- Joined
- Jun 18, 2019
To be fair I played the "director's cut", maybe you played the original 2014 release? I'm not sure what the differences are between those two versions.
But the game was solid, not spectacular, but solid, I'm glad I played it.
Wasteland - The Predecessor and Successor to Fallout
- Thread starter Peasant
- Start date
To be fair I played the "director's cut", maybe you played the original 2014 release? I'm not sure what the differences are between those two versions.
But the game was solid, not spectacular, but solid, I'm glad I played it.
- Joined
- Jan 15, 2019
I never understood why the prudes in the 90's thought getting that dumb "Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics" sticker slapped onto practically every album in the stores was some kind of "win." It was just a badge of honor and, as you said, a reliable mark of quality to most people.
lol ... what did you learn? (sounds like a fun "quirk" to me)
Agent of Z.O.G.
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Apr 22, 2016
Original but DC didn't actually fix any of the major problems like the bad everything.
- Joined
- Aug 8, 2017
Somebody threw a tantrum in development. Preppers would be the ones reading books and not just manifestos; they'd be the guys clearing out Home Depot's DIY section from electrical to gardening.
Although I like the subtle implication that not listening to the media saved your family. Not sure they intended that.
- Joined
- Jun 18, 2019
This is especially dumb because Wasteland's world is one where the Cold War continued on and escalated into the 1990s, so I'm pretty sure being a prepper wasn't an illogical thing to be, in fact the Desert Rangers are explicitly stated to be partly descended from preppers.
- Joined
- Dec 16, 2019
- Joined
- Jan 30, 2018
I've gotten some hours into this and so far I'm enjoying it. Everything seems improved or at least polished from WL2, the writing especially, although if you really didn't like WL2 I don't think this is a major step up from it.
My biggest problems with it so far are:
- I don't like how you don't have a main PC. The game basically treats you as an amorphous blob, often referring to the player as they/them/us/we/Rangers; you can even completely get rid of your original Rangers, replace them with entirely new ones, and the game will never react to it. This also means you have no real personal stake in the story, you're just there to help the Ranger organization, you never really have any personal, individual reason for doing what you're doing. Further compounding on this issue is that the role playing options are never consistent, there's no real uniformity to when skills & stats are used in dialogue. Lastly, I don't like how you're forced to always have two custom Rangers at all times; had I know this was the case I definitely would've went with a pre-made pair since they apparently have unique content tied to them.
- Companions are a mixed bag. Some are real chatty, often talking about the environments, giving their opinions, or even talking with NPCs during dialogues, while others are fairly silent. Unfortunately, beyond those interjections & barks the companions don't have seem to have any content -- they don't have personal quests nor do they have any dialogue trees.
- The UI is god awful garbage. This game's been in development for like four or so years, so I have no idea how a UI this bad survived through dozens of developers plus alpha & beta tests, The dialogue interface in particular is terrible; it has this floaty look and feel to it, having no background to the dialogue, only showing one line of NPC dialogue at a time, and only showing (at most) three dialogue choices at a time. It all feels like it was obviously intended for people sitting ten feet away from their TV while playing it with a controller. The entire interface in general has this horrible, cheap tablet game look to it. Then there's just how clunky navigating the UI is and how it's not especially informative.
- The game in general isn't very attractive looking. I can't put my finger on what exactly about it turns me off but I think a lot of it comes down to it not really have any sort of unique style. A lot of the time the game looks sorta lifeless, with characters and parts of the environment looking like generic Unity store assets. This is especially weird because: A) Deadfire came out a few years ago and (despite its other shortcomings) looked really great, and B) The part where you drive around Colorado in your tank-trunk looks fantastic and extremely atmospheric with the constant onslaught of snow, lightening crackling around you, and all the fire and debris everywhere. Whoever designed the look for that part of the game should've been put in charge of the look for the whole game.
- Loot is still mostly garbage, and I mean that literally. Often times you'll come across a locked door and behind the locked door is a locked safe and within that locked safe is... literal junk, maybe with a few bullets. Items and equipment in general aren't very exciting; I never really look forward to upgrading my equipment because most upgrades are just incremental and without any flair.
