Wasteland The writing/story/choices seems...awful so far - SPOILERS

[Rhalle]

The Rail Nomads camp is a terrible, terrible place, mostly because of how fuckhueg it is despite having barely any fucking content, and forcing you to run back and forth through those empty areas all the fucking time.

It's intentionally reminiscent of WL1, I think.

Brian Fargo designed Rail Nomads.

Ah...

The only thing I don't like about the RNC map is the blocked-off portion in the railyard that makes you run all the way around again.

Otherwise I think it's one of the more interesting maps and visually fleshed-out areas of the game. It sure beats the hell out of the one-scripted-encounter towns they filled-out California with when they were running out of time and needed to ship the game.

 

[Norfleet]

1. Use brute force to push one of the totems down (seems pretty logical to me).
2. Use shovel to make one of the totems fall (that is what I tried first, even though I had Angela Deth with me).
3. Use explosives to make one of the totems fall (haven't tried it, but I heard it works).
4. Let the boy drown, and then kill the witness so that the city can't hear the bad news about how you let the kid die.
5. Just let the boy drown

You've got a lot more than just those options. You can also knock down the wrong pillar, braining the kid and killing him, with all the possible options for Doing It Wrong.

 

[drukQs]

The Rail Nomads camp is a terrible, terrible place, mostly because of how fuckhueg it is despite having barely any fucking content, and forcing you to run back and forth through those empty areas all the fucking time.

The game is filled to the brim with areas like this, and all of it could've just been fixed by a fucking fast forward button or a "Run" (Or "Run faster", I guess) option to make eeryone move quicker like in Fallout 2...

Anyway, I'm unsure what to think of the writing - Some of it is very safe and cliche, but it works because of the somewhat self-aware aspect of the setting. Some of it is good, though character depth for pretty much anyone is completely non-existent, and that really damaged by attention towards anything relating to the story. As for the totem thing I managed to figure it out simply because there were a lot of description mentions of those things and I figured I needed to do something with them, so I don't think it's THAT random, though it definitely could've been hinted better. And the fact that one of the totems can kill the kid despite having no discernable difference is just a dick move.

 

[Dr Skeleton]

Really, the only areas I didn't like were Prison and Seal Beach.

Prison is way too railroaded (you can only pass our magical cannons with an item that's conveniently located at the end of an unrelated quest), and doesn't offer any real choices (should I kill the evil raiders or should I not kill the evil raiders?). It also seems like the Rangers don't give a fuck about Red Scorpions until they go full retard and kill their own food source.

Seal Beach is 95% trash enemies with no real content outside of mopping them up. It was rushed and it shows. Compared to other areas in California (buggy as they are), it's a complete letdown.

 

[drukQs]

Speaking of Seal Beach, is it ever known what the hell happened to Angela there? I got an epilogue saying she was never found but I figured maybe I had to do something I didn't do to find her, but I'm on my second playthrough doing everything I can and it doesn't seem like the result is changing