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Tags: Brian Fargo; Chris Bischoff; InXile Entertainment; Wasteland 3
Polygon reports on the biggest news of the day:
The incline has finally arrived.
Polygon reports on the biggest news of the day:
After several wildly successful Kickstarter campaigns, InXile Entertainment is ready to launch its next project. The pitch for Wasteland 3, the sequel to Wasteland 2, is ambitious. While the game itself promises to be a bit shorter at 50 hours, the graphics and the feature set will be significantly beefed up. We spoke with studio head Brian Fargo last week to get more details.
Wasteland 3 will be true to the series' roots, allowing players to create a small party of characters and lead them through an isometric role-playing game in the classic style. It will tell the story of Team November, a group of Rangers sent on a mission to Colorado in the aftermath of a global nuclear apocalypse. In the opening sequence of the game, Fargo says, players will be stranded far from civilization and have to fend for themselves. Their biggest challenge early on will be staying alive in the sub-zero temperatures.
But, while many of the game’s systems should feel familiar to fans of the series, Fargo says his team is including bold new features that move the franchise into uncharted territory. First on the list is multiplayer, with both synchronous and asynchronous play.
"We’re going to have a fucking blast with it," Fargo told Polygon. "And it’s not just solving puzzles together. It’s about narrative multiplayer and what can happen when the two of us are in a world, independent of each other, doing other things on the map."
Up to two players can each field a unique team of Rangers. When those teams are close together in the game world they’ll be able to take part in the same turn-based skirmishes. But when they’re apart, each player will have their own chance to move the campaign story forward, at times leading to a cascade of unintended consequences for the other player.
"Let’s say that you’re sleeping and I go on a mission where there’s a sickness among some cattle," Fargo said. "I decide the resolve it by killing them all. You wake up and you’re notified that mission is complete.
"But when you get back to the game there’s a radio call. The town? They’re kind of pissed about that. They want money for those cattle. You can convince your friend to pay up, or you could pay it yourself. You could even refuse to pay entirely and live with the consequences."
In another example, Fargo said he could envision a situation where one player might convince a village on the map that another player is the messiah. Later, when the second player arrives, villagers might not let him leave for fear their community will be forsaken.
"I love the idea of opening new content that you would not have seen otherwise by clever use of multiplayer," Fargo said. "It’s gameplay that’s not just a simple lock and key, with different ways of solving the same puzzle. That’s less interesting to me now."
Players will be able to play with a friend. Most importantly, Fargo said, they'll be able to break the multiplayer connection at any time. It's essentially an eject button that diverts your game's timeline from the timeline of whomever you're connected to.
InXile has also teamed up with Brotherhood Games, which is comprised of brothers Christopher and Nic Bischoff. While they’re also working on the Stasis and Cayne isometric adventure games, fans might recognize their work from a few clever experiments that showed Fallout 4 and BioShock Infinite from an isometric perspective. With their help, InXile intends to bring a new level of graphical polish to the wasteland.
"It looks great. It’s lightyears above where Wasteland 2 was, and it’s all in-engine," Fargo said. "The other thing is that it’s great for conversations, a la Fallout 4. The camera is going to come down and you’re going to see and hear people speaking their lines, which really helps drive the immersion.
"We’re going to break from the isometric for conversations, and we’re also going to break from the isometric in other areas where we think we can dial up the drama. XCOM: Enemy Unknown is a good example, where you can zoom in on something and cut to the creature shattering through a window and then go back isometric."
InXile Entertainment will launch a fundraising campaign for Wasteland 3 on Oct. 5 through the Fig equity crowdfunding platform, where Fargo sits on the advisory board. Fig allows for rewards-based crowdfunding alongside investment, and Fargo says the campaign will be open to both accredited and non-accredited investors.
[...] Fargo says that Wasteland 2 earned his team more than $12 million dollars, and he’s using a portion of that money to contribute to the total budget for Wasteland 3 which is somewhere in the neighborhood of $7 million. The Fig campaign will have a goal of $2.75 million with equity capped at $2.25 million, and Fargo says he’s also searching for a publishing partner to contribute some portion as well.
Wasteland 3 will be true to the series' roots, allowing players to create a small party of characters and lead them through an isometric role-playing game in the classic style. It will tell the story of Team November, a group of Rangers sent on a mission to Colorado in the aftermath of a global nuclear apocalypse. In the opening sequence of the game, Fargo says, players will be stranded far from civilization and have to fend for themselves. Their biggest challenge early on will be staying alive in the sub-zero temperatures.
But, while many of the game’s systems should feel familiar to fans of the series, Fargo says his team is including bold new features that move the franchise into uncharted territory. First on the list is multiplayer, with both synchronous and asynchronous play.
"We’re going to have a fucking blast with it," Fargo told Polygon. "And it’s not just solving puzzles together. It’s about narrative multiplayer and what can happen when the two of us are in a world, independent of each other, doing other things on the map."
Up to two players can each field a unique team of Rangers. When those teams are close together in the game world they’ll be able to take part in the same turn-based skirmishes. But when they’re apart, each player will have their own chance to move the campaign story forward, at times leading to a cascade of unintended consequences for the other player.
"Let’s say that you’re sleeping and I go on a mission where there’s a sickness among some cattle," Fargo said. "I decide the resolve it by killing them all. You wake up and you’re notified that mission is complete.
"But when you get back to the game there’s a radio call. The town? They’re kind of pissed about that. They want money for those cattle. You can convince your friend to pay up, or you could pay it yourself. You could even refuse to pay entirely and live with the consequences."
In another example, Fargo said he could envision a situation where one player might convince a village on the map that another player is the messiah. Later, when the second player arrives, villagers might not let him leave for fear their community will be forsaken.
"I love the idea of opening new content that you would not have seen otherwise by clever use of multiplayer," Fargo said. "It’s gameplay that’s not just a simple lock and key, with different ways of solving the same puzzle. That’s less interesting to me now."
Players will be able to play with a friend. Most importantly, Fargo said, they'll be able to break the multiplayer connection at any time. It's essentially an eject button that diverts your game's timeline from the timeline of whomever you're connected to.
InXile has also teamed up with Brotherhood Games, which is comprised of brothers Christopher and Nic Bischoff. While they’re also working on the Stasis and Cayne isometric adventure games, fans might recognize their work from a few clever experiments that showed Fallout 4 and BioShock Infinite from an isometric perspective. With their help, InXile intends to bring a new level of graphical polish to the wasteland.
"It looks great. It’s lightyears above where Wasteland 2 was, and it’s all in-engine," Fargo said. "The other thing is that it’s great for conversations, a la Fallout 4. The camera is going to come down and you’re going to see and hear people speaking their lines, which really helps drive the immersion.
"We’re going to break from the isometric for conversations, and we’re also going to break from the isometric in other areas where we think we can dial up the drama. XCOM: Enemy Unknown is a good example, where you can zoom in on something and cut to the creature shattering through a window and then go back isometric."
InXile Entertainment will launch a fundraising campaign for Wasteland 3 on Oct. 5 through the Fig equity crowdfunding platform, where Fargo sits on the advisory board. Fig allows for rewards-based crowdfunding alongside investment, and Fargo says the campaign will be open to both accredited and non-accredited investors.
[...] Fargo says that Wasteland 2 earned his team more than $12 million dollars, and he’s using a portion of that money to contribute to the total budget for Wasteland 3 which is somewhere in the neighborhood of $7 million. The Fig campaign will have a goal of $2.75 million with equity capped at $2.25 million, and Fargo says he’s also searching for a publishing partner to contribute some portion as well.
The incline has finally arrived.