- Stealth seems mostly pointless. There's no sneaking mode, so you can't really sneak around enemies. Instead the stealth stat just changes how fast an enemy notices you outside of combat once you step inside their awareness radius, and even that's mostly pointless because there's a ton of times when NPCs are scripted to notice you upon your entrance into an area.
Despite all that I'm still having fun exploring Colorado and doing quests. Combat is better than in WL2, with you now having a good amount of different combat abilities and there being a better balance between the weapons and various skills. That said, I'm not sure if the combat has enough depth to remain interesting for 80 hours but I guess we'll see. I'm also not sure how the plot can last 80 hours, unless there's some major twist or a new enemy is introduced. I'm about 10 hours in and have done all the side quests I can find for Colorado Springs and the Bizarre, and I can't see the plot (or the game in general) lasting more than 30 hours as it's currently laid out.
My biggest problems with it so far are:
- I don't like how you don't have a main PC. The game basically treats you as an amorphous blob, often referring to the player as they/them/us/we/Rangers; you can even completely get rid of your original Rangers, replace them with entirely new ones, and the game will never react to it. This also means you have no real personal stake in the story, you're just there to help the Ranger organization, you never really have any personal, individual reason for doing what you're doing. Further compounding on this issue is that the role playing options are never consistent, there's no real uniformity to when skills & stats are used in dialogue. Lastly, I don't like how you're forced to always have two custom Rangers at all times; had I know this was the case I definitely would've went with a pre-made pair since they apparently have unique content tied to them.
- Companions are a mixed bag. Some are real chatty, often talking about the environments, giving their opinions, or even talking with NPCs during dialogues, while others are fairly silent. Unfortunately, beyond those interjections & barks the companions don't have seem to have any content -- they don't have personal quests nor do they have any dialogue trees.
- The UI is god awful garbage. This game's been in development for like four or so years, so I have no idea how a UI this bad survived through dozens of developers plus alpha & beta tests, The dialogue interface in particular is terrible; it has this floaty look and feel to it, having no background to the dialogue, only showing one line of NPC dialogue at a time, and only showing (at most) three dialogue choices at a time. It all feels like it was obviously intended for people sitting ten feet away from their TV while playing it with a controller. The entire interface in general has this horrible, cheap tablet game look to it. Then there's just how clunky navigating the UI is and how it's not especially informative.
- The game in general isn't very attractive looking. I can't put my finger on what exactly about it turns me off but I think a lot of it comes down to it not really have any sort of unique style. A lot of the time the game looks sorta lifeless, with characters and parts of the environment looking like generic Unity store assets. This is especially weird because: A) Deadfire came out a few years ago and (despite its other shortcomings) looked really great, and B) The part where you drive around Colorado in your tank-trunk looks fantastic and extremely atmospheric with the constant onslaught of snow, lightening crackling around you, and all the fire and debris everywhere. Whoever designed the look for that part of the game should've been put in charge of the look for the whole game.
- Loot is still mostly garbage, and I mean that literally. Often times you'll come across a locked door and behind the locked door is a locked safe and within that locked safe is... literal junk, maybe with a few bullets. Items and equipment in general aren't very exciting; I never really look forward to upgrading my equipment because most upgrades are just incremental and without any flair.
- Stealth seems mostly pointless. There's no sneaking mode, so you can't really sneak around enemies. Instead the stealth stat just changes how fast an enemy notices you outside of combat once you step inside their awareness radius, and even that's mostly pointless because there's a ton of times when NPCs are scripted to notice you upon your entrance into an area.
Despite all that I'm still having fun exploring Colorado and doing quests. Combat is better than in WL2, with you now having a good amount of different combat abilities and there being a better balance between the weapons and various skills. That said, I'm not sure if the combat has enough depth to remain interesting for 80 hours but I guess we'll see. I'm also not sure how the plot can last 80 hours, unless there's some major twist or a new enemy is introduced. I'm about 10 hours in and have done all the side quests I can find for Colorado Springs and the Bizarre, and I can't see the plot (or the game in general) lasting more than 30 hours as it's currently laid out.
