|OT| Wasteland 3 - Save Major Tomcat!

prudis

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In Wasteland 3 you take command of a squad of Desert Rangers, lawmen and women in a post-nuclear world, trying to rebuild society from the ashes. More than a century after the bombs fell, you’re fighting a losing battle to keep your beloved Arizona alive. Then the self-proclaimed Patriarch of Colorado radios, promising aid if you'll do a job he can only entrust to an outsider—rescue his land from the ambitions of his three bloodthirsty children.

You’re dispatched on a desperate quest from the scorching deserts to the snowy mountains to start from scratch, building a new base, finding a snow-worthy vehicle, training new recruits, and fighting your way through hostile frozen wastes. All the while, you'll have to decide who to trust in this land torn apart by corruption, intrigue, warring factions, crazed cultists, cutthroat gangs, and bitter sibling rivalries. Build a reputation for yourself by making decisions that will profoundly impact Colorado, its inhabitants and the story you experience. Will you be Colorado’s savior or its worst nightmare?

Wasteland 3 is a squad-based RPG from inXile entertainment, featuring challenging tactical turn-based combat and a deep, reactive story full of twists, turns, and brutal ethical decisions that will keep you hooked whether you’re a Wasteland veteran or new to the series. Create a squad of up to six Rangers and customize them with perks and abilities geared to your playstyle. You even get your own battle truck, which you can upgrade into a hardened war beast, bristling with weapons, to help mow down your enemies.

The End Has Just Begun
A party-based roleplaying game with the series’ signature focus on story reactivity and strategic combat in a post-apocalyptic world.


A Core RPG Experience
Features a deep and engaging story, utilizing a dynamic dialogue system with full English voiceover, allowing players to choose their role, and immersing fans of the series and newcomers alike.


Survive the Blistering Cold
Set in the savage lands of frozen Colorado, where survival is difficult and a happy outcome is never guaranteed. Players will face difficult moral choices and make sacrifices that will change the game world.


Deep and Reactive Tactical Gameplay
Player vehicles, environmental dangers and a revamped, more fluid action system lay the foundation for tactical, yet explosive turn-based combat.
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Assemble your Squad
A detailed character creation system with dozens of skills, perks, and quirks allow for deep customization of your squad of up to six Rangers, geared to your playstyle.


Take in the Scenery
A significant graphical upgrade, character animations, and first-person conversations bring Colorado and its sensational landscapes to life and elevate the series to new heights.


Bring a Friend
Play single player or with a friend in story-driven co-op. Choices open (or close off) mission opportunities, areas to explore, story arcs, and more.



From the creators of Wasteland 2 and Torment: Tides of Numeneracomes Wasteland 3! Following the critically acclaimed releases of 2014's Wasteland 2 and 2015's Wasteland 2: Director's Cut, fans have been clamoring for a direct sequel. Wasteland 3 is currently in development with a target release in Spring 2020.
  • A party-based role-playing game, with a renewed focus on our trademark complex story reactivity and strategic combat.
  • By including a player vehicle, environmental dangers, and a revamped, more fluid action system, we are evolving on Wasteland 2's deep tactical turn-based combat and unique encounter design.
  • Play by yourself or with a friend in story-driven synchronous or asynchronous multiplayer. Choices open up (or close off) mission opportunities, areas to explore, story arcs, and lots of other content.
  • Your Ranger Base is a core part of the experience. As you help the local people and establish a reputation in Colorado, quests and narrative will force you to make decisions on how to lead.
  • The game will be set in the savage lands of frozen Colorado, where survival is difficult and a happy outcome is never guaranteed. Players will face difficult moral choices and make sacrifices that will change the game world.
  • Wasteland 3 will feature a deep and engaging story utilizing a newly-revamped dialog tree system from the celebrated writers of Torment: Tides of Numenera.
 
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texhnolyze

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Looks like Wasteland 2, and by the sounds of that description, it will also retain one main hub system. I'm not really a fan of that. I want to discover and explore new towns and cities in my adventure. Yes, there will be towns to explore, but I bet they'll be under attack or already raided to the ground just like in Wasteland 2. :neutral-face:
 
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prudis

prudis

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Multiplayer is one of the big new features for Wasteland 3. Can you talk about that a bit?

