Game News Wasteland 2 Kickstarter Update #49: The End is in Sight - Final Early Access Update and Release Date

[boobio]

P.S. Played a bit with the new beta version and while miles better I still came away with the distinct impression of a polished turd.

What is turd about the new version?

 

[Onholyservicebound]

I tried to submit a ticket to Inxile asking them to fix it but there wasn't any soul category under the components I could choose to make suggestions on.

Says a lot about how little value Inxile places on the soul of the game.

 

[NotAGolfer]

You have absolutely no idea what we're talking about when we use the word "soul", do you?

I guess everyone here gets what you mean but I for one don't think it's a meaningful distinction.
Only thing I feel able to judge is if the designers/artists/whatever put thought and labor into the aspects of the game I care about and if it's all cohesive (so there's your "vision") and fun for me.
Everything else is just trying to declare my taste as objectively true and while the Codex perhaps wouldn't exist if we didn't enjoy doing that all day it's still nothing but silly.

Underrail for example has pretty simple visuals but they please my eyes because they remind me of Fallout and all elements fit together nicely. And it seems to have only one music piece for the whole game (might be wrong though, just a guess), but it isn't intrusive so that's okay with me.
So nothing outstanding on the artsy front.

BUT for my taste it does everything right in the CRPG mechanics department.

Open world? Not really, sometimes too powerful enemies block your way, sometimes the story unlocks areas, but it isn't linear either so I don't feel constrained. The big advantage over open world games is that Styg doesn't need any sort of level scaling and the different mechanics (loot progression vs. skill progression vs. enemies becoming more powerful etc.) work together like a charm, something every single TES game sucks donkey balls at. TES are mostly nothing but dress-up doll games with some tacked on gameplay to test your doll in action. If you want your power fantasy trip and the game story to have any kind of connection look somewhere else ... for example Underrail.

Is the TB combat fun because of a big enough variety of builds and tactical options? Yes, it's great fun actually, maybe the gunner builds need something to spice them up though.

Is it hard enough for my tactical decisions to matter? Yep, most def.

Does it have fun and addictive leveling/char building mechanics? Hell yes!

All these things are rather subjective even though one might be able to objectively tell that a lot of hard work went into finetuning the game. But some people might find the mechanics too fiddly, others the art not pleasing (showcasing your artist's skills with tacked on braindead awesome button "gameplay" to turn it into a game so people will throw their moneyz at you seeems to be all the rage these days), still others the story "soullless" (fuck them) etc..
In short, they might find that the stuff they care about in their games didn't get enough love and "soul" in Underrail.

tl:dr
I couldn't care less about esoteric hippies and where they believe to find souls.

 

[TwinkieGorilla]

You're still missing the point, so no, I don't think you get what I or anybody else means. A unique, coherent, consistent, unified vision. Are any of you artists? Because this seems to be lost on some of you in a way I can't help but feel lost in explaining.

And not sure why you turned this into a discussion about Underrail (though I do disagree with many of your points and there are music themes for different areas, btw), because that's neither here nor there. It is brought up only as one of many examples. The only thing which makes that game unique is the small budget and team involved which kills any argument about money and manpower.

 

[NotAGolfer]

You're still missing the point, so no, I don't think you get what I or anybody else means. A unique, coherent, consistent, unified vision.

A vision? You mean something like this?

And not sure why you turned this into a discussion about Underrail, because that's neither here nor there.

To convey what I tried to say of course.
But this seems to be lost on you in a way I can't help but feel lost in explaining.

 

[TwinkieGorilla]

You're still missing the point, so no, I don't think you get what I or anybody else means. A unique, coherent, consistent, unified vision.

A vision? You mean like this one?

Yes. Except having a vision does not mean it is a coherent and unified one. It also does not mean it was executed properly or well at all. The fuck is wrong with you?

To convey what I tried to say of course.
But this seems to be lost on you in a way I can't help but feel lost in explaining.

Except you're not actually saying anything because you seem to have no idea what the fuck anybody else is talking about.

Retard.

 

[NotAGolfer]

The fuck is wrong with you?

Dunno. Trying to communicate with assburger aliens is kinda hard for me so please go easy on me.
And now please fall off your high horse and break your neck, that would be hilarious.

