Game News Wasteland 2 Kickstarter Update #34: Gamescom Demo Video, First Dev Diary Released

[Vault Dweller]

My impressions:

- the game looks good, the visual design is superb
- the UI is way better
- combat looks good, seems too easy but let's hope it's just for the demonstration purposes

Now about what's been shown:

- The area is very corridor-like and reminds me of the IWD 2 maps. Linear, with pockets of events here and there, almost to the point of being too cluttered with "random" events.

- Some events aren't very logical, C&C seem forced

Why would the trader refuse to trade with you and make a profit? Why would the sick woman ask you to kill her, if she can pop some pills and get better? A dying person is one thing. A sick person who can be easily healed is another. You don't kill someone who has a migraine, for example, even if they beg to be shot. Why would the raiders let you pass instead of jumping you?

It seems that some events and places where designed to let you use your skills (brute force here, animal empathy over there, medical here, etc) - i.e. events driven by the desire to let the player use skills and show reactivity everywhere.

- Sheep conveniently placed next to the mines remind me Shadowrun's conveniently placed solutions. The comment that you can just run through, trigger the mines, take damage and then get healed is just ... There are few things that I hate more than traps and mines that hit for 5 points of damage (like the NWN2 traps).

- the unguarded ramp conveniently placed next to the camp is silly. Placing a guard there and letting you to take him out silently (or failing and losing the element of surprise) and then attack would be something. Going up the ramp, completely invisible to the semi-blind men and dogs and taking your time to pick targets, is kinda meh. So, the choice is between rushing through the main entrance or passing the player's perception check and going up the ramp?

- the radio seems to be a way for the NPCs to talk to you from far away, to make sure that you find them. "There is a dying woman in aisle 4, please stop by for loot and xp". Did her husband have a radio too? If yes, why didn't he reply? If he knew that she was dying and asking to kill her, why would he attack you? Why wouldn't he ask you why and let you try to explain? His dramatic entrance, guns blazing and shit, was pointless and served absolutely no purpose (other than to show the "consequences" of your actions and let you loot his clearly useless gun).

- the 'encounter begins' text is very JRPG like, and so are the flashing damage numbers that belong in RT clickfest games like Diablo 3, not in a TB game with a textbox.

- the descriptions are great and evocative but the louspeaker humor was silly and unnecessary.

Necessary disclaimer: I'm not saying that the game is bad or that the entire game is like that. I'm merely commenting on what's been shown.

 

[St. Toxic]

Disliked what they showed of the writing and flow of dialog.

Because...? If you're interested in helping them make the game better, criticism without detail isn't very useful.

Criticism of writing and dialog isn't helpful no matter how detailed I make it, when the game is this far into development. My biggest complaint is that NPC's present themselves as an information database rather than people, making conversations feel stiff and unnatural. Most noticeable is when Overbake asks how many guns the rangers have, and instead of getting an answer the PC asks him about 'Gladys' to which he happily replies with some small-talk hinting at a sidequest. Real conversations don't work like that. Same thing with Darvis -- it's plain to see he isn't a big fan of rangers, and on top of that he's got his shitty cart stuck 2 feet behind him, and yet he doesn't mind giving you all the answers about the place up-front? Does he even react if you say Buh-bye without helping him out?

This doesn't necessarily have to be a weakness of using a keyword system for dialog trees, but it certainly makes the artificial nature of the approach more apparent. There absolutely has to be some limit to what dialog options are available at different stages in the conversation, or any attempt at adding varied emotions to NPC dialog breaks down, as the selection of different queries has the characters bouncing between jokes, gravitas, anger and detachment. The easy solution is to put the NPC in the driver's seat where conversations are concerned. Fallout did this fairly well, locking you in smalltalk segments where necessary, modifying reaction based on your responses, and only after that giving you the option of leading the interrogation. With characters sitting on bulk information you'd normally start by asking permission to ask your questions, because barging into a guard-post and going for the jugular straight away, "Who was that woman? What do you do here? What do you know about snakes?", looks demonstratively retarded.

