Development Info InXile consults academics to create Wasteland authenticity

[Monocause]

If these 'consultants' will get paid at all, I doubt it'd be even noticeable in the game's budget. Also, I think it's pretty safe to assume that their lore will not be to create role, but to explain it in pseudo-scientific terms. Like, Stackpole approaches them and says "OK, we have these rifle-toting mutated rabbits and I need you guys to figure out some sort of an explanation for this". And the Thwacke guys create a lore entry that says about mutation combining the rabbit DNA with parts of human DNA because there was a volatile mass effect field in Kansas due to particle X-42 extracting provitamin B5 from shampoos.

 

[Vault Dweller]

If these 'consultants' will get paid at all, I doubt it'd be even noticeable in the game's budget. Also, I think it's pretty safe to assume that their role will not be to create role, but to explain it in pseudo-scientific terms. Like, Stackpole approaches them and says "OK, we have these rifle-toting mutated rabbits and I need you guys to figure out some sort of an explanation for this".

"How about this, boss? The rabbit DNA was combined with the rifle DNA and now the rabbit and the rifle are one. You see, the rifles are growing out of the paws and the rabbits have to eat a lot of iron-rich food to grow the barrels..."

 

[PorkaMorka]

This is a good thing, you guys should stop whining.

They are going to need some technobabble in their game. By hiring some scientific consultants (for peanuts) they can avoid having the technobabble sound really, really stupid to people who have a basic understanding of science.

If you are ignorant of science you won't care either way, but if you're an autistic nerd (the target audience) this could easily make the game much more enjoyable for you. Hearing something that obviously makes no sense can take you out of the game.

 

[Monocause]

"How about this, boss? The rabbit DNA was combined with the rifle DNA and now the rabbit and the rifle are one. You see, the rifles are growing out of the paws and the rabbits have to eat a lot of iron-rich food to grow the barrels..."

"The projectiles they shoot are actually not propelled by any sort of gunpowder. The 'rifle' itself is actually a form of an intestine, and excrement with high-iron content is ejected due to forced combustion of volatile gastric gasses, such as methane. Pulling the trigger increases pressure on the gasses, causing them to explode, and the explosion, in turn, ejects the mostly-iron excrement at high velocities; essentially, the rabbits are killing you with shit. Isn't that brilliant?"

Some more backdrop:

"The gunbunnies are considered a common and deadly pest in the Wasteland; the low intelligence and fearful nature causes the bunnies to shoot every frightening thing on sight, including humans, and the incredibly high breeding rate leaves the Wastelanders with evacuation as the only option once they show up in numbers. Fortunately, the high demand for iron-heavy content coupled with no bodily option to accumulate iron through means like growing fat means that once the gunbunnies strip a place bare they mostly die of starvation before migrating to a new place; those bunnies that survive thanks to cannibalising their fallen brethren and reach new iron pastures are relatively easy to stave off due to low numbers and weakened state, but must be noticed and taken care of fast enough to prevent them from starting a new breeding cycle.

The gunbunnies were occasionally used as a weapon by the wastelanders. In the Texan war of 2145 general Roberts managed to capture and secretly transport a number of bunnies to enemy fortified positions, winning the war without any casualty on his side; the downside to this newfound military tactic was that the whole area was rendered uninhabitable for the next two years due to massive bunny infestation."

 

[Tigranes]

See, they already have WL2 fanfiction!

 

[Charles-cgr]

Scientific consultants can be both creative and entertaining. Well worth the extra moniez.

 

[Brayko]

Good Gods I get the impression that some Codexers are a bunch of anti-intellectual chest thumping faggots. Since when is a little professional scientific insight a bad thing when intertwined in a game? I see loads of potential here in quests, lore, etc. Oblivion was not a shitty game just because it had soil erosion.

 

[Tzaero]

What the think tank could come up with might be interesting.
Heres what I think they might help with.

-Plants that are likey to be grown or cultivated in the wasteland. (Raiders siezing farms, a needs you to help them access a food supply)

-Possible and possible fictional diseases likely to be rampant in the wasteland (Hordes of diseased creatures roaming the wasteland, hundreds coming this way, will you stay and help them or leave)

-The likely technologies to be rediscovered as well as how the wasteland is to reindustrialize.
(Three powerful settlements have been collaborating for years in building a coal powerplant to power the three of them. Recently theres been quite a few setbacks, someone suspects sabotage.)

