Wasteland Wasteland 3 + Battle of Steeltown and Cult of the Holy Detonation Expansions Thread

[likash]

Let's not forget that making good games does not mean financial success. Look at what happened to Fargo at Interplay. I think he learned from that. You can't be a studio in the US and make 15$ niche great games like AOD and Underrail. You have to balance things to make money and continue working.

Wasteland 3 is indeed the best game that Fargo has made since he left Interplay. I enjoyed it quite a lot. I say it's a better game than The Outer Worlds. I hope he somehow manages to convince Boyarsky and Cain(Anderson is already at inXile) to work with him again to fucking remaster and finish Arcanum or make Arcanum 2. That game had such great ideas and it's a pity that we only got to enjoy a rushed product. Same thing with Bloodlines and Temple. All Troika games need to be remade with adequate resources.

 

[Roguey]

Let's not forget that making good games does not mean financial success. Look at what happened to Fargo at Interplay. I think he learned from that. You can't be a studio in the US and make 15$ niche great games like AOD and Underrail. You have to balance things to make money and continue working.

Interplay's RPG division was always profitable, they fell into the moneyhole because they spent too much money trying to chase trends (fmvs). http://archive.nma-fallout.com/article.php?id=60786

Long before I ever heard the term “Jump the Shark”, I began to see some warning signs of Interplay’s continued success. I sensed a change in the management. There was a shift from a passion for game making, to a desire to make Hollywood-style cinema. We changed from the old adage of “Shoot for the moon. Here’s a nickel.” to “How can we make this experience more like watching a movie.” It began with Stonekeep (which started as a throwback to the old Bard’s Tale, but became a nightmare of “cinematic experience”), and exploded with the Sim-CD series (Interplay’s remakes of SimCity, SimAnt, and SimEarth in CD-ROM format with lots of movies) and the horror show that was “Cyberhood” (an interactive movie that became a black hole of funds.)

I remember one producer summit when we first saw the film footage shot for Sim City CD. The idea was that you could click on buildings and see a movie of the people inside living their lives. They were 30 second clips of people watching TV, or sleeping in bed, or doing aerobics, or eating cereal. And there were dozens of these clips; the most boring and mundane things you can imagine. Immediately after seeing this footage, we learned that it cost over a million dollars to film… and there was more filming to do. Considering that most of the games in production had a sub 100K budget, I (and many of the producers there) about had aneurisms. All it took was for this one game to be a train wreck, and the whole company suffers, or even dies.

During this time, I inherited SimEarth CD-ROM. I was my favorite of the sim games, and I immediately wanted to add features that would enhance the gameplay. For instance, I always wondered what my creatures looked like when they evolved into sapient beings. What would a sapient arthropod look like? What kind of cities would an iron age civilization of sapient amphibians build? I wanted to create small movies that were rewards for evolving your planet. There was a new artist at Interplay who was quite good at 3DStudio, and he did an amazing 3D movie test. (This was before Toy Story, so a movie with high-quality animated 3D characters was bleeding edge.) As the artist built and rendered these movies in his spare time, the programmer, coded furiously to convert the old Sim Earth into a modern vibrant VGA game. When the incredible movies went into the beautiful game, it began to really shine.

Then, the pain. I was told that I was going over budget. Confusing, because I had spent less-than $100k. But my predecessor spent over $200K on other cinematic footage.
Footage that we had no gameplay use for.

No problem, I’ll make it work.

Then, after showing the incredible movies to Steven Spielberg, the artist was pulled from my project to work on “better things”. (Spielberg was in the process of founding Dreamworks, and soon after hired that artist to work on Shrek.) Then another artist was also pulled off. Finally, after months of insane hours to meet the schedule the project was canceled. (Since SimCity was having such budget overruns, our product lineup needed trimming.) After all the time and effort we had spent getting the game ready to ship, this was kick-to-the-bits number two.

In another company wide meeting, we learned that Universal Pictures had purchased a portion of the company. The company was treated to a day at Universal Studios, and we were promised several amazing upcoming movie licenses. My fear of the company ditching games and becoming a movie house was getting stronger.

