inxile REPLACED the bullet screen with some other effect insteadf of REMOVING it, missing the point that reappearing graphical stuff (or mandatory pauses, animations etc.) that breaks/blocks your vision/flow gets weary very very quickly.
I just hope that critique of some aspects in the first video didn't lead to some other criticised aspect/change in the new one

 

The grinding square thingy didn't matter and I never paid any attention to it. The <shhhh, blip> sound of combat starting, on the other hand, that I remember very well. So I'd say that a visual notification is not that important. Better make it unobtrusive.

 

It wasn't skippable, but it was tucked away in a corner. I was too busy assessing the tactical situation to look at it.

 

no, they aren't. some stuff dependent on grid layout might(!) be harder to manage properly (like cover system?) but hexes have equally simple math behind them.

 

Now this is an interesting comparison. I would agree that there seems be minimal death scenes, but FO had far more weapons than what's been displayed here. Yet, you're expecting a large variety of death animations? I would agree that the FO animations were funny, but after awhile, it lost its luster for me. If you still get your kicks out of seeing the same animation 946+ times, then great. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

This has already been covered in the very first post.

While I wouldn't deny the linearity of the area, drawing a conclusion of a partial walkthrough of a small area of a much larger game is like watching a 2min trailer of a movie and deciding it'll be great or horrible.

I'm waiting for this game because I can't get enough of the post-apocalyptic genre, not because of the hopes that it'll be a FO clone.