 

[TwinkieGorilla]

No. I'd imagine understanding and communicating abstract ideas with other people is your problem. In that, the burger seems to be on your plate, not mine.

 

[Davaris]

The outcome of W2 and PoE will come down to a difference in philosophies. Using the crowd vs everything made in house.

This also does not reach the heart of the matter. Underrail, until recently becoming a three piece, was a one man project with perhaps the best example of "soul" as pertains to this discussion. In house, crowd-crutch, random numbers assigned to arguments be damned. None of it has fuckall to do with vision and execution.

P.S. Played a bit with the new beta version and while miles better I still came away with the distinct impression of a polished turd.

Yeah, I understood what you meant. You are talking about a detectable pattern, the designer wants in everything that goes into the game. If the pattern is a pleasant one, it makes the experience a good one. IMO if you get assets from random sources, you can't achieve this effect. You need to do it all in house, with a talented control freak overseeing everything.

 

[Onholyservicebound]

NotAGolfer Since you seem to be too retarded to grasp what soul is let me fill you in:

While mortals do not understand all of how soul "works", what is known is that sapient souls move through an endless cycle of waking life and purgatorial slumber among the gods. Most times this metaphysical rest lasts for several years, but it can also be very brief, with a soul reincarnating immediately. The process of reincarnation is not perfect however. Soul can experience "fracturing" over generations, transforming in myriad ways, and not always functioning properly. Certain cultures or individuals may place high values on various soul characteristics. Some of these characteristics include "strong" souls, souls with a "pure" lineage, "awakened souls (meaning souls that can recall past lives), "traveled" souls (souls that have drifted through various divine realms) or souls that coexist in a single body. However, the opposite is also true, resulting in negative discrimination and sometimes outright violence.

Through a variety of techniques (e.g. martial training, meditation, ritualistic evocation, mortification of the flesh), some individuals are able to draw upon the energy of their soul to accomplish extraordinary feats. These abilities range from the mundanely superhuman to the explosively magical. Having a strong soul seems to make this easier, but sometimes even people with fragmented souls are able to accomplish the extraordinary. The individual's body seems to act as a conduit and battery for this power, drawing in replenishment from seemingly omnipresent "fields" of unbound spiritual energy in the world around them.

Thinkers, spiritualists, and scientists of the world have theorized for thousands of years about the nature and purpose of this process, but others have turned to prayer for answer. Rather than illuminate the presumed higher purpose of this cycle, the gods have obfuscated the truth, at times spreading cosmological lies, pitting believers and empowered chosen agents against each other, and tacitly approving the prejudices of their followers to maintain power.

Whatever the fundamental nature of mortal souls is, the people of the world accept the reality of what they have observed: that all mortal bodies contain perceptible energy bound to the individual, and that once they die, their energy will move forward in the eternal cycle that they are all a part of -- that as far as they know, they have always been a part of.

 

[NotAGolfer]

Great, another lunatic coming to the rescue. You guys sure deliver.

 

[Daedalos]

Less shitposts, more actual gameplay talk and beta testing.

Go.

 

[ZagorTeNej]

Great, another lunatic coming to the rescue. You guys sure deliver.

You're saying Josh's a loon?

 

[tuluse]

Wasteland 2 must be analyzed using intellection.

 

[NotAGolfer]

Great, another lunatic coming to the rescue. You guys sure deliver.

You're saying Josh's a loon?

Sorry, but I don't get it.

Interesting discussion though, I try to rebut that stupid knockout argument about a game having or lacking a soul and that gets countered by "tl:dr lololol u dumb" and some all-encompassing rubbish about a unique, coherent, consistent, unified vision (TM).
Sure, if someone pulls all the strings and manages to make the game he dreamed of that might be great, but it doesn't guarantee that anybody else dreamed of that particular game or thinks that it has "soul". Taste varies, you fucking dimwits.
The reason why all of us are so butthurt isn't that newer games lack soul, it's casual gamers and that taste changed. The vision behind games like the first Ass Creeds (the newer ones are too obviously just a cash grab) for example might have been implemented flawlessly ... it's just that the vision sucks.

 

[ZagorTeNej]

Sorry, but I don't get it.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/obsidian/project-eternity/posts/312639

 

[FeelTheRads]

Wasteland 2 must be analyzed using intellection.