The first movie license arrived in-house, Flipper, a remake of the 70s TV show. (I recall the designer of that project saying that we should buy the rights to ECO the Dolphin and simply rename it.) The second movie license was Casper the Friendly Ghost. When the first design was shot down by Harvey Comics because “Casper should be able to walk through walls” – we realized that trying to create a game with no way to contain the player’s movement was, in fact, rather impossible.

The third movie license? Oh, it was the granddaddy of them all: Waterworld. After flying the designers out to Hawaii to see one of the multi-million dollar atoll sets (which would later sink), all they were provided with was the original script to create a game (which surprisingly wasn’t bad – the game I mean). However, most of their ideas got thrown out as the movie filming was changing the script on a day to day basis. The game did ship, but it became a Real-Time Strategy game, based in the world, but having nothing to do with the actual movie.

 

[Yosharian]

I say it's a better game than The Outer Worlds.

That's not really much praise though is it? The turd I left in my toilet this morning is a more entertaining product than The Outer Worlds

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Let's not forget that making good games does not mean financial success. Look at what happened to Fargo at Interplay. I think he learned from that. You can't be a studio in the US and make 15$ niche great games like AOD and Underrail. You have to balance things to make money and continue working.

Interplay's RPG division was always profitable, they fell into the moneyhole because they spent too much money trying to chase trends (fmvs). http://archive.nma-fallout.com/article.php?id=60786

Interplay was far from the only company that chased the FMV-based game fad that began after the immense success of The 7th Guest in 1993 and petered out a few years later, which seems to be the only complaint made in that interview.

The RPG division by the mid-90s lacked focus and wasted large sums of money on projects that failed entirely or entered a tortuous, expensive development cycle. For example, Interplay acquired in 1994 a license from TSR to make AD&D games in The Forgotten Realms and Planescape campaign settings. However, it infamously started three projects in the Planescape setting, of which one was cancelled, one eventually morphed into Stonekeep II, and the third eventually was published as Planescape: Torment in 1999, after five years had passed, TSR had gone bankrupt, the Planescape setting had been cancelled, and Interplay had imported a game engine developed by another company. Meanwhile, they only released two games with The Forgotten Realms license, Blood & Magic in 1996 and Descent to Undermountain in 1997, which bombed. If it hadn't been for convincing Bioware to reskin their RTS/RPG hybrid into an AD&D game released in 1998, their acquisition of the AD&D license would have been a commercial disaster.

 

[gurugeorge]

A nice thing about the way both WL2 and WL3 combat is pitched is that they have that thing where an encounter is set up so that initially you think, "Holy fuck, how am I going to survive this?" The enemy takes great chunks out of your guys, you're inwardly groaning and wanting it to stop, and the battle seems lost before it's won, but you claw your way to victory from there. I think that's the true RPG combat style that most of us here love. It's a hard thing to get right (obviously it's something to do with the fine-tuning of numbers and lots of Q&A testing), and both games do it very well, and manage to sustain it right from the beginning, and carry on that way as both you and the enemies get tougher and harder hitting.

I think in terms of contemporary games, comparing the WLs to the PoEs and the DOSes and the Pathfinders and all that, though those are variably good RPGs in terms of the other things that make up RPGs, they don't maintain that scary combat challenge as often or as relentlessly as the WLs. Some of the more tactical types of games have it too (in some ways there's not a huge difference between good tactical games and good RPGs).

I think that modern loss of some of the encounter difficulty is partly a function of having more open world design. If you're more focused on the sense of adventure through a virtual world, the environments in which combat occurs can't be so tightly controlled to provide set encounters (mini board games, as it were). There are pros and cons to both approaches (an open world with a rhythm of trash encounters and tough ones can be quite enjoyable too, if it feels more like a continuous adventure), but there's definitely something to be said for a series of relentlessly difficult combats in tightly-controlled encounters.

