Wasteland 2 - The conclusion to a 26-year journey

[Great Rumbler]

No, I had to work today. :'(

But I loved the really early version of the beta from back in February and the game has only been greatly improved upon since then.

[cool breeze]

I thought about downloading it last night but it's 33 gigs and maybe I'll get around to it on the weekend.

[Great Rumbler]

The actual download size isn't quite that big, maybe about 16 gigs or so.

[Great Rumbler]

Here's my impressions:

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW
THIS GAME IS SO GOOD
LIKE WHOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAA
SHOOTING GUYS WITH MOHAWKS
SHOOT BANGS
LOTS OF QUESTS AND STUFF
GOTTA SELL ALL THIS JUNK I KEEP COLLECTING
RANGERSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

spoiler (click to show/hide)

It's really good. I'm tempted to say that it's better than Divinity: Original Sin so far, but DOS had such an amazing, fun, and versatile combat system that probably no other RPG is ever going to really match that. W2 certainly can't; it's combat system is much simpler but still has enough depth to it that it's not feeling like a chore or anything.

Compare to what I played back in February, it's almost night and day. So many things have been updated and fleshed out, there's much more going on and much more to do. And I already really liked what I played back then, so I really feel like inXile absolutely made the right decision to delay the release by about 11 months in order to keep working on things that needed more work.

[close]

[DCharlieJP]

I have to be honest - i've probably started and failed to finish games that are almost certainly as good as W2 because... well... meh

The game so far (not far in) is good, but i think this is more down to my enjoyment of W1. I'm sure no one who skipped W1 is going to give it much of a go.

Personally - loving that combat is pretty brutal and unforgiving at times.

[Stoney Mason]

I didn't realize this was out. Will give it a go.

[Great Rumbler]

I'm sure no one who skipped W1 is going to give it much of a go.

I think a lot of people who missed Wasteland 1, but were around for Fallout 1 and 2, are interested in giving it a go. At least, that's how it is for me.

[Rufus]

Yup. Top down CRPG? I'm in.

[toku]

Game is hot. I love the death animations. Especially after a critical hit.

[Steve Contra]

So worth pirating it in 6 months?

[Great Rumbler]

You should be pirating it right now!

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Actually, you should be paying money for it and supporting small-time developers.

[close]

[Stoney Mason]

Played it for about 5 hours. I like it.

It's not without significant flaws.

It feels like a euro jank rpg. The production values are low. I dislike the camera controls. The voice acting is meh.

But for some reason I find it really compelling to play so far. Maybe its just because I like post apocalyptic rpgs no matter what.

Reminds me of that Shadowrun game that was kickstarted but where as that one lost me early on, I probably will finish this one fairly rapidly.

[Human Snorenado]

It feels like a euro jank rpg.

That's like the best thing I've heard about it to date. Will buy during the Steam holiday sale, etc.

[Stoney Mason]

Played more today.

I like it.

I mean I could nitpick it and tell you why its flawed in areas but what's the point. It's a low budget kickstarter with all the inherent problems that brings.

I think they got the heart and tone and atmosphere right which is what matters most. I enjoy playing it and experiencing the world.

[Bebpo]

I heard there's a ton of battle filler and it slows down the game.  Like you get into town and have to fight 5 battles before anything happens just because.


Otherwise heard good things, just that sometimes its tedious.

[Stoney Mason]

I heard there's a ton of battle filler and it slows down the game.  Like you get into town and have to fight 5 battles before anything happens just because.

There is definitely some of that.

I guess I don't mind it because I like the combat to a degree and I tend to like turn based jagged alliance style systems.  It takes alot of experience to level up your skills so with the current design, the amount of combat is necessary. But its a fair argument to say make it more rpg and less combat stuff.

The combat has an xcom lite feel to it. With a bigger budget and more design it actually could have really been something interesting. In its current state it never quite reaches it though.

[Bebpo]

I still find it impressive though, lack of polish or not, that a small dev with hardly any experience besides people who haven't made an rpg in 20 years on a game running in Unity were able to churn out of real and more than decent wrpg in 2-3 years on Kickstarter budget.  Hell, Double Fine has trouble making 6 hour point and click adventure games.  Rpg's are huge and complex and there's a reason almost no indie dev is making rpgs longer than 5-6 hours in length (outside the Spiderweb guys).  So congrats to these guys.  If they use it as a learning experience, Torment 2 could be even better and we can always use more quality rpg developers.