-The possible medical techniques availiable
(Johnny use to lead a town until he mutated another arm and was shunned out, do you handle his surgery? or do you help him to Doc Bozo reknown in this reigon of the wasteland for helping mutated people get on with their lives. Some say the Doc though has ties to the cannibal tribes)
(Some people who read a bunch of books on medicine wants to setup a clinic, cue resource hunt, in part two the quest turns into sim hospital where you deal with the various patients of the wasteland. )

-The mutations of creatures
(In a place reknown for it's gambling theres one thing that draws people in, the blood pits where mutated creatures fight. You get an offer to sabotabe the Champion's eugenics program which has produced consistent winners, you can do this or if your feeling a bit honest
start you own program to create the creature that will win.)

 

[Vault Dweller]

Good Gods I get the impression that some Codexers are a bunch of anti-intellectual chest thumping faggots. Since when is a little professional scientific insight a bad thing when intertwined in a game?

Depends on how you look at it.

The main question here - is it necessary? What does it add to the game? Does it actually make it better or is it a cheap gimmick just like every other attempt to involve "professionals" in game development.

Does anyone expects/cares/wants a realistic post-apoc simulator that makes you feel "holy shit, it's so real, it's like I'm living in teh future!". Did anyone play Wasteland and thought "god damn, the game sure gets its sci-fi right!" or "god damn, the game would have been so much better if these hacks hired some consultants!"?

Take the giant robot thingy, for example. It looks cool, doesn't it? Well, if the real professionals were to take one look at it, they would have to change it immediately and give it much more practical but less interesting form. They would also have to make sure that there was no chance in hell that 6 men armed with handguns could bring it down and to make sure that they would be cut down and/or torn to little chunks in less than 0.24 seconds. I mean you don't build a fucking monstrosity like this and make it vulnerable to small gun fire and you don't buy the targeting software for those miniguns from Prosper's Quality Goods General Store.

Same goes for the mutations and pretty much everything else.

 

[Grotesque]

Now we have an experts opinion on soil erosion like Beth$ had on Fallout 3.
Fuck this shit.
At least one of those expert could point the nonsense of a world war starting because of a global phenomenon like a massive meteor shower.

Bye bye surrealism in Wasteland 2! No more talking potatoes for ya.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

This doesn't mean the game will be super-realistic. Fuck, every crazy ass sci-fi movie out there has "scientific consultants" in the credits.

Yeah. These consultants are just there to prevent the authors from writing stupid shit (movie directors and video game developers aren't known for their erudition). It's not a team of white coats breathing down their neck, telling them that the scorpitrons' design is WRONG and should be CHANGED because they shouldn't be able to sustain their own tail's weight.

 

[almondblight]

Though I do agree that doping up some preschool kids on LSD and writing down their hallucinations after forcing them watch some quality retro Sci-Fi would sure produce good material too.

This guy thought it'd make for a good Kickstarter: 'Moo's Moogley Moo' - A 5yr old's video game design

 

[Moribund]

Glad to see the ME science experts will not be starving on the streets.

 

[zeitgeist]

They are wasting money on stuff they need not even have in the first place.

But that's what happens when you get free money. You have to return a few favors, you have to treat your friends a bit, you have all these useful connections to strengthen, and so on.

 

[Alex]

This is a good thing, you guys should stop whining.

They are going to need some technobabble in their game. By hiring some scientific consultants (for peanuts) they can avoid having the technobabble sound really, really stupid to people who have a basic understanding of science.

If you are ignorant of science you won't care either way, but if you're an autistic nerd (the target audience) this could easily make the game much more enjoyable for you. Hearing something that obviously makes no sense can take you out of the game.

Having something wild and retarded was a lot of fun in games like Gamma World, I thought. The robots, the weapons, the mutants, it all was made to sound campy and retarded. I dunno, I think I see where you are coming from, but hoping that the science behind the game will sound plausible can kill a lot of the leeway the devs can have.