 

[Yosharian]

The problem is that the answer to that initial question is almost always "launch a rocket into their faces"

 

[gurugeorge]

The problem is that the answer to that initial question is almost always "launch a rocket into their faces"

I dunno, that only really works as you get all the pips in Sneaky Shit with the bigger area perk and the insta-crit perk and better weapons and mods, and that's more towards the last third of the game. Early to mid-game, the rocket guy is only occasionally useful. Also the late game mobs do compensate somewhat - often they spread out quite a bit on contact, and you don't always have an opportunity to start the combat with the trick. Also, the setup can be a bit faffy. But yeah, it probably is a bit too strong

Btw, I've found my rocket guy is an absolute beast with a good (energy-ized) handgun - the problem there is that what you need in order to give you the right rocket skills doesn't give you much mobility, so that beastliness is only unleashable when the mobs get close, which about 60% of the time they don't get a chance to.

Niggling complaint: the pet-losing situation is really annoying. It seems to be related to respeccing your character. I lost Tom and the two-headed goat through that before I realized.

 

[Yosharian]

It's way too strong, several encounters that are extremely challenging otherwise become absolute cake walks with a swift application of a stealth rocket to the principals

Also once my rocket guy got his hands on the PDW-01 he also absolutely destroyed things in ranged combat generally

In general characters tend to skyrocket in effectiveness in the lategame if they are built correctly, but the PDW-01 in the hands of an explosive expert is on a whole other level - it just straight up deletes targets from the game.

 

[Hobo Elf]

I never touched rockets and I still found combat to be a cakewalk after the first few hours. When my sniper OHKOd a robo scorpion on the first turn when I finally met one I kind of knew it was over.

 

[Yosharian]

Sniper is very powerful this is true, but rocketman fulfils both the stealth initiation and pointman roles and excels at both once that specific weapon is obtained. Sniper is powerful but less flexible IMO

 

[Hobo Elf]

Rockets seem to be good at sweeping large groups of enemies, but the way that encounters are designed in this game you have one high value target and if you can take them down ASAP you've pretty much won. So whether you use rockets or a sniper it's a ticket to victory either way. I heard that the Cult DLC is a bit harder in combat but I skipped that one. I'll try it in a future play. Also will try rockets, since they sound fun.

 

[Yosharian]

Hmm that wasn't my experience on the hardest difficulty but whatever

 

[gurugeorge]

Finally actually got over the hump and finished the damn thing. Got a reasonable ending (my main focus was on the mission and saving Arizona ofc, Team November had no interest in the Rangers taking over Colorado, and the Patriarch's succession problems are for the good people of Colorado to deal with. We can't rely on their help forever anyway, Arizona needs to overcome its own problems.)

All good, clean fun. (And now, God help me, I'm thinking of some other builds ... )

I thought the song at the end was very clever - they must have created rhyme and melody for all the possible combinations of endings, so you get your own personalized song. Neat.

But I noticed at the end wrap-up the following:

After things resolved, the Rangers noticed Scotchmo was no longer with them. They searched every bar in Colorado Springs, but never found him. Some say he's been seen drinking in saloons in Kansas and points east, but these rumors are unconfirmed.

Hmmm, Kansas eh?

 

[Acrux]

I think they missed a huge opportunity for a thematically very appropriate Bleeding Kansas DLC focusing on slavery. Maybe they are hinting at that for WL4, but it feels like that's a long way from Arizona for a whole game.

 

[Stavrophore]

Interesting, the game starts easy and progress to be more hard and hard. At level 11-12 and find enemies really strong, often one shotting my 130 HP nimble chars, even tank chars get 2-3 hits before they die.

 

[Yosharian]

Interesting, the game starts easy and progress to be more hard and hard. At level 11-12 and find enemies really strong, often one shotting my 130 HP nimble chars, even tank chars get 2-3 hits before they die.

I had the exact opposite experience but I optimized my characters pretty hard I guess

 

[Stavrophore]

The game is better fallout than fallout 4 lol. The game has actual choices and consequences and there is role playing -hope this will stay till the end of the game!
Some weapons feel extremely useless like shotguns i hope that there will be some redeeming arc for investing in these POS weapons. Pistols are also kinda lame, beside some heavy crit based.