[toku]

It's definitely combat heavy but when it's time for dialog trees they tend to be very meaty. Camera probably my biggest complaint so far. No matter how I turn it, or zoom it, it always feels like I might be missing something. Though if im being honest idk if that's the camera, or just how everything from background to characters all blend together.

[Stoney Mason]

Camera probably my biggest complaint so far. No matter how I turn it, or zoom it, it always feels like I might be missing something. Though if im being honest idk if that's the camera, or just how everything from background to characters all blend together.

The problem is you never feel like you can get the perfect angle on stuff because the camera is always getting caught up on something. I appreciate that its real 3d but still.

It's not a new problem to these type of rpgs but its still annoying.

edit:

- Press M to bring up the map. You can double click on the map to zoom the camera to that location, and then right click to start your characters walking there. Basically nobody knows that you can do this!

- Press Z to highlight all interactive objects within range. This helps immensely for finding little boxes and other items, it even shows through walls if you've got your camera turned around.

[Stoney Mason]

Finished that

spoiler (click to show/hide)

railroad line

[close]

quest.

I had to look it up because the first 3 or 4 times I tried to finish it, I couldn't get the result I wanted.

So it involved

spoiler (click to show/hide)

typing in a keyword that you have to figure out.

[close]

I don't like that. It was a good quest. I would have preferred to not have the solution be an odd mechanic you barely use.

edit: My god this area is big. I just sort of blew threw it at first trying to do the main quest but now that I'm exploring the area from above, there is a lot of shit here.

[Great Rumbler]

Either I did something differently from you or the latest patch fixed that, because the option showed up properly for me.

[Stoney Mason]

Patch may have fixed it. Game is pretty buggy in most respects though so maybe something weird just happened with me.


I ran into the discobot last night. That got a legit laugh out of me.

[Dennis]

Camera is pretty shit. Rotate rotate rotate.

[Dennis]

Shadowrun Returns and now Wasteland 2 makes me optimistic we can get more of these types of games in the future.

Now to imagine an AAA budget......

[Human Snorenado]

Shadowrun and WL2 are just appetizers to the main course of Pillars and Torment

[toku]

Playing WL2 actually made me revisit Shadowrun Returns. Still need to play Dragonfall.

[Great Rumbler]

Dragonfall is way better than the original campaign, and the Director's Cut of Dragonfall is even better.

[Great Rumbler]

[Dennis]

I am loving this game!

Proper old-school hard as fuck too. Don't even front you softcores. I am of course assuming you are playing at a proper difficulty level.

[Stoney Mason]

I'm back to Wasteland after taking a little hiatus.

It's such a weird experience.

This game has a shitload of heart and soul in it. This is no half-assed kickstarter project. This is an ambitious old school project on a small budget. I really appreciate that.

On the other hand it's also very frustrating. Because their scenario design can't quite match their overall design and ambition. Like I'm doing

spoiler (click to show/hide)

the Nuke guys versus the Diamondback Militia

[close]

questline at the moment. And half the time I'm confused because its hard to tell what they've actually designed the quest to be in some cases, in other cases the design is too old school in that I feel like you need to make lots of saves at various points to make sure you don't screw yourself, and in some cases I wish they had designed the quest to account for the very unique/messed up way that I did it, but they really haven't. It just works barely enough so that the game doesn't crash.

It's hard to explain if you haven't played it. It's like how Fallout 3 or New Vegas are big budget games so they can account for the different ways you do the quest because they have the manpower to cover all the edge cases. Or they limit you in very obvious ways. Wasteland 2 doesn't do that. There are lots of ways to do things. But because of that, its like they don't really account for it or acknowledge it in some cases. So it ends up feeling weird. And all you can really do is hope that everything sorts itself out by the finish of the quest and it doesn't crash.

I really respect the effort put into the game. I hope it sells well enough to give them enough of a budget to sort of smooth the edges for the next one.

Also Scotchmo is awesome. He steals the snake squeezins if you have him in your party.

 

Whoever wrote his dialogue is a good man. 

[Great Rumbler]

They were obviously hampered by not having a large enough team to tackle all those eventualities, but they've still managed to add a depth of reactivity that games just don't have very often. They're definitely on the right path towards making an awesome Torment game.

[Great Rumbler]

Xbox One/PS4 version [with tons of updates] coming soon:

[Stoney Mason]

[archnemesis]

Reading that small text on my 46" TV will be painful. Perhaps it is time to upgrade.