Also not a fan of highlighted keywords; not at all. I figured they were next-gen hints for manual input queries but, as far as I could see, every topic made it into the exhaustive list of dialog options. If these are extra dialog options that you can type in manually, for players to feel a bit more clever about squeezing additional info out of NPC's, then it's still fucking retarded to highlight them rather than just adding them into the basic pool of dialog options or making them hyper-links inside of the speech-window, as it's pretty much the exact same thing without any of the convenience. Like a locked door with the key glued to the handle.

[EDIT: Actually, having watched the vid again, I don't see the option for it. Guess they removed it. Highlighted keywords merely moron-bait for people who can't skim unassisted.]

Necessary disclaimer: I'm not saying that the game is bad or that the entire game is like that. I'm merely commenting on what's been shown.

Sounds about right. Though, since they are showing it off, I figure it's pretty indicative of the entirety of the game.

 

[codexian reject]

Gameplay:
If it comes to gameplay I like keywords dialogue implementation and interface ( functionally not aesthetically ).
Thats about it. Everything else about gameplay mechanics on this vid was somewhere between decent and shit, with majority of it being meh.

Lack of diagonal movement is so fucking bad... I believe that, majority of non retards watching this realised within 10s, that diagonal movement with 2 and 3 AP, or similar solution is essential here. It's not a random vid, but a Gamescom demo footage. Paired with complete lack of response from BN, to all the questions regarding movement mechanics that popped multiple times on both, the codex and the official forum, makes me convinced that this shit is intentional. Yes, after a lot of bitching maybe they'll improve on it. But design consist of thousands little decisions like that. If they can't get such essential and basic things right on their own, then it's hard to expect anything else, than a game full of annoying shit.
Fuck, I am loosing faith...

Design:
Writing, area and quest design is perfectly meh, nothing offensively bad, but nothing really interesting either. Well, it's an unimportant filler area chosen for a demo to not spoil too much, so I'll remain optimistic about these aspects.

Art:
Music is nice. Interface art, enemies and rangers models look great. Portraits have a lot of personality. Everything else on art department is passable.
If there'll be an option to disable post processing, than maybe environments will look no worse that AoD, but with more assets variety. Currently, with all this shitty blur and bloom it looks worse than AoD.

 

[FeelTheRads]

Yeah, what the gentleman with the hat and spiffy uniform said.
And they really should give up on silly animations like the "encounter begins", those keywords jumping around, numbers popping out and those goddamn floating dialog boxes following you around. It's one thing going for silly, another going full next-gen tablet game retard.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

Note that it's much easier to create an enclosed, "in and out" demo of a dungeon area. Even in this demo, Chris had to skip over talking to that Red guy, because what he had to say wouldn't make sense to players who didn't have the context of the full game.

I'm sure it would've been a lot easier for the FO1 devs to show off the Radscorpion caves than to build a prototype Junktown, but they wouldn't have because the latter displays FO1's main selling points, while the former does not. You can tell by Fargo's reactions in all the previews that this map in his opinion perfectly shows off W2's main selling points in a nicely concise form. You seem to be saying that we can't judge the main focus of the game by either the demos, the screenshots or the devs reactions.

 

[Infinitron]

You can tell by Fargo's reactions in all the previews that this map in his opinion perfectly shows off W2's main selling points in a nicely concise form.

They key word being concise.

As for Fallout 1, well, it was a different era. That was a playable demo for gamers, not a video for journotards at Gamescom.

I don't really have anything more to say other than let's wait for Brother None to say something.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

He should first respond to the grid question I asked.

 

[TwinkieGorilla]

I'd like to chime in and say the "Encounter Begins" bit was jarring and completely fucking unnecessary.

Carry on.

 

[Lancehead]

You can tell by Fargo's reactions in all the previews that this map in his opinion perfectly shows off W2's main selling points in a nicely concise form.

They key word being concise.

Being concise involves conveying plenty of information in very few words.

As for Fallout 1, well, it was a different era. That was a playable demo for gamers, not a video for journotards at Gamescom.

They chose to release the video to backers as well. If it wasn't representative of the game, maybe they shouldn't have, or maybe shoud've released one that is.

 

[Infinitron]

Being concise involves conveying plenty of information in very few words.

But quantity has a quality of its own. One incidence of C&C demonstrates that a game "has C&C", but it isn't very impressive. An entire map full of C&C is the best RPG evar.

