Wasteland Wasteland 2 Thread - Director's Cut

[Lemming42]

How can you spot/detect traps or alarms?

Perception.

 

[Infinitron]

Updated review roundup: http://wastelandrpg.tumblr.com/post/97902926806/wasteland-2-review-roundup-1

Wasteland 2 Review Roundup #1

With Wasteland 2 out for about 12 hours, the first reviews are pouring in. We round them all up below.

Eurogamer, 8.

The humour is black as obsidian much of the time, but very knowingly so. A deposed mayor in a cage, for instance, contemplates that inviting a gang called the Leather Jerks into his town was, in retrospect, a bad idea. A tax-collecting enemy gets a unique set of barks like “Assessor VanOverbake shoots Cherry Bomb and makes a note to charge her for the bullet.” Accidentally triggering a nuclear device in the middle of Ranger Citadel is summed up with a simple “Ooops.” Rarely does too much time go by without something amusing happening.

Throughout, it’s a game that uses text to great advantage, pushing descriptions far more nuanced than any graphics could allow, and full of great conversations unfettered by the need for voice acting. There’s some of that, but it’s used sparingly for key characters and moments, like hearing the fall of a settlement you had no choice but to leave to its fate, or the voices that come in on the radio. Some come from Rangers on their own missions (though, sadly, nowhere near enough of those - the early game is lonely), while others come from the various factions after a piece of the world. They might be open about it, like a religion of robots; they might be charming about it, simply inviting a community to enter a lottery where third prize is a lifetime slavery. Either way, there’s never a shortage of jerks in need of a visit from some nuclear cowboys.

Rock, Paper, Shotgun.

Killing things is satisfying though, which is handy because there are so many things to kill. Combat is clean and just about complicated enough – it’s never too demanding but has just enough room for error to create tension. It’s also the area of the game in which skills are most sensibly applied, even if some (unarmed, I’m looking at you) seem underpowered due to the equipment available.

But it’s fun to have a blademaster, a sniper and an angry giant with a club full of nails. Not an actual giant, you understand, but a massive bruiser, with a cig in her mouth and a Buddhist chant on her lips. Smoking habits, ethnicity, religion and size are all part of the delightful character building before the game even begins. That’s when starting skills are chosen as well and while it’s easy enough to dish out combat skill evenly, selecting the rest is troublesome**.

PC Gamer, 83.

inXile provides a nice selection of premade characters, but I enjoyed the characters I created most. Each character has six basic stats that affect a further set of derived abilities. Coordination, for instance, affects your ability to shoot a gun, but also how steady your hands are when jimmying a lock or disarming a bomb. These abilities also tie into your choice of skills. Some are obvious: Brawling affects how good you are at bare-fisted fighting, Handguns shows your skill with a pistol or small gun. Others seem useless at first; who would focus on repairing toasters in a post-apocalyptic world? I did, and I’m proud to report that some of my best experiences (and loot) came from bringing life to a discarded appliance.

None of the skills available are useless, which makes focusing on a few difficult. I routinely found myself wishing I had a character or companion with Brute Force who could break open a safe I had permanently locked through a critical failure. Animal Whisper doesn’t lead to surreal bunny conversations as in Divinity: Original Sin, but it does help when herding cattle for a quest. I completed one difficult late-game combat encounter with a lost puppy I had used Animal Whisperer on, who followed me into combat and viciously murdered three synthetic enemies. It takes a while to learn how the skills work in the world, but their usefulness is ever present.

Game Informer, 8.75.

Conversation is a major activity outside of combat. While you always have a roster of appropriate keywords and phrases to draw upon when talking to important NPCs, the soft skills like “hard ass” unlock special dialogue options. These conversations can lead to bonus loot or unlocking entire new locations on the world map, so don’t just hammer through the dialogue like a MMORPG player looking to jump back into the action. In addition to the canned responses, players can also type in their own words, and perhaps unlock even more interesting secrets – sort of an extra bonus for those paying attention to what’s going on in the game.

Wasteland 2 is unflinchingly dark; players must make horrible life and death choices along the way and witness the consequences of their actions. Early in the game, you have the choice to help either the Ag Center, which is being overrun by infected plant life, or Highpool, under siege by your typical Road Warrior wasteland goons. Whatever your decision is, it will determine potential team members, and you’ll eventually visit the other location later in the game, realizing that those calls for help that you didn’t answer led to something terrible. This is just one example, as the game continually enjoys forcing you to make decisions with lives hanging in the balance.

Strategy Informer, 7.5.