Campbell:
Yeah, absolutely. That feature is one they’re actually we’re really excited about. It’s a first for us with the Wasteland franchise, and it’s something that I think is going to offer a new way to play the game. So we support two players co-op. Players can swap characters back and forth, split their party, progress through the game together. Depending on how they want to play, they can save and split up and progress the rest of the way through single player and potentially then join back up later on. It’s kind of a very flexible way to play the game that will let people play single player and play multiplayer and kind of switch between the two when they want.

Can they somehow harm each other if they want to, going against the other player?

Campbell:
No, we don’t support direct PvP, it is a co-op experience. But we do look for ways where they can affect each other in the game world for sure.

Fargo: You can grief each other, maybe trigger an avalanche on your partner or something, but it’s not meant to be PvP.

If I joined your game, could I make some decisions on your behalf?

Campbell:
Yeah, because the game world is so reactive to player actions. It’s not just dialogue choices, you could attack a faction, you could kill an important person, you could cause the game world to change in a way that I might not have wanted it to unfold. And that’s kind of the neat thing, in co-op you can either play totally in sync with each other or you can be going about it your own way, and the other player is gonna have to live with the consequences.

Okay, does Wasteland 3 support just invite-based co-op or matchmaking too?

Campbell:
Invite only.

Fargo: Also when we’re playing together, you have your own instance of the game. I think it will save when you join an instance of the game. So if you come in and do all this crazy stuff, I have the opportunity to go: ‘Okay, okay, I’m going to go this way and you play your own game, your own way’. Then if you and I are playing, you can go to bed and I can keep playing. And you get up in the morning and go ‘Holy, what did you do?’ Then you can continue to play or you can say ‘I’m going to go back to this spot and just continue my way’.

I’m wondering though, when you have two players in the game, will each player get his/her own party?

Campbell:
For balance reasons, we want to keep the two of them on the same NPC count. What happens is, in single player, you get a party of up to six characters and companions and everything. And when you play multiplayer, you can choose how to split that party between the players. So you’re giving up control of the party between the two players, but not having, you know, double the number of characters. That’s the sort of thing that would pose too many challenges for us balancing wise.
Yeah, that makes sense. I’ve noticed that destruction and physics in general seems to be much more detailed this time around.

Campbell:
Yeah, absolutely. The nice thing is, that’s an area we haven’t explored much before. This is a new thing where the extra 10% that we’re talking about, being able to iterate and polish, is enabling us to really kind of go to town with destruction. And we have ragdoll physics, we have kind of advanced shipping, we have barriers in combat that you can hide behind and get cover. And those are things that can actually get destroyed, leaving your characters exposed, vehicles can actually run over obstacles and crush them and knock things out of their way. So we’ve really, I think, done a lot of little things there that will add up to a really fun experience for players.

Another big new feature is the addition of player vehicles. How are these going to work?

Campbell:
That’s actually one of the areas in the game that I’m most excited about. You effectively dig your first one out of the snow. It’s like this rusty baseline vehicle, and you can upgrade it throughout the course of the game, you find parts, you find technology, you’re able to start kind of upgrading it. So it goes from kind of this clunker that’s just barely hanging on to life all the way up to this rolling death machine with customizable turrets and upgradeable armor. We even go so far as to let you customize the hood ornament on the front of your vehicle. It’s a really in-depth system and it’s directly used in combat. It’s how you traverse the roadmap, so you can drive around and do these different things and your vehicle’s capabilities affect your party along the way.

What happens if it’s destroyed?

Campbell:
We have put systems in place there. Your vehicle can, in kind of a worst case scenario, get kind of hauled back to Ranger HQ as salvage and you can get it towed back there. There’s not a bunch of rest stops and gas stations out there in the wasteland, these vehicles are kind of your shelter on wheels for surviving the nuclear winter out there, so you really don’t want them to get destroyed. But we do have systems in there so that it’s not game over when it gets destroyed and you can come back as a player.

Do you already have an idea of the average length of Wasteland 3?

Campbell:
Yeah, we were aiming for 50 hours, which is about the same length as Wasteland 2. Now these things are, I’m just going to go on record with this, horribly tough to estimate. Because with a game where you can make so many different choices, you can go different ways to approach it. There are always shorter playstyles and there are always longer ways of playing the game. So we aim kind of in the middle, and then player experiences are going to vary shorter or longer from there. I know we targeted about the same length for Wasteland 2, I think it wound up being longer.

Fargo: Yeah, it’s longer than that.