- Joined
- Sep 5, 2019
- Joined
- Jul 18, 2020
Put a few hours into it, here are my first impression:
the good:
- Redundant skills have been removed and a few new things added as replacement, RPG side of the game is pretty solid now.
- Story is improved and made somewhat more unique. It also gives you many excuses to be an asshole which is welcome.
- Overall the game takes itself mostly seriously with a occasional "random" joke character mixed in, very nice since i expected the game to be a joke-a-minute kinda deal from some trailer footage. idk maybe i misremember things.
- Its no longer that easy to have an expert in every field on your squad, although its still pretty close.
- You no longer have to select the right guy to do an action he specializes in, it happens automatically.
the bad:
- The game tries to let you set up your team before combat starts but more often than not you start a fight with 1 guy right before the enemy and the rest of your squad 10-14 squares back and out of cover.
- Combat is mostly static, your guys stay in 1 spot and shoot at enemies that are running at them. This is nowhere near the quality of XCOM2.
- Game is not all that pretty and seems to be barely working at times, for me audio cuts out before every shot for a few seconds, there are other issues.
- Presentation of the game is pretty dry, there are a few animated conversations thrown in (they look pretty good) but for the most part you're just looking at your ant squad on a white backdrop. Again, contrast with XCOM is pretty jarring, almost every shot in that game is some sort of a closeup or an action camera swing. Makes it feel more dynamic, less detached.
- Whoever decided that you can shoot your companion by clicking on his portrait needs to get fired, same with the guy who decided ESC always opens a menu instead of just canceling your action first.
- Your companions will sometimes decide that your enemies were actually the good guys and leave your squad angry at you killing them. My 2 companions left after i deactivated an enemy turret before combat started saying "you cant just kill innocent people, that's disgusting". #TurretLivesMatter i guess.
I don't think they did a good job at ripping of XCOM but they definitely improved form Wasteland 2. So far.
the good:
- Redundant skills have been removed and a few new things added as replacement, RPG side of the game is pretty solid now.
- Story is improved and made somewhat more unique. It also gives you many excuses to be an asshole which is welcome.
- Overall the game takes itself mostly seriously with a occasional "random" joke character mixed in, very nice since i expected the game to be a joke-a-minute kinda deal from some trailer footage. idk maybe i misremember things.
- Its no longer that easy to have an expert in every field on your squad, although its still pretty close.
- You no longer have to select the right guy to do an action he specializes in, it happens automatically.
the bad:
- The game tries to let you set up your team before combat starts but more often than not you start a fight with 1 guy right before the enemy and the rest of your squad 10-14 squares back and out of cover.
- Combat is mostly static, your guys stay in 1 spot and shoot at enemies that are running at them. This is nowhere near the quality of XCOM2.
- Game is not all that pretty and seems to be barely working at times, for me audio cuts out before every shot for a few seconds, there are other issues.
- Presentation of the game is pretty dry, there are a few animated conversations thrown in (they look pretty good) but for the most part you're just looking at your ant squad on a white backdrop. Again, contrast with XCOM is pretty jarring, almost every shot in that game is some sort of a closeup or an action camera swing. Makes it feel more dynamic, less detached.
- Whoever decided that you can shoot your companion by clicking on his portrait needs to get fired, same with the guy who decided ESC always opens a menu instead of just canceling your action first.
- Your companions will sometimes decide that your enemies were actually the good guys and leave your squad angry at you killing them. My 2 companions left after i deactivated an enemy turret before combat started saying "you cant just kill innocent people, that's disgusting". #TurretLivesMatter i guess.
I don't think they did a good job at ripping of XCOM but they definitely improved form Wasteland 2. So far.