Fortunately it’s not all bloodshed. Sometimes the easiest, least destructive way to access an area or nab a precious item is to suck up to someone you despise. There’s some great villains, or at least antagonists. Mr. Manners, leader of the Mannerites, a group of unfailingly polite thugs who build their society around a 1930s book on courtesy and good manners, is a figure you’ll come to despise for his soft-spoken, almost passive-aggressive hostility and streak of sheer ruthlessness. The Pistol-Packin’ Priests, meanwhile, are gun crazy fundamentalist nuts who are an absolute pleasure to kill. Not that it’s advisable to just march in laser-guns blazing.

You’re free to start an all-out war if you want, but mowing down hordes of fanatical soldiers tends to drain both your ammo reserves and your blood pretty quickly. This tends to make you consider your situation carefully. While you do get to serve out the occasional bit of frontier justice, I was actually impressed with how many compromises my team of rangers had to make. There were times when I couldn’t justify wiping a group out, even though I found them reprehensible, but equally there were times that someone pushed me just a bit too far – like that memorable moment with the one-armed warchief that I mentioned earlier. I found myself making distasteful but rational decisions based on my team’s resources, alliances and current situation – that’s pretty cool.

• Digital Spy, 4/5
• Pixel Dynamo, 8.9
• The Independent, 4/5
• MMORPG, 8.2
• Joystiq, 3/5
• PC World, 4.5/5
• Game-Debate, 6.5
• FZ.se, 4/5 (Swedish)
• GameStar, 81 (German)
• CD Action, 4/5 (Polish)
• Eurogamer.pl, 7/10 (Polish)
• GamAlive, 4.5/5 (French)
• Vandal, 8.5 (Spanish)
• IGN ES, 7.2 (Spanish)
• Eurogamer.it, 8/10 (Italian)

Metascore: 82

 

[Jaesun]

Hmmm I guess my peception is too low currently... :/

 

[Cnaiur]

Quite perceptive of you.

 

[Dustin542]

The default STEAM F12 to take screenshots doesn't seem to work (I assume Wasteland 2 is allocating that key). Would love a print screen option in the settings.

The Steam overlay doesn't work at all, at least on my end.

No Steam DRM --> no overlay.

You can use overlay with non steam games.

 

[Astral Rag]

The default STEAM F12 to take screenshots doesn't seem to work (I assume Wasteland 2 is allocating that key). Would love a print screen option in the settings.

The Steam overlay doesn't work at all, at least on my end.

No Steam DRM --> no overlay.

Found a way to enable the overlay.

 

[Infinitron]

Astral Rag Do tell.

 

[Grim Monk]

Going to wait until its patched a bit before playing...

Plus I just got STALKER: SOC during GOG Birthday sale, and Metro: Last Light during a flash sale yesterday.
(Overnight download of M:LL at 8.6 GB still not done, Wasteland 2 is even bigger...)

 

[Zombra]

where can I find some decent portraits and where do I cave to copy them to access them in the game?

A nice thread filled with portraits and links.

On Windows 7 the directory should be C:/Users/Grotesque/My Documents/My Games/Wasteland 2/portraits
256x256, jpg or png.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

From reddit :


On future projects

I'm actually still quite interested in exploring a time travel RPG. Managing meaningful choice and consequence decisions while the player is jumping back and forth between past preset and future was proving to be quite a design challenge. I imagine the scope would have to be smaller but it would be quite deep.

Creating a Bard's Tale IV is the #1 request I get so it's something I am taking under serious consideration. We had fun creating our parody of RPGs with a Bard's Tale comedy but I know there is a crowd that wants a true successor. SOSI

On expaniosn/DLCs

In all seriousness, we've certainly discussed ideas that would fit into another Wasteland, but each time we do, it feels silly since we were so focused on this one.

We are going to continue to do updates for a while. We've had good success in reading the patterns of feedback and reacting to them. The team is working on an update as I write this.

We've been playing around with a more in-depth aimed shot/special attack system that will likely see the light of day in the future.

With every game I have ever worked on there have been things that I wanted it. It's always painful to ship any game knowing that it could always be better. I really wanted perks and traits but now with games staying live after ship we will plan to revisit adding a number of things. One of the areas that I designed for the game was dropped due to production and of course I had great affinity for it. It was an area in which Ronald Reagan had become a deity.. kind of like real life actually.

On costs

The game cost us around 5 million to create, all said and done. We raised just over 3 million between Kickstarter and paypal during our drive, then had some residual and early access sales. Brian put a chunk of his own cash into it as he wanted to get it right.

We don't need HUGE sales to be a success. One of the benefits of being a small to mid size dev team is we don't need to sell 5 million units to break even.