I don't know about you, but I like my Wasteland to be of a more cereberal nature.

 

[NotAGolfer]

Sorry, but I don't get it.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/obsidian/project-eternity/posts/312639

Thanks, didn't follow P:E development and I didn't know that Teh Josh writes these updates himself.

 

[Agesilaus]

so it's shit then?

 

[TwinkieGorilla]

Yeah, I understood what you meant. You are talking about a detectable pattern, the designer wants in everything that goes into the game. If the pattern is a pleasant one, it makes the experience a good one. IMO if you get assets from random sources, you can't achieve this effect. You need to do it all in house, with a talented control freak overseeing everything.

Essentially, yes, this is what I'm getting at. Though the concept should not be limited to visual aspects only, fwiw.

 

[Onholyservicebound]

Joking aside I completely understand what the asperger alien is on about. Oblivion is a game that I would say is very much lacking in "soul",(Even though I wouldn't use that word because it sounds retarded.) not sure if I could say the same about Wasteland though. Hard to approach it, since we all know for a fact that the UI was reiterated on thousands of times and the art assets were outsourced, so I try to look at it as if I didn't know that. And I really don't see it, the biggest exception would be the icons in the patch before this one, those were awful, and definitely made me feel the cheapness. Otherwise everything comes together rather nicely, Not Fallout tier, but nothing sticks out as the super tacky jumbed mess that it did in the early and middle of development.

Can't really comment on the writing, feels consistent, but I don't know really know much about writing or articulating the quality of it, besides whether I thought it sucked or not.(Wastelands is average, with the occasional low point.)

 

[NotAGolfer]

Joking aside I completely understand what the asperger alien is on about. Oblivion is a game that I would say is very much lacking in "soul",(Even though I wouldn't use that word because it sounds retarded.) not sure if I could say the same about Wasteland though. Hard to approach it, since we all know for a fact that the UI was reiterated on thousands of times and the art assets were outsourced, so I try to look at it as if I didn't know that. And I really don't see it, the biggest exception would be the icons in the patch before this one, those were awful, and definitely made me feel the cheapness. Otherwise everything comes together rather nicely, Not Fallout tier, but nothing sticks out as the super tacky jumbed mess that it did in the early and middle of development.

Can't really comment on the writing, feels consistent, but I don't know really know much about writing or articulating the quality of it, besides whether I thought it sucked or not.(Wastelands is average, with the occasional low point.)

Yeah, that's another thing that makes me rage. Graphix and UI whores (never imagined that could be a thing but hey, you never stop learning) dismissing everything that's really important about a CRPG as wasted efforts because the game doesn't have their favorite UI they sperg on about all the time and anyway, where's muh unified vision behind these icons and UI and graphix and all that shit?!

Only thing I could agree on with the assburger alien is that if you implement features you better implement them well and intertwine them, instead of just tacking on a feature list, but I already wrote that shit (that's what I meant with cohesive).
Everything else depends. If you're a storyfag you might be inclined to call games without an ambitious story soullless, if you're a combatfag you might think that railroaded popamole like Mass Effect lacks soul.
Most games have a lot of effort put into them and it's almost always nothing but a baseless butthurt claim to call them soulless. And no, it doesn't all have to be in the hands of one single control freak, if designers talk to each other and do their best and are more than talentless hacks then it will look like a labor of love. And if the foundation was solid hopefully it will all come together nicely.
The thing is it might still suck and you might still not enjoy it. The reason might be that your children are physically and mentally challenged (generation popamole) and the designers cater to them, that the thing the game tries to do doesn't click with you or that you're just an old jaded butthurt cynic who doesn't really like playing games anymore (there are many shit games from back in the day I wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole today but still played extensively then ... guess I had much more time and patience than I have now).

 

[TwinkieGorilla]

"makes me rage"



And yet the guy who's simply pointing out a lack of quality in the artistic direction of a game is the "assburger alien" (where do you basement dwellers get this stuff from anyway?). Oh what the decline has done to your minds.

 

[SuicideBunny]

gods, i am really starting to hate ag center level design...

 

[Onholyservicebound]

I don't do it often, and I hated it the first few times, but going back after not playing it, along with remembering how to do everything made it a pretty smooth experience. Haven't gone back there last patch anyway, just because I tend to use a lot of melee rangers.