Wasteland Wasteland 2 Pre-Release Discussion Thread [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[tuluse]

They'll need to clean up some of the narrative descriptive text which is currently riddled with grammatical errors, replace the Arial font used in floating combat text and UI elements with something more appropriate (the output window font is fine, though; seems to be Courier/Courier New, which reminds me of MUDs)

Now this is some quality nitpicking.

 

[Surf Solar]

They'll need to clean up some of the narrative descriptive text which is currently riddled with grammatical errors, replace the Arial font used in floating combat text and UI elements with something more appropriate (the output window font is fine, though; seems to be Courier/Courier New, which reminds me of MUDs)

Now this is some quality nitpicking.

The fonts do not match together and are likely placeholders. Don't see how this is nitpicking.

 

[tuluse]

If font selection is the biggest problem with the game that means Fargo has created the greatest cRPG in the history of man.

 

[Excidium]

Who said it's the biggest problem, master of hyperbole? He just commented that the fonts are mismatched and that InXile needs to use a spellchecker.

 

[tuluse]

I didn't mean to quote the part about grammar errors actually, but still complaining about font selection in alpha footage is pretty much the epitome of nitpicking.

 

[Brayko]

Looks great! Let's see how the whole thing holds together. Not a huge fan of movable cameras though, should have kept it fixed.

 

[Zed]

I didn't mean to quote the part about grammar errors actually, but still complaining about font selection in alpha footage is pretty much the epitome of nitpicking.

Nitpicking and complaints is what's interesting, and also what the game needs.
I also said it looks good.
EDIT: ah, someone else was also pointing out font inconsistency.

 

[tuluse]

Feel free to nitpick away, but font selection is the last thing on my list of worries about this game, so I'm going to point out that I think it's silly.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Well that looks fantastic. The keywords dialog system sounds fine by me, and as grumbled by a few Codexers the AI seemed pretty questionable. But since they've still got quite a bit of work to go and that was an early area I'm not too concerned. Even if the AI's bad the combat system looks promising enough to be fun. Absolutely love the text box with descriptions too.

Surprised nobody has gone "Hurr, MCA, hurrrrrrrrr" yet, so hurr, MCA, hurrrrrrrrrr.

 

[Twinkle]

Looks promising at this stage. A brief glimpse of faction philosophy delivered via radio chatter was nice touch. Visuals are okayish, but I hope in full game we'll see more diverse locations. Morgan's ambience is neat, as expected. And I prefer keywords to dialogue trees.

But

Combat surely needs additional work:

- No context-based cover, leave that crap to Shitbawks.

- Since the engine supports destruction as many cover spots as possible should be destructible.

- Manual crouch/prone stances is a must.

- And so is locational damage.

- I know it's a tutorial but the game proper needs bigger and less linear levels.

Overall, nothing that can't be fixed/improved at this stage of development. Here's hope they make the right choices (and if they won't we'll bash them right into their skulls).

 

[Brzęczyszczykiewicz]

It looks much better than scorpion video.

 

[Krivol]

- No context-based cover, leave that crap to Shitbawks.

- Since the engine supports destruction as many cover spots as possible should be destructible.

- Manual crouch/prone stances is a must.

- And so is locational damage.

This!

 

[LundB]

This guy doesn't know much about Brian Fargo: http://wasteland.inxile-entertainment.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3416&start=80#p62695

Hi inXile folks,

As a player of the original Wasteland [C64,1988... Ah, the good ol' days...] I backed WL2 very early on and have been very excited to see what you produce. I have kept out of the forums as I don't want to add to the voices that might sway you too far from your design-conscience.

But I had to chime in and say that there's one thing I didn't like about the gameplay video: The gratuitous vulgarity. Swear-words don't offend me, and some vulgarity can punctuate a scene or heighten tension. But when you use the words too often - especially in a quick succession of dialogue - it starts to sound fake. It ruins the authenticity of the conversation and the immersion (people really don't swear like that). It feels like you're "trying" to stage a scene, instead of just having a tense conversation / exclamation.

I'm sure that all the writing is still subject to change. And while Wasteland's heritage is to not shy away from "mature" themes, I hope that this is reined in a little so that the players can focus more on story and their involvement in the events that are unfolding in the game-world.

Thanks for listening, and for your hard work!

--Noel

I think it calls for a Wasteland 2 Language Modesty Mod! Paging LundB

I agree, and since replacing text takes way less effort than artistically reimagining images, it's something I could do in a less Cleveian timeframe than my current labour of love.

 

[Volrath]

I'm very butthurt about rotatable cameras.

 

[Blaine]

I'm a little bit miffed about camera rotation, but in the end I doubt it'll make much difference to the actual gameplay, other than being able to add objects and features to all corners of a room/area. 'Course, that means you'll HAVE to use the camera to explore properly, which will detract somewhat from the tabletop-esque/classic cRPG feel of the game, but oh well.

 

[Commissar Draco]

Looks great, only nitpick is lack of taking poses ala JA2 and rotable camera.

 

[Deleted member 7219]

Biggest nitpick for me was the Bethesda 'RUMORS' dialog system. The thing I really liked about Fallout and Torment was the dialog trees. I thought Wasteland 2 was going to have those. They can still have the user inputted keywords alongside, like Fallout 1 and 2 did.

 

[suejak]

Dialogue trees have never been a Wasteland thing. They're not making a Fallout game; they're making a Wasteland game.

 

[Infinitron]

Dialogue trees have never been a Wasteland thing. They're not making a Fallout game; they're making a Wasteland game.

That's kind of arbitrary, though. The game has already been made more like Fallout in so many ways.

Personally, I think that keyword-based dialogue tends to work well in games where you're playing a blank-slate, investigative and impartial authority figure (such as the Avatar in Ultima)

 

[suejak]

How is it like Fallout? Isometric perspective? Mark Morgan?

 

[Lancehead]

Also, the keyword mechanics are not very suitable to implement choices through dialogue.

 

[Infinitron]

Also, the keyword mechanics are not very suitable to implement choices through dialogue.

I don't see why. It just means that your choices have to actually be significantly different (not just bullshit Mass Effect style say-the-same-thing-in-an-angry-or-friendly-voice)

How is it like Fallout? Isometric perspective? Mark Morgan?

Well, yes.

 

[Lancehead]

Also, the keyword mechanics are not very suitable to implement choices through dialogue.

I don't see why.

If there's a keyword "threaten", for example, it can be difficult to communicate to the player what exactly the pc is threatening with (i.e. a keyword can be interpreted to mean more than one thing), which means it'd be difficult to gauge the consequence.

It just means that your choices have to actually be significantly different (not just bullshit Mass Effect style say-the-same-thing-in-an-angry-or-friendly-voice)

I think it means the choices would be limited to pretty straightforward and obvious ones. Like "attack", "no" etc. That may not be a problem, however, as there are other ways to implement choices.

 

[Shadenuat]

I don't see why they won't combine keywords with some other mechanic, it worked great in Wizardry, and to some extent in Morrowind.

 

[Infinitron]

I shot Colin McComb a question about the keyword-based dialogue system on his Formspring. Let's see what he has to say about it.