Game News inXile reveal Wasteland 3's party system

[Bubbles]

Tags: Brian Fargo; Brother None; Chris Keenan; Eric Schwarz; InXile Entertainment; Wasteland 3

After obstinately dodging the question for the entire duration of his Figstarter, Brian Fargo has finally strung together a semi-coherent explanation for his latest act of design vandalism:

“I like the concept of you starting off alone and trying to survive with all the elements against you, so you don’t get the luxury of having your squad around helping to save your ass,” starts Fargo. “The thing with role-playing games is that at the start, we’re already asking you to spec out a guy before you really understand what’s best. And it compounds the problem when we’re asking you to spec out four people before you know what’s best. So, for all those reasons, we really liked that, from both a psychological perspective and also from a gameplay perspective.”

Keenan agrees, and the team have been watching Twitch streams to see how the players actually enjoyed the game. “It seemed like there was a group of people who were used to that old-school character creation right off the bat, with lots of stats and numbers, who you could tell just immediately loved,” he says, but there were other people who were more apprehensive to that creation system, and Keenan offers a solution. “What if we give the player a little bit of a sense of the world so they can start to feel it out and then building that stuff up afterwards so they can really make it count?”

It’s an interesting idea, but the concern must surely be that this strays from what fans of Wasteland are used to. Keenan is aware of that worry and is quick to calm fears. “You’ll still create your party,” he explains. “You’ll have your initial character, and then you will certainly come across a wide range of NPCs throughout the world. But you will be able to adjust the stats of other party members.”​

So they've ripped out one of the most distinctive features of the Wasteland franchise because "other people" on Twitch found it overwhelming. But no worries, you'll still "create your party" by recruiting NPCs with respeccable stats. Best of both worlds!

They couldn't have told us about this while the Figstarter was still going on? No, of course not.

Update 1: inXile developer Eric Schwarz has issued a statement on the Wasteland 3 forums:

In Wasteland 3, we're still building on Wasteland 2's party-based system and giving you the ability to create and customize Rangers. The main difference is we're planning for you to start out as a single character, before forming a full party out of created characters and companions.​

We have reached out to inXile with a request for further clarification.

Update 2: inXile developer Thomas Beekers has also made a statement in response to a fan question:

And if that single character dies but one or more of the party created later do not, does the game end?​

You can still continue playing if that character dies.​

 

[Fairfax]

Far from the first time they pull shit like this. Backers have no right to complain, they knew who they were dealing with.

 

[DeepOcean]

Sorry guys, like Colin and company but Fargo is just a fucking scumbag, won't back a single crowdfunding project from him ever. If anyone asks what killed crowdfunding, it is this sort of BS that killed it. I just want him and Feargus, both weasels to go fuck themselves.

 

[Darth Roxor]

fukken LMAO

 

[Excidium II]

So they join Larian in the "You're gonna take our pre-written NPCs and you're gonna read them faggot" crowd?

 

[Roguey]

According to my poll most folks on the Codex, who play RPGs primarily for their reactive narratives, don't care too much about this issue.

Really now, inXile is just having Wasteland finally catch up to Ultima IV from 1985, which replaced the full party creation of III with a single character and companions.

 

[Excidium II]

Sorry guys, like Colin and company but Fargo is just a fucking scumbag, won't back a single crowdfunding project from him ever. If anyone asks what killed crowdfunding, it is this sort of BS that killed it. I just want him and Feargus, both weasels to go fuck themselves.

Colin is also a scumbag.

 

[Fairfax]

Sorry guys, like Colin and company but Fargo is just a fucking scumbag, won't back a single crowdfunding project from him ever. If anyone asks what killed crowdfunding, it is this sort of BS that killed it. I just want him and Feargus, both weasels to go fuck themselves.

Colin is also a scumbag.

Why? Not disputing, I just didn't know he was part of any fuckery.

 

[Excidium II]

You should have seen his twitter then. He's one of those people.

 

[nil]

" [...] we don’t have a morality [...] "
-Brian Fargo

 

[Brayko]

Not that I'll back anything from California scum ever again but single character is not bad if the character creation system is actually good this time around (gotta admit it was pretty shit in W2).

 

[Roguey]

“You know, people make a lot of jokes about us wanting to hit on the whole Trump phenomenon, but I think that’s a little too on-the-nose,” says Fargo.

I'm relieved to hear that these references have joined "arrow in the knee" jokes in the Forbidden column.

Keenan is aware of the socio political state of the world, too: “It feels like right now in politics there’s this idea that reality can be created if you say something enough times, whether it’s true or not. You see a lot of this stuff happening, where politicians will say something that a lot of people will know is a complete lie, but if it gets blasted out enough on social media, you start to see this groundswell of people believing it.”

I have a feeling Keenan and I might be thinking of two entirely different examples here.

Keenan meanwhile is aware of the fact that the black and white system isn’t always that satisfying. “What is kind of fun, though, is testing people’s morality and putting them in very grey situations, where you can kind of make an argument for both sides and you don’t really know with certainty how each choice is going to work out,” he tells us.

