Development Info Wasteland 3 Dev Diary #3: Choice & Consequence

[Infinitron]

Tags: Brian Fargo; inXile Entertainment; Nathan Long; Wasteland 3

For the third and final episode of inXile's series of Wasteland 3 dev diaries, Brian Fargo and Nathan Long return to talk about the game's choice & consequence. It's a shorter episode than the previous ones and it starts out the way you'd expect - tough moral choices, brutal consequences, every edge case must be anticipated, etc. Will you murder this family to steal their heirloom rifle? According to Nathan, no choice in Wasteland 3 will be "punished", but the consequences will always be apparent. The consequences of your choices will usually be predictable, so if you reach a particularly brutal ending, you made that ending. As before, the episode premiers at IGN:

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In other news, Wasteland 3 is the cover story for the latest issue of Game Informer, which means they'll be publishing lots of videos and articles about it on their website over the next month. So far the only thing they've released is a forty minute gameplay video from the backer beta, but there's sure to be more starting from next week.

 

[V_K]

What happened to only making one newspost a day?

 

[eXalted]

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

Fargo looks 20 years older than last time I saw him, which was during TToN kickstarter.

Is he ok?

7 years ago: https://youtu.be/r4NkADMQwzg?t=39
now: https://youtu.be/DghrMs8s_9g?t=141

What a scary difference a couple of years make...

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Brian Fargo still looked fairly fit as recently as 2018.

 

[Gylfi.Fenriz.Conquests]

To me difficulty in making a choice (otherwise if it's all easy what's the point?) is neither you feeling bad about one, or accepting that all choices have good/bad consequences (so again what's the point), nor being pissed off that what you thought was good turned out disastrous: it's that sometimes (not for all situations) if you want a morally good choice, you gotta search for it. That's the challenge of being good. I hate to repeat it everytime, but you gotta bring back puzzles into rpg's.

It's goofy how when people talk about choices & consequences, they get all philosophical and moralistic, ranting about ethical conundrums and dilemmas, about teaching kids how the best intentions can bring the worst outcomes, that there's good and bad in everything, and similar fairy tale teachings nobody asked them for, that for some reason choices & consequences has something to do with a morale at the end of the road.

Videogames are not fairy tales, they are about getting the best score when you solve problems. So bad choices should just be easy to make and yielding low scores (though yeah good money and weapons to make up for it), and good choices should be hard to figure and yielding high scores, with various degrees in the middle!

The philosophy for dummies has to stop. If there's morale to be had, it has to emerge from videogames' own logic, and what's more logical than score numbers and a puzzle?

 

[AArmanFV]

To me difficulty in making a choice (otherwise if it's all easy what's the point?) is neither you feeling bad about one, or accepting that all choices have good/bad consequences (so again what's the point), nor being pissed off that what you thought was good turned out disastrous: it's that sometimes (not for all situations) if you want a morally good choice, you gotta search for it. That's the challenge of being good. I hate to repeat it everytime, but you gotta bring back puzzles into rpg's.

It's goofy how when people talk about choices & consequences, they get all philosophical and moralistic, ranting about ethical conundrums and dilemmas, about teaching kids how the best intentions can bring the worst outcomes, that there's good and bad in everything, and similar fairy tale teachings nobody asked them for, that for some reason choices & consequences has something to do with a morale at the end of the road.

Videogames are not fairy tales, they are about getting the best score when you solve problems. So bad choices should just be easy to make and yielding low scores (though yeah good money and weapons to make up for it), and good choices should be hard to figure and yielding high scores, with various degrees in the middle!

The philosophy for dummies has to stop. If there's morale to be had, it has to emerge from videogames' own logic, and what's more logical than score numbers and a puzzle?

Like the Sierra adventure games, but without dying when doing the wrong shit?

 

[Agame]

Fargo looks 20 years older than last time I saw him, which was during TToN kickstarter.

Is he ok?

7 years ago: https://youtu.be/r4NkADMQwzg?t=39
now: https://youtu.be/DghrMs8s_9g?t=141

What a scary difference a couple of years make...

Yea I was thinking that to, he looks like a sick man.

 

[toro]

Fargo looks 20 years older than last time I saw him, which was during TToN kickstarter.

Is he ok?

7 years ago: https://youtu.be/r4NkADMQwzg?t=39
now: https://youtu.be/DghrMs8s_9g?t=141

What a scary difference a couple of years make...

Yea I was thinking that to, he looks like a sick man.

I will go on a limb and I would say he had a stroke because ... his lower lip is fucked up and his entire face is in slow motion.

 

[Gylfi.Fenriz.Conquests]

Like the Sierra adventure games, but without dying when doing the wrong shit?

Kinda, though in a typical Sierra adventure they weren't choices, just your ability to pay more attention to details and not miss anything. And that's maybe even more suitable for rpg's.

A perfect example of it is in the game i last beat, Police Quest 3. [spoiler alert] I manage to open a corrupt officer's locker, revealing cocaine. And it was an easy task. Yay? Nay. If you do just that, in the ending scene, in the lair of the bad guys, She turns on you and shoots you down, and you can't do anything about it, you gotta reload way back or replay the whole game (it's not so bad, it takes maybe half an hour to redo all the game, it's not a reason to cry like most do). When you see the cocaine you need to grab your notebook from the inventory and use it on the cocaine, to write down your finding, otherwise it's just you seeing it. If you write all down then talk to the chief, he'll report it to internal affairs. When your partner again turns on you in the ending scene, an internal affair officer pops from behind you and kills the bitch. THAT was difficult and satisfying.

So yeah, the key is variation. Choices in dialogue? They're fine. But i'd like to see also choices in action. Besides, if a choice is non-linearity, and has consequences in the end game, and most situations in a Sierra game have both, then Sierra puzzles can be considered choices.

I think every game today is just following the Bioware philosophy of choices, and that's horrific to think about. Psychological, romantic and sociopathic nonsense that cross and intersect pointlessly in the plot. It's bad because the writers have fun doing it and show off their simpering false skills, but the players end up just clicking two centimetres below or above. How is that fun??? It's not even gameplay, it's writing from outside slowly eroding videogaming's own vitality.

 

[himmy]

Fargo looks 20 years older than last time I saw him, which was during TToN kickstarter.

Is he ok?

7 years ago: https://youtu.be/r4NkADMQwzg?t=39
now: https://youtu.be/DghrMs8s_9g?t=141

What a scary difference a couple of years make...

Yea I was thinking that to, he looks like a sick man.

I think he looks pretty good for somebody who's almost 60.

 

[AArmanFV]

Looks pretty good for a crackwhore addict

 

[Shaewaroz]

The enthusiasm for this game is overwhelming.

 

[slowtard]

Somehow, as Fargo get older, Slowtard find it easier and easier to imagine what William Shatner would look like if he was from Ecuador.



Thanks for this, Fargo, the greatest game of all.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Fargo looks 20 years older than last time I saw him, which was during TToN kickstarter.

Is he ok?

7 years ago: https://youtu.be/r4NkADMQwzg?t=39
now: https://youtu.be/DghrMs8s_9g?t=141

What a scary difference a couple of years make...

It looks like he is just growing a mustache to play in Adolf Hitler movies, now that Bruno Ganz is dead.

 

[don_tomaso]

He got a new birth mark under his left eye. Skin cancer? He actually looks quite sick.