inXile on Porting Wasteland 2 to Xbox One and PS4

Eurogamer has published an interesting interview with a few inXile developers (including CEO Brian Fargo) on the Game of the Year Edition of Wasteland 2. Understandably, most of their attention is focused on the game’s Xbox One and PlayStation 4 ports, and Eurogamer rightly wonders how the game will play with a controller. It won’t come as a surprise, but the interface will be extensively revised:

Now, Wasteland 2 expands onto the current generation of consoles, addressing an entirely different audience and posing an entirely different set of questions. The Wasteland feels more daunting with a controller in hand. I was happy to read the thousands of words of text that that coursed through Wasteland 2’s veins on PC, my body hunched over a desk, my face pressed up against a monitor. Sat back on my sofa in front of my TV, those words blur into a stream of fuzz.

And what about the interface? Wasteland 2 was – and inXile admits this – a bit cumbersome to navigate. It was just about doable with a mouse a keyboard. But with a controller?

“We know, and everybody else has stated, that how this thing plays and the controls are going to make it or break it on console,” Keenan admits. “So we’ve been putting some good time into the controller, the inventory and what moves the camera versus the characters. You’re going to be able to see a pretty big upgrade.”

An example: Wasteland 2’s NPC vendors will now display more information on what’s currently equipped so you don’t have to look at the store, exit to check your character inventory, then go back into the store again. Little things like this should make the game much easier to get along with, controller in hand.

“Anything that needs unique UI for console is getting its own special UI,” Keenan says. “We’re touching everything we need to.”

That said, all of the improvements will be universal and ported to PC too (including the gamepad interface, if that’s your preferred input), and it does sound like the visual ones will be pretty significant:

Unity 5 introduced a physically-based rendering system that simulates the way the light bounces off of materials in a more realistic way. We’re getting a little technical here, but, basically, Unity 5 spreads out specular maps so glass, for example, feels different because light bounces off of it in a different way to, say, stone or brick.

InXile is going through all of its Wasteland 2 assets and modifying them to make use of this new system. “Being a top-down game you see a lot of the terrain,” Keenan says. “So we’re focusing on making the terrain and the ground plane and the tops of buildings and all that stuff as great as it can be.

“Every single scene is getting basically a complete treatment,” Keenan says. “We’re not starting from scratch, certainly, because we have a pretty good foundation to everything. But we’re just going through and putting a little extra love into every scene.”

InXile is also creating brand new character models, which is welcome because, well, let’s just say it: they were pretty crude. The new models include new clothing options, some of which you’ll see in character creation, where you can now tweak your characters’ hat, face and face accessories. You might want your character to wear a gas mask, or a beard. Beards are on trend, so best get those growing.