You're telling me, part of the reason why I aborted my second playthrough of Wasteland 2 was that I couldn't really see myself making too many significantly different decisions from the first even though I was playing a team of Bad Cops (as opposed to Good Cops the first time around). I'd just be killing a few more groups.

It seems we won’t be getting a fully voiced game any time soon, however, as Fargo is clear about the cost of such systems. “It requires a commitment to create a lot of content that you know a lot of people won’t see, and I think that’s difficult for a big AAA company to sign off on spending $10 million, or whatever the number is, to create a bunch of things we know people probably won’t get to experience. So, us smaller guys, we’re OK with that. We have a cost, too.”

Saved from the low quality of Wasteland 2: DC's full voice acting.

(full voice acting doesn't cost 10 million, but whatever)

One thing that’s not set in stone yet, though, is the save system. With your friends interacting with your world, does that mean we’ll need an offline and an online save system to solve any syncing issues? Keenan is tight lipped, it seems. “At the moment we have something that we think is gonna work,” he begins. “We’re really big on iterating it and playing it, because to be honest at any time in game development probably half of good ideas you have don’t work out well. We have a couple of directions we’re going to take and play around with. But we probably won’t talk about that for, I would imagine, around a year or so!”

Didn't Divinity: Original Sin already have this figured out?

 

[Aenra]

So they join Larian in the "You're gonna take our pre-written NPCs and you're gonna read them faggot" crowd?

No.
You see Larian never pretended its aim was something other than what it really was, nor did it ever allow for old school expectations. Bit of a difference i think.
edit: also, they didn't "forget" to inform you about their goals until after their KS campaigns were over.

 

[Excidium II]

So they join Larian in the "You're gonna take our pre-written NPCs and you're gonna read them faggot" crowd?

No.
You see Larian never pretended its aim was something other than what it really was, nor did it ever allow for old school expectations. Bit of a difference i think.
edit: also, they didn't "forget" to inform you about their goals until after their KS campaigns were over.

They allowed you to ignore companions in DOS1.

In DOS 2 with the player story choices it would make great sense to allow a full party-gen with each char having one of the stories, specially since it would work out of the box due to needing to support multiplayer. But alas you can't because Swen want to force you to use companions.

 

[Dr Skeleton]

Why couldn't they do it like in Wasteland 2? If you want to you generate just one character and have more room for recruitable companions, it was perfectly playable that way.

 

[Atomkilla]

Pretty fucking glad I pledged them no money.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Did people on the Codex even back this piece of crap? Should be obvious by now that InEptile is just a team of cynical hacks preying on the emotions of RPG-starved nerds.

 

[Ludo Lense]

In and of itself the decision is not without merit. There is almost no skill in making your party on your first try since it relates to encounter design (Stuff like the ranger enemy racial in D&D is the perfect example of this).

That being said this is like one of the first question that would have been answered while starting work on the project so infer what you will.

 

[Azrael the cat]

It's the inherent weakness of the crowdfunding system. Publicising/promising particular mechanics and features so early in development is not great for game development. Developers need freedom to adjust their vision, change things that aren't working and explore avenues they hadn't thought of when they started the project.

That also means they need to be able to make mistakes. And before the lot of you shout me down - I strongly believe that this is a bad mistake, and even though I actually prefer the FO2 'hero character + followers' system, I'd rather have WL3 keep doing the '4 rangers + 3 NPCs' simply because it's different and interesting and it works. I'm not defending Fargo's decision at all - I'm criticising the notion that it's feasible to lock down developers in a way that will prevent such mistakes, and people should consider that before they back a project. You can't give developers the freedom to make good creative decisions without also giving them the freedom to make fucking awful ones.

Think of the various interviews with developers discussing how development usually works behind the scenes. Projects are started, scrapped entirely halfway through and still deemed useful if enough of their tech and ideas are stripmined for use in other projects. Games start development in one genre and end up in a different genre altogether - Baldurs Gate was an RTS that had nothing to do with D&D when they first presented it to Interplay. That's why they used to keep as quiet as possible about the details of projects until they hit internal beta, and outside of crowdfunding and EarlyAccess, they still do. It doesn't seem to be a feature specific to badly managed companies; it seems to be more just how games are made.

If anything, it seems to take far longer to produce a game to pre-established specs (other than where you're just making a sequel that's an iterative improvement of the previous game) - both in indie development (AoD) and AAA (WC3, SC2). Probably because it's harder. If you have strict specs at the start, and then you run into difficulty making those specs work, you've got a much tougher task if your only option is 'make it work, goddamit', instead of looking for other directions to go in.

I back fig/kickstarter projects sometimes, so I'm not saying don't do it. But you've got to be wary of specific promises and stretch-goals - because at best the developers will use them only as a loose guide, and at worst they'll take the fucking things seriously and the game will end up broken or vaporware.

