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

Because...? If you're interested in helping them make the game better, criticism without detail isn't very useful.

 

This looks fucking great so far. Sure, rough edges and all, but the gameplay seems suitably interesting and multiple ways to solve problems is something that should be mandatory in all games, not just RPGs. Really have nothing to say other than I've suddenly got very excited again about Wasteland 2.

In before Rock Paper Shotgun write up an article about animal cruelty in games.

 

Overally satisfied, but:
1) Hexgrid is gone :-(
2) Y U NO moving diagonally?
3) Placing of the goats is really horrible and forced. That way they would set off the mines some time ago. Unleashed goats wander, you know. Would look more natural if there was broken/open fence beyond the minefield and you would lure them from there. It would need a bit space redesign of that bit of area.
4) PCs hidden prior to start of a fight should stay hidden during encounter until they show themselves or the NPCs reposition to point of direct LoS on them. Reavealing of the sniper position after the initial shot also feels a bit weird. How do I know when I am invisible in the game, especially when I am on higher ground?

 

I'm sorry but Lady Gaga's Alejandro has forever ruined Csárdás for me. I can't hear those violin notes without immediately thinking about that song. Avellone did a smart thing by backing off from using The Final Countdown as Brayko's boss fight song since it's too associated with Arrested Development. Looks like inEPTile and The Plagiarist didn't have such thoughts.

I'm curious about how skill checks work. Like are there thresholds for guaranteed success or guaranteed failure? What's to stop one from degenerately trying to succeed at a task until the RNG lets them?

Some of that content seems awfully contrived. Guy shows up with medicine as soon as you kill his wife. Goats being perfectly content to graze in a mine field until you call on them to explode those mines.

I'm disappointed in how there's seemingly no SoZ style dialogue menu since it would be a perfect fit.

Still loving those small damage ranges. And I noticed that when the doggie was close up, the sniper had a 10% chance to hit which jumped up to 80% when she moved a couple of spaces away. Quasi-sim kneejerkers gonna kneejerk.

I'm skeptical about the claims of ammunition being rare. We'll see.

Floating numbers aren't a console-exclusive element. They're a way to give you feedback so you don't always have to dart your eyes to the bottom of the screen to see how much damage an attack does. Ideally one can use a toggle to disable them.

 

My only beef with those floating numbers is their parabolic trajectory which I think is silly like in a jRPG.

Anyway, maybe Brother None knows why the hex grid was abandoned because it was way more elegant.




Look at the hexes man! It's like... no contest!

I think the motive for the hex grid being changed has to do with how the cover system works. If you look at the layout of the fight area, all cover structures are angled at a 90 degree. There is no building or cover placed diagonally.

 

I thought it was more like the entire group is treated as one person in dialog. So any available skills will be shown

 

Apparently some people can never be pleased, even when Incline is staring them right in the face.

 

Finally watched the video.

If at the first outpost, you turned around and shot everyone because they're assholes and you want your money back, would the second outpost be on higher alert and not let you walk right up to their walls unopposed?

That would be really really awesome if so.

Edit: Brother None

 

Somebody give me a rope.
I'm going to hang myself for forgetting to back this and P:E last year.

 

I've already embraced the incline long before.
The shitty combat in that video has nothing on it.

 

Jagged Alliance is a strategy game with RPG elements. Among pure CRPG's hardly any other isometric title had better combat. ToEE was probably the best so far.

 

You play the role of the laptop guy!11

That's still no excuse to make a boring combat system like InXile did.

 

I don't even know what that means, and I am not sure if I care.

Again: some people can never be pleased, even when Incline is staring them right in the face.

 

Some people are just easily amused.

This doesn't look much better than SRR combat, and it actually seems to have got worse since last time we saw it. They seem p. tight-lipped about the change in combat grid.

 

Someone might call it incompetence perhaps?

 

Demo map looks a bit too linear

 

Agreed. SRR had better animations for pretty much everything as well, but that was a finished game, this is an ~Alpha.

There's a clip in the dev diary where they are moving around in the Unity editor and it looks nice and smooth, but in the gameplay video everything looks really really clunky.

 

It still managed to show combat, dialogue and events influenced by it, opportunities for using skills, etc. I'm satisfied.

 

I guess there is that, but the game systems seem to be in an enough advanced state that it should already have basic stuff like aimed attacks, overwatch, stances, melee disengage, etc. That and some of their design decisions don't give me much hope but the combat grid change means they are still experimenting...we'll see on beta in two months.