On last night

After so many late nights and panic modes we found ourselves shuffling around the office like zombies last night. I find the stress of making the games pales in comparison to the economic stress of how to fund. Obviously we are hoping for a fair success to determine our future liability to keep making these kinds of games,

About how much Stackpole and other W1 veterans had contributed to writing and story

In reality it was a small part since the final game demanded so much text, over 550k words in total which is longer than the LOTR trilogy. They did not have nearly the time to dedicate to that. It was great to work with them again and to be able to get their perspectives and writing styles.

the same topic

Mike did fly out at the beginning and was instrumental in sitting down with the inXile design team and Chris Avellone when we were coming up with the exact setting and locations of the game. I can also credit him with inventing the Children of the New Citadel cult. His biggest contribution was in helping us create an outline for a story that stood on its own, but was true to the original plot and story of Wasteland 1

There will be sales info

Well we are currently #1 on both GOG and Steam so I consider that a success. We'll give some sales info at some point but so far we are quite happy. The player word of mouth seems very strong so hopefully that helps to keep us in the top list for a week plus.

Fargo lacks game manual

Believe it or not I don't have a physical copy myself. We let Deep Silver handle that and I'm waiting for a definitive date.

On Unity

Overall, it went great. When you break down the positives and negatives, it was overwhelmingly in the right direction. The asset store allowed us to purchase art and script that got us prototyping right away. We easily saved a few hundred grand just getting our initial gameplay up and running through purchased assets.

That said, we certainly stretched it to the max. We had some framerate issues that were hard to track down and are continuing in some areas

Miselcanous

For me I like writers that understand the human condition and understand the psychology of the moment and of the player. It's something that I know when I read it. RPG gamers are typically well read and know when a game is tone deaf in understanding what they are thinking.

And we would like to continue crowdfunding as it I like the connections we develop and we can offer things that cannot be available later. I look at crowdfunding as one step in the chain of buying. You have crowdfund, Early Access, launch day, when it goes on sale, and perhaps a Humble Bundle type sale. People can buy anywhere along that continuum based on what is important.

 

[Astral Rag]

Astral Rag Do tell.

I was testing it out, seems to work fine.

1. Right click on Wasteland 2.
2. Copy/ paste "-force-d3d9" (no quotes) in launch options.

3.Take a million screenshots and get distracted by friends.

 

[Surf Solar]

How did you do that Astral Rag ?

E: thanks!

 

[Infinitron]

Astral Rag Do tell.

I was testing it out, seems to work fine.

1. Right click on Wasteland 2.
2. Copy/ paste "-force-d3d9" (no quotes) in launch options.

3.Take a million screenshots and get distracted by friends.

Brother None thanks you: http://steamcommunity.com/app/240760/discussions/0/613936673396879018/

 

[sea]

Soundtrack can now be purchased separately (see widget below): http://wasteland.inxile-entertainment.com/store

 

[Zombra]

sea, any estimate for the new patch?

A ways out. This isn't going to be a small hotfix, we're rolling a lot of fixes into one big patch (barring anything catastrophic popping up in need of a hotfix)

Will the GOG update be downloadable seperately, or will I have to d/l the whole thing over again? GOG has this tendency to only post the latest full build in one package.

 

[Jaesun]

I'm going to be re-rolling characters for a week.....

I'll never finish this heh

 

[Diablo169]

I'm going to be re-rolling characters for a week.....

I'll never finish this heh

I know that feeling :/

 

[Trash]

So far so good. Much better than anticipated really. Also lol at this being the first time in, well, a decade (?) for installing two new rpg's on the same day.

 

[Baron Dupek]

I'll try that tip and see if there will be visible FPS boost. Lastest beta worked fast already though but still...

 

[StaticSpine]

The release trailer claims the game walkthrough takes 80+ hours, seriously??

Brother None
sea

 

[Merkwürdigliebe]

Why is there no 1920x1080 resolution option? What is this 1998? Did they take the whole old school rpg idea a bit too seriously perhaps?

 

[Lemming42]

Grenades are completely insane. Not sure if that's good or bad. Throwing a pipe bomb into a crowd of 5 people was the funniest part of the game so far, though.

 

[Infinitron]

Why is there no 1920x1080 resolution option? What is this 1998? Did they take the whole old school rpg idea a bit too seriously perhaps?

Switch to full screen.

 

[Grunker]

Why is there no 1920x1080 resolution option? What is this 1998? Did they take the whole old school rpg idea a bit too seriously perhaps?

You have to be in fullscreen

 

[Drax]

Haven't read the whole article yet but something annoyed me: The "metacritic" score for this game is 79, I checked which was the currently highest-ranked game and it's something called "Kentucky Route Zero - Act III" that has a FUCKING 91.

Fuck this world.