 

[notpl]

It's been awhile since I played but I remember Pistols really needing charisma to shine, the gimmick was to fire so many times that the pistoleer was activating his ult (lol) every turn if not several times per turn. A happy accident, since I made my pistoleer the faceman on a whim without any intention of it working as a combat build.

 

[Stavrophore]

I've finished the game, with both DLCs. What i can say, this game is really tricky to rate. On one hand you can feel it's not a jank game, the graphics, the music, the voice acting it's all good quality tier, on the other hand the gameplay and build variety is quite shallow, with clearly unbalanced choices[explosives, smgs, snipers, two handed blunt crit build]. Music can sometimes be out of place and unfitting, especially during big battles, i liked some songs, but the one playing during

Spoiler

Proteus

fight was abysmally unfitting so i had to disable the music in the menus.
Itemization and skills were mediocre with armors having the least variety and importance in the game, where alpha strike is the king. More uniqueness, more synergy, and more build variety would be welcomed, especially since we have six party members, something that can open plethora of possibilities, but the game is less nuanced and indepth in build variety than underrail where you just have one character. Lack of abilities, which mostly came from weapons was also annoying. Some characters had only like one active skill that came from weapon. More active role and decision making would be welcome to enhance player involvement in tactical "chess" rather than move there and shoot.

The choices you made throughout your campaign, usually matter only in these big plot arches, the smaller one's either doesn't build up toward strenghtening/weakening the overall arch, or just get one line in the end. The ending itself was pretty anticlimatic for me, as i could resolve it without a fight, and weirdly enough i could talk out

Spoiler

Angela Deth

out of attacking, after it was clear she is hell bent on taking over the patriarch reign with fanatic ferrocity. Story is your typical arch of support that vs support this in the penultimate ending that can happen by literally few dialogue options, without any consideration of your actions[like the one with

Spoiler

Liberty

]
In the end it's enjoyable game, but it doesn't shine with anything particularly clever or outstanding either in build depth or it's story, it's a blend of XCOM with well known story trope used in games since forever. In the times of RPG drought, i will give it a solid 7/10, buy Steeltown DLC, but i would advise against Cult of Holy detonation, it was pretty tedious, especially if you have to backtrack to open all of the flesh chests. From my lousy memory i think wasteland 3 is a better game overall than the second, some mechanics were more superflous than in second, like radiation in W3 being completely useless stuff, that is gone after you literally upgrade one thing in your armored car. The humor is definitely over the top, and there's too much emphasis on boring gangs, that do the shock value stuff that gets you tired easily and the gang members dialoges are just not interesting. Despite these flaws i've finished the game, something that rarely happens for me these days.

 

[Dhaze]

Welp, I've finally started Wasteland 3 and so far so good.

Nice general ambiance and music. Dialogues feel rather natural, and to the point, neither too dry nor too verbose. I'm seeing fun characters all over the place with Irv, Flap, Ken Doll, etc... Performance seem irreproachable and loading times are almost non-existent.

The sound design is good; LMGs and vehicles cannons or gatling guns have an appreciable amount of 'oomph' them.

The combat is much more streamlined than what I remember from Wasteland 2, which I quite like, though a bit 'alpha-striky' and on the easy side perhaps? My team is around level 11-12, I think I'm done with the Bizarre, and playing on Ranger I haven't encountered any problem for the moment. Rocket launchers are something and a half, and sniper rifle are borderline monstrous. At least this time assault rifles aren't the unconstested kings, and I enjoy the variety.

I've also got a bit of synergy going on between different characters, with things like Demoralize + Suppressing Fire, or one sniper killing an enemy then using her remaining APs to mark another enemy, so that the second sniper can use Perfect Strike to full effect.

But something must be done about Jodie Bell. Is she a descendant of Linda Blair?

Of course you missed that Drool despite 91% to-hit; you're trying to 180° no scope! Also I think you broke your back, and that might be something the Doc can't fix.