 

[St. Toxic]

Also, gotta say I'm a fan of the graphics. The game looks good. Area design, not so much. I have a serious problem figuring out what the place was supposed to have looked like pre-apocalypse, with the way the sparse few houses are placed. The huge amount of wrecks suggests a lot of motor activity, but it sort of clashes with the canyon layout. Also agree with VD's comments on the 'convenient' gamist design of it. It's just one map, so who knows how indicative it is of the rest of the game, but still.

And, lack of diagonal movement or hexes doesn't really bother me too much.

 

[tuluse]

Corridor maps are likely there to keep the hardware requirements lower (for a future console port? ). I doubt Eternity will exclusively use them.

They're feature complete now so this would be the beta phase.

Brother none said that over watch wasn't enabled in the demo, so it's not feature complete yet.

 

[Lexx]

I thought it was funny when "encounter begins" pops up, like all the other times, you get ready for combat, and then that dude comes and says "yo guys, wait! They paid the tax!" and the encounter gets cancelled. Felt like one of these "hey, wait a sec---scene backjump" from movies.

 

[Lancehead]

Being concise involves conveying plenty of information in very few words.

But quantity has a quality of its own. One incidence of C&C demonstrates that a game "has C&C", but it isn't very impressive. An entire map full of C&C is the best RPG evar.

Yes, but the criticism here is mainly on design, and design is an intensive property.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Being concise involves conveying plenty of information in very few words.

But quantity has a quality of its own.

If "help NPC and he'll reward you, kill NPC and he doesn't" is a good example of C&C, then Bioware is the king of reactivity.

 

[nihil]

I'm with felipepepe. I really hope there are areas of a more hub-like nature, or where you actually get a feeling of exploring. This feels way too staged and linear.

VD has many points, as well.

I love the atmosphere, though, mainly thanks to the music.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

Brother none said that over watch wasn't enabled in the demo, do it's not feature complete yet.

No, he said that the AI didn't use it during the demo video, but that the AI did use it other runthroughs during the convention.

At least I think that's what he said

 

[Grotesque]

I like to think that this is a bug. Or something.

 

[Infinitron]

If "help NPC and he'll reward you, kill NPC and he doesn't" is a good example of C&C, then Bioware is the king of reactivity.

Implying you can freely kill NPCs in any Bioware RPG since BG2

Yes, but the criticism here is mainly on design, and design is an intensive property.

I'm not sure what you mean by "design". I see all kinds of criticisms here, with the main one being that the area is too much of a linear dungeon crawl with random micro-instances of C&C/reactivity strewn throughout.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

tuluse, here it is:

It does. I don't think the AI uses it this video though, but they used it against me quite a few times when I was running the demo at GamesCom.

I'm pretty sure they've said a while ago that it's feature complete.

 

[Sensuki]

Maps in Project Eternity will probably be like this as well. I don't know why designers think that the BG1 / other open exploration style of maps is bad design or a waste of space, because it isn't.

Bad design? I don't know if that's what they think. Maybe they think this style of map is more natural/realistic/pretty. A valley should actually look like a valley. Etc.

My impressions: - The area is very corridor-like and reminds me of the IWD 2 maps. Linear, with pockets of events here and there, almost to the point of being too cluttered with "random" events.

Looks like I wasn't the only one who got that feeling from the map design

 

[tuluse]

Jim the Dinosaur

I consider the AI and the AI using important tactical options to be features, so by that definition it's not feature complete.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

Jim the Dinosaur

I consider the AI and the AI using important tactical options to be features, so by that definition it's not feature complete.

I'm pretty sure that that counts as polishing, if all the features are working and included it's feature complete, and things like adjusting how often the AI uses it (if they would even want to do that in the first place) counts as polishing.

 

[tuluse]

I'm pretty sure that that counts as polishing, if all the features are working and included it's feature complete, and things like adjusting how often the AI uses it (if they would even want to do that in the first place) counts as polishing.

The AI isn't using it *at all* right now. That's not adjusting how often it does something, that's adding a whole new *feature* to the AI.

 

[Vault Dweller]

A valley should actually look like a valley. Etc.

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