 

[Goral]

Apparently, yeah. Look at Fallout 2. It was retarded when compared to Fallout 1 and while not as retarded as Fallout 3 there were fire Geckos, magicians and other shit. With scientists looking over inXile's employees shoulders such epic ideas are less likely to be implemented.

Do you have potato for brains? They didn't add that stuff to Fallout 2 because they thought it was plausible, they added because they wanted more wacky stuff in an already wacky setting.

See, this is a difference between you and me. I can at least read with comprehension and I don't ask stupid questions like "are you retarded?". I know you are. And in case you would like to claim that it was a rhetorical question, go ahead, it's still retarded since you can't read with comprehension. Anyway, I'll explain myself so that even a retard such as yourself will understand and to spare you the trouble of going to your teacher and asking why what you said was retarded.

You've stated the obvious in your post, i.e. that F2 creators added shit because they wanted wacky stuff. Hence I've written earlier:
"With scientists looking over inXile's employees shoulders such epic ideas are less likely to be implemented." See what I did here? What's interesting, they've admitted themselves later that it was over the top but to you it was "kewl" right? Certainly not for me. And Wasteland didn't have such shitty things in it either despite of what you're claiming. With scientists giving their insight Fargo and co. will think twice about implementing retarded ideas (i.e. adding wacky stuff just for the sake of adding wacky stuff). EOT.

 

[Johannes]

It seems by all accounts that this game will have totally different atmosphere than Wasteland.


The original didn't try to explain the existence of giant vegetables, rad angels, etc., and it was better for it. They just were there and you could draw your own reasonings for them.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

Yes, but will there be Giant Scorpions?

 

[ghostdog]

Bah, I think this was mostly a marketing move from Fargo to add a little hype to the game, but it doesn't seem to have worked that well.

Anyway, I'm not very concerned about the gameworld being overly serious and realistic.

 

[Angthoron]

Oh my, consulting sciencey people for your science fiction setting?

That's... a pretty good move actually. Just give 'em what you come up with, and if they don't facepalm and laugh/cry, carry on!

 

[shihonage]

Lul, what? Do you have a source on that?

The post by Goral I quoted implied that SCIENCE!(tm) could solve the problems with inanity of Fallout 3. But none of the knowledge needed to stop Fallout 3 idiocy requires a scientist. It just requires some common sense and a high-school diploma at the most.

 

[Alex]

Oh my, consulting sciencey people for your science fiction setting?

That's... a pretty good move actually. Just give 'em what you come up with, and if they don't facepalm and laugh/cry, carry on!

There are different type of Science Fiction, you know? Real science only gets in the way of the pulpy kind.

Edit: Actually, this isn't quite true. Real science inspired it in first place, and should still be able to do so. But at the same time that science inspires it, pulpy science fiction always ignores a whole lot about real science too, which is why this move is so weird.

 

[Oesophagus]

So, from a point of what amounts to ignorance (because we don't know what exactly these people will be doing, we don't know in what manner their insights will be used), we get:

Bye bye surrealism in Wasteland 2! No more talking potatoes for ya

It seems by all accounts that this game will have totally different atmosphere than Wasteland.

You want to know what science consultants do? Watch the movie Sunshine, they had a particle physics PhD "consulting" them. The movie ended up with a plot about reigniting the sun with a nuke. Very realistic

 

[Angthoron]

Oh my, consulting sciencey people for your science fiction setting?

That's... a pretty good move actually. Just give 'em what you come up with, and if they don't facepalm and laugh/cry, carry on!

There are different type of Science Fiction, you know? Real science only gets in the way of the pulpy kind.

Edit: Actually, this isn't quite true. Real science inspired it in first place, and should still be able to do so. But at the same time that science inspires it, pulpy science fiction always ignores a whole lot about real science too, which is why this move is so weird.

Not entirely sure what your point is. Using consultants for writing fiction is bad? Having a test audience to point out that THINGS DON'T WORK THAT WAY (sorta) before your entire player base mocks your science chops is ill-advised? I'm just not following.

 

[Infinitron]

Bah, I think this was mostly a marketing move from Fargo to add a little hype to the game, but it doesn't seem to have worked that well.

Eh, he didn't even tweet about it personally and it wasn't publicized anywhere else but Twitter. Doesn't seem like much of a marketing move to me.