 

[lukaszek]

about to pick this up, kind of hate character creation. Based on Rog review I will have 4 people so...

How do I build my characters to cover all the skill checks while maintaining some minimal combat utility?

My first try was weird, also no idea what I need to do in order to ambush enemy

 

[Trithne]

about to pick this up, kind of hate character creation. Based on Rog review I will have 4 people so...

How do I build my characters to cover all the skill checks while maintaining some minimal combat utility?

My first try was weird, also no idea what I need to do in order to ambush enemy

You get 6 people, but only 4 rangers. The last 2 slots are for characters that join you, you get to pick their growth on level up, so you can cover all the skills, but those characters might leave I'd you do things to upset them.

Covering all the skills isn't hugely necessary, just cover the obvious ones - lockpick, nerd shit, sneaky stuff, explosives. Pick one dialogue skill, you get a character with kiss ass early on.

Generally speaking, each character can reliably cover 3 skills, with one going to a weapon type. Also you can cheese thr "modding" skills and have a character you leave at base for those, they'll level up as you do and you can just swap them in, do the mods, swap them out.

Toaster Repair and Animal Whisperer are low priority.

Ambush is just overwatch - its one of the end characters turn options.

 

[lukaszek]

Ambush is just overwatch - its one of the end characters turn options.

i mean when my rangers approach enemy. Out of combat. I tried to attack first but for whatever reason it doesnt work

 

[Trithne]

Ambush is just overwatch - its one of the end characters turn options.

i mean when my rangers approach enemy. Out of combat. I tried to attack first but for whatever reason it doesnt work

Can't re member if you have to turn them on, but there should be circles around the enemy showing their awareness zone - if you enter that, you have limited time (based on Sneaky Shit skill) before they notice and start combat. Best way to get the first shot off is a sniper, you'll get first turn with your whole squad that way.

Pretty sure you just ctrl+click or click the shoot icon in the bar, or on the gun itself to activate free shoot.

 

[Dhaze]

Finished my first playthrough. Overall I'd say it's a much better game than Wasteland 2.

Better pacing and refinements all over the place made for a very entertaining time in Colorado, and I enjoyed it thorougly from beginning to end. Enough so that I'm about to start a second playthrough since I'm quite curious to discover how certain decisions might influence this or that; it seemed to me there was a large variety of consequential choices.

Of course the game is certainly not devoid of warts, amongst which line of sight issues are arguably foremost in a pure gameplay-focused perspective. For example I've had multiple times when my own guys or enemies would shoot—and hit!—through multiple walls as if these didn't exist, mostly when using Ambush it seemed.

On the other hand, how is it my gunner can't target this Razorback?

And why can't my sniper shoot through a broken window with a clear view?

I understand it might be a bit overpowered to have a couple of your snipers pick enemies off while benefiting from the relative safety of a building, but hey, it's not my fault the enemies are standing out in the open with not one of them covering his buddies' asses from inside.
This leads to a number of encounters feeling terribly forced in the way you have to use the available space; here's a mostly flat room full of enemies, and don't you dare be a bit creative in the way you go about clearing it.

Also the whole thing about not being able to see into a room unless you have a character actually inside that room leads to absolutely ridiculous situations. Even having a character on the very threshold of said room—i.e. standing right under the doorway—doesn't necessarily give you sight into that room.
So when you're walking into a room but are not yet in the room proper when a dialogue with someone already inside automatically triggers, this is what it looks like:

Aside from that, there's a few borderline infuriating dialogue choices, or lack thereof. Some rather questionable logic of outcomes, also. But it's a damn enjoyable game.

Oh and here's a fun quirk. At some point in the game I tried to target three enemies and one neutral guy with Demoralize, a no-damage debuff whose icon is a middle finger and whose description begins with "Insult your enemies."

But Scotchmo objected to that and interrupted me:

Then objected again when I tried a second time:

Obviously any action, even those like Demoralize, are flagged as attacks. But there's a deeper lore implication here—Scotchmo is a Mannerite! All the vomiting and belching was a ruse.