It may be a bit early to talk about this, but do you already have any plans for Wasteland 3 DLC in the future?

Fargo:
We have a full DLC plan, though I can’t remember it off the top of my head.

Campbell: We want to really strongly support the game. We have a lot and not just in terms of patches and updates but new content as well, new levels, additional story, weapons and all sorts of things that will be rolling out.

We’re releasing more concrete information about DLC plans later this year. But I can say one of the nice things going from an independent studio to a studio with the backing of Microsoft is that we’re now actually able to plan much further ahead beyond the horizon in a way that independent studio that’s going from project to project in order to just kind of keep everything going is not able to necessarily plan for. Before we might have not been sure about DLC plans or not been able to commit very far. And for this one, we’re planning to support Wasteland 3 for a long time.

Fargo: We’re hoping to work on this franchise for the next decade. This is our Fallout.

Right, especially now with Microsoft’s resources… I remember you wanted to grow inXile, right?

Fargo:
We’ve just hired a top animator, a new technical director, we’ve been adding on these people that we’ve been sorely missing for many years. We haven’t really had a technical director and we haven’t had enough animators around the company. The way I describe it, it’s like a band, we knew we were missing a keyboardist and a bass player and we would make our music but we did it with what we could. But we’ve been missing some key roles that we’ve now been filling pretty quickly and you can really see the impact of what they’re doing to our game, every day.

Campbell: We’ve been able to look at the game, not just that the trajectory it’s on but where we really want it to be quality wise and then bring people in surgically to help with those different areas and that has made a huge difference to the team.

A lot of people fear that by giving up your independence to join a big company like Microsoft a studio could be losing some of its creative freedom.

Campbell:
I can say on the team level, the development side, we’re ecstatic for the partnership with Microsoft, we are absolutely making the game that we want to make and we’re making it better than we would have been able to by ourselves.

Fargo: Yeah, I think we’re fortunate because Microsoft trusts us. I think that’s always a concern when companies get bought, that’s what they think. There’s a natural sense of ‘There goes the company now’. But really, they’re like, we trust you. I mean, even when I start talking about what we want to do in the future, beyond that, I start describing in detail and they go ‘We trust him’.

Microsoft just announced that Double Fine is joining Xbox Game Studios as well. I’m curious, did Tim Schafer talk to you about your experience as new additions to the family before accepting the deal?

Fargo:
I haven’t talked to him since February. Yeah, I knew what was happening. He did talk to me about the experience and what was it like. So indeed, he did.

It feels like all the bigger studios that used to do crowdfunding are now at Xbox Game Studios. Obsidian, Double Fine, you. And you’re working together in a way, right?

Fargo:
We’re sharing with all the studios. I mean, we talked to the guys at The Coalition. If we’re doing something that involves shooting, we’ll pick up the phone and talk to them. If we want to do anything with water, you know, we’ll talk to the guys doing Sea of Thieves and go ‘Hey, just tell us about your water technology’. So that’s what’s great. I mean, everybody’s like ‘Kumbaya’, everybody is sharing everything that they’re up to, we’re in constant communication, and we all want to help each other with our craft.
Wasteland 2 launched on the Nintendo Switch as well in September 2018. Any plans to bring this to the Switch, too, at some point?

Fargo:
I’m not sure yet. I’m not sure if it can be done on the Switch. But we haven’t thought about it. We’re just hyper-focused on just getting this one done. We didn’t plan to do the Nintendo Switch release of Wasteland 2 until much later. So maybe later. But yeah, maybe it’s not impossible.

I got one last question. Wasteland 3 was crowdfunded on Fig, but for the next game, would you like to do something like a big third-person action RPG in one of your franchises? Or do you want to keep doing smaller, cRPG-like titles?

Fargo:
I don’t know. It’s probably a little early to talk about what’s next. But I think it’s safe to say that our budgets will probably be increasing. But we have big things in the works, I can tell you that.

Good to know. Thank you for your time.
Wasteland 3 Interview - Brian Fargo: We Want to Work on This Franchise for the Next Decade
 
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prudis

prudis

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For Alpha Eyes Only
The Wasteland 3 Alpha is closer than ever, and those of you who have pledged at the First Access ($75) or higher tier (or added the Alpha as an add-on) will soon be getting hands-on with the game. Come August 21 you’ll be setting foot in the frozen post-apocalyptic Colorado for the first time.
...
The Alpha is combat-focused, and revolves around the last leg of your journey to deal with one of the Patriarch’s children, lovingly known as the Psychopath. At this point in the game you’re higher level, and are taking the last few steps to deal with him in the mountain town of Aspen—however you choose to do that. You’ll get to experience most of the systems related to combat, including the player vehicle. We will have some things purposely blocked off, like the Perk and Skill menus, and multiplayer, which aren’t quite ready to see just yet.