Last edited:
Peasant
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Apr 19, 2019
I am incredibly glad for a lot of the quality of life improvements that were made, such as automatically selecting the appropriate character for a skillcheck, as you mentioned, as well as not having to juggle items through different character inventories. Also your characters automatically reload when combat is finished. The addition of a detection radius for enemies also helps quite a bit just so you can see exactly how much room you have to position your characters.
As for the humor, it just about is a joke a minute, but it's all in the background. Important dialogues are kept pretty serious, which I think is a good balance.
Affluent Reptilian
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Jun 21, 2018
This game is good. I played through Wasteland 2 but it only held my interest by the skin of its teeth. This is much less janky (although not entirely), has more interesting and amusing characters, and has surprisingly pleasing combat. Shout-out to Polly the foul-mouthed parrot who manages to make an art out of being vulgar and is way funnier than he should be.
- Joined
- Apr 1, 2017
- Joined
- Aug 9, 2019
Honored guest
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Dec 16, 2019
This was my biggest problem with the 2nd wasteland. Is it so hard to make a game similar to Fall Tactics in that regard? There were so many different weapons in it, some where side grades some had trade offs, some where almost redundant, and some were just plain better than others but they had flavor and it was fun finding or buying a new weapon.
- Joined
- Jul 18, 2020
Yes actually, making weapons for an XCOM type game is really hard. Mostly because by design every enemy dies after only a few attacks and turns. This style of combat allows and kinda necessitates varied enemies that can do a lot of thing quickly but the filpside is that your gun barely matters since your enemies die too quickly for most gimmycky things to work. You can alrerady see it here with the flamethrower and molotovs - you can apply [burn] to a few enemies at once but its a wasted debuff since those enemies will most likely die in the same turn or maybe the next.
Still, im expecting some cool AoE effects or chain shots later on in the game or maybe unique guns locked behind expensive ammo.
- Joined
- Dec 16, 2019
You get a .50 cal HMG (not the starting bunker buster gun) at the Bizarre later-on, and a 7.62 bullet spammer at around that time. Unfortunately, the XCOM style of combat where you either win or die in turn 1 or 2 does prevent any actual fun differentiated weapons from being used, and the ensuing lack of diversity in equipment and the mandatory linear upgrade paths for such annoys me.
Peasant
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Apr 19, 2019
There was one instance where the game hitched for a good 20 seconds or so, but I haven't encountered any instability aside from that. I'm running a full AMD build.
- Joined
- Jan 30, 2018
In terms of technical stuff and performance the only issues I've run into are:
- Long load times. I'm running this on a M2 SSD and they can still be minutes long, so I can't even imagine what it's like on a mechanical drive. Combine this with no fast travel options and if you're in an area that's inside of another area and you want to get back to HQ you're going to be looking at two or three load screens.
- Occasional bouts of lag. I haven't had the problem with the game lagging when highlighting items but every once in a while when I'm running around on maps the frame rate will tank for a few seconds.
- Sometimes I get stuck on the shopping screen. Controls will stop working, giving me no way to exit out of the screen, forcing me to terminate the game and re-open it and hope that I saved recently.
- Some minor quest bugs but nothing game breaking so far.
- Long load times. I'm running this on a M2 SSD and they can still be minutes long, so I can't even imagine what it's like on a mechanical drive. Combine this with no fast travel options and if you're in an area that's inside of another area and you want to get back to HQ you're going to be looking at two or three load screens.
- Occasional bouts of lag. I haven't had the problem with the game lagging when highlighting items but every once in a while when I'm running around on maps the frame rate will tank for a few seconds.
- Sometimes I get stuck on the shopping screen. Controls will stop working, giving me no way to exit out of the screen, forcing me to terminate the game and re-open it and hope that I saved recently.
- Some minor quest bugs but nothing game breaking so far.
- Joined
- Aug 9, 2019
About 5 hours in or so. Love it so far, only problem has been load times. The humor has surprised me in that the writers seemed to actually understand that you should put humor in humorous situations instead of injecting it everywhere like the hacks at Gearbox. The goat gag in Little Vegas is probably the first time I've actually laughed at a joke in a game in a decade.