The stretch-goal system is intrinsically flawed, because it encourages that bullshit. The only sensible approach is to treat it like you would any normal investment. You don't buy shares in a company because they've given you a rock-solid guarantee of the product they're making, full specified and locked in - that's how charlatans and pipe-dream money-sinks operate. You look at the company's performance, their general output, their annual reports so you see that they're well-managed and approve of their broad direction, and decide whether they're worth your trust. If they are, then the last thing you want them to do is consult you on what the fuck their next product should be. If you owned Apple shares, and the CEO calls you up to ask what the specs for their next iphone should be, you sell your shares as fast as possible, because holy shit this guy doesn't know anything more about iphones than I do! Sure, get me to fill out a survey of what things I like or don't like in a phone, but don't send me the fucking spec sheet for my personal approval.

If you liked a company's last few games, and you like the general idea of the game they're promoting, then sure - back it. But know that you're taking a risk, and that - if the developer is competent - you can't rely on more than the broad outline of what the game is going to be like. If you want to know exactly what you're buying, then buy the fucking game when it's done. Nobody is stopping you from doing that. You still have the 'know whether the game is good before you spend your money' option available to you. Yes, criticise bad development decisions, especially if you've already got skin in the game. But don't act like it's some shocking fraud when the game isn't what you were expecting, when you specifically chose the 'take my money before I see what I'm buying' option.

 

[undecaf]

Suppose they'll also trim the partysize down to 1+3 like in the Fig presentation video so they can better "balance" and control the number of companions in multiplayer.

 

[Excidium II]

That also means they need to be able to make mistakes. And before the lot of you shout me down - I strongly believe that this is bad mistake, and even though I actually prefer the FO2 'hero character + followers' system, I'd rather have WL3 keep doing the '4 rangers + 3 NPCs' simply because it's different and interesting and it works. I'm not defending Fargo's decision at all - I'm criticising the notion that it's feasible to lock down developers in a way that will prevent such mistakes, and people should consider that before they back a project. You can't give developers the freedom to make good creative decisions without also giving them the freedom to make fucking awful ones.

Just do it right. Certain things need to be set in stone, others need to be flexible.

If anything, it seems to take far longer to produce a game to pre-established specs (other than where you're just making a sequel that's an iterative improvement of the previous game) - both in indie development (AoD) and AAA (WC3, SC2). Probably because it's harder. If you have strict specs at the start, and then you run into difficulty making those specs work, you've got a much tougher task if your only option is 'make it work, goddamit', instead of looking for other directions to go in.

Horrible examples if trying to prove a point.

 

[Azrael the cat]

Suppose they'll also trim the partysize down to 1+3 like in the Fig presentation video so they can better "balance" and control the number of companions in multiplayer.

Exactly. That's why you should ask 'is this developer trustworthy and competent', not 'do I like these particular specs'.

 

[Excidium II]

You should ask both.

 

[Azrael the cat]

That also means they need to be able to make mistakes. And before the lot of you shout me down - I strongly believe that this is bad mistake, and even though I actually prefer the FO2 'hero character + followers' system, I'd rather have WL3 keep doing the '4 rangers + 3 NPCs' simply because it's different and interesting and it works. I'm not defending Fargo's decision at all - I'm criticising the notion that it's feasible to lock down developers in a way that will prevent such mistakes, and people should consider that before they back a project. You can't give developers the freedom to make good creative decisions without also giving them the freedom to make fucking awful ones.

Just do it right. Certain things need to be set in stone, others need to be flexible.

If anything, it seems to take far longer to produce a game to pre-established specs (other than where you're just making a sequel that's an iterative improvement of the previous game) - both in indie development (AoD) and AAA (WC3, SC2). Probably because it's harder. If you have strict specs at the start, and then you run into difficulty making those specs work, you've got a much tougher task if your only option is 'make it work, goddamit', instead of looking for other directions to go in.

Horrible examples if trying to prove a point.

Well all 3 projects tried to specify the kind of game, the feel of the game in advance, and a fair chunk of the details without being immediate iterations upon the previous engine. There was no possibility of WC3 becoming a D&D crpg like what happened with BG. There was no possibility of AoD becoming a rtw/p game, let alone changing genre or switching from tactical combat to simulationist approach. WC3 was a big change to WC2, but the hero system was set in stone early as well - they wanted to make an alternative product to their Starcraft line of games, instead of having two identical games with different skins cannibalising each other's market share.

And it does seem to take a lot longer to pull that off. I'm not convinced that it's a development style that works for most companies. Obviously for Iron Tower and Blizzard (thinking commercially here, not game quality), it does. Other times, you end up with Star Citizen vapourware.

 

[Excidium II]

Yeah but AoD took far longer to be made because it was a game by a guy who can't even program or create art assets, and even once it got people capable of making it real it was a long time before it was a full-time effort.

And blizzard is just blizzard, I think their games just take longer more for commercial reasons (not competing with itself) than anything else.