And Everyone Else
For many of you who didn’t back at the Alpha tiers, you’ll be looking forward to Early Access, which is the second demo we’ll have before launch. Alpha and Early Access will both use the same Steam entry (the Alpha will be replaced with the Early Access demo), so Alpha users you’ll only need to redeem one key to play both, and Early Access players you’ll get your keys later on when we get closer to that point. If you’re looking to get the full game on GOG, no worries, while the Alpha and Early Access will be run on Steam, your final product choice won’t be impacted.
 

Mivey

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Hmm, does this have controller support already? PCGamingWiki says yes, but there's nothing in the settings for it.
I kinda liked playing Wasteland 2 on a gamepad, as the game has lots of needless clicking, with no real need for precision controls, if you play with KBM
 

texhnolyze

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Where's the love?

There has been a couple of dev diaries released since last week.

[UWSL][UWSL]Character Creation, Customization & Combat[/UWSL][/UWSL]


[UWSL][UWSL]The Story, World, and Characters[/UWSL][/UWSL]
 
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texhnolyze

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d00d3n

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Yeah, some great scores, higher than I anticipated. I went ahead and bought it on Steam
 
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Prodigy

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Just got to the base, and got the extra team mates. So far really enjoying it.
Weird thing though - I watched Cohh play it and his sniper seemed to have over 40 bullets (and he is on hardest setting) whereas mine had around 10, so before the tutorial was over I was out of ammo. Need to get a merchant quickly.
 
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Dandy

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I keep trying to start the game, but I am the worst at making characters from scratch. I want to make a "face" for the party - so high CHA, Kiss-Ass, Leadership, First Aid... and Small arms? Is that too many skills? And then 90% of his points into CHA with a few in the attribute that support Small Arms I guess? I wonder if maxing CHA at the start is worth it? The bonus from 9 to 10 is almost doubled.
 

texhnolyze

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I'm 20 hours into the game now, finishing up the 2nd town with a dungeon below.

I have a party of 5 (I don't like too many people in my party):
  • Leader: pistol user with leadership and medic skills
  • Sniper: the main damage dealer who also excels at lockpicking
  • Hacker: deals with computers and other weird stuff
  • Wong: the soldier who are also into kissing other people's ass
  • Lucia: the gunslinger and armor modders, also a trader

My party lacks some skills, but I can live with that. Playing on hard difficulty, the combat is still manageable so far.
 

Dandy

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How are you guys liking the game?

Also you start as a couple? Prefect, getting over a breakup now so just what I need!:D
I really liked the idea of playing as a couple, but I wanted to make my own characters so it didn't effect me. I wish you could customize the pre-mades but still have the backstory.
 

Dandy

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Oh you can't make your own couples?
Not as far as I know. The premade characters have back stories, though I think it really only gives them unique banter and combat barks, and has no effect on the actual story. I could be wrong though.

When you make your own character, you don't get to choose a backstory/relationship for your two rangers.
 
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Le Pertti

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Not as far as I know. The premade characters have back stories, though I think it really only gives them unique banter and combat barks, and has no effect on the actual story. I could be wrong though.

When you make your own character, you don't get to choose a backstory/relationship for your two rangers.
But they still have the same backstory and are they still the same couple? I dont mind there only being one story, I just want the character to look like me haha
 

Dandy

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But they still have the same backstory and are they still the same couple? I dont mind there only being one story, I just want the character to look like me haha
No. Custom characters are blank slates. They are not treated as a couple. I'm not even sure the premades are.
 
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texhnolyze

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The back story of the pre-made couples are pretty minimal, they only have a few banter here and there, from what I've read. They don't even comment on story-related dialogues like the companions do.

There's one thing that's been bugging me, why can't the camera be zoomed in when talking to NPCs? I like it when it's used like in Patriach's introduction. The dialogues are fully voiced, even the random NPC chatters in towns. But it's just weird that we don't talk to them in 1st person. The thing is, they removed the NPC portraits so a big part of their characterization is taken away.