Wasteland 2 Preview and Video Quick Look

We’ve rounded up a couple of new previews for Wasteland 2, both based on the Early Access build of inXile’s sequel to the venerable post-apocalyptic RPG.

Rock, Paper, Shotgun cautions against buying the game in Early Access, but otherwise seems positive:

Fights are broadly comparable to Fallout 1/2s, but a cover system of sorts both ups the tactical thinking and the animation factor this is less like a bunch of blokes standing in a line taking turns to shoot each other, as there’s more ducking and diving on show. Only a bit though: when it comes down to it, this is about hit percentages and weapon specialisms, not hiding and twitching. There’s nothing like XCOM’s slo-mo kills or over the shoulder camera switching here, which’ll good news for purists but perhaps a little sterile for anyone hoping for a turn-based game with 21st century whizzbang sensibilities. There also isn’t a huge amount of death-toys to play with, at least not that I’ve found so far, and the fact that character models aren’t visually changed by what they’re wearing is a bit deflating. As every single sentence in this piece should be qualified with though, it’s very early days for Wasteland 2 yet.

Wasteland 2 also requires some creative thinking on occasion saving a drowning boy, for example, involves realising that a certain skill might affect a certain object. If you don’t establish that quickly enough, or none of your party members have that skill, they will literally watch the boy drown, and the game and relevant NPCs will then reflect that outcome. Clearly I can’t say how much of that sort of thing will abound in the finished game, but I like the idea that if you’re just not enough of a thinker, not enough of a hardbitten wilderness survivor, you’re going to experience very different turns of events to other players. The world also feels reasonably fat with places and people, things to do/kill and options to make an enemy out of almost anyone even at this early stage, which bodes well for the future.

Sadly it really is extremely difficult to play at the moment: the average framerate on my not-inconsiderable PC is 17, dropping to 10 if anything particularly exciting or shadow-y is happening. On top of that, quests keep going wrong for instance, a tribe plum forgot that I’d saved the aforementioned boy from drowning, and kept angrily accusing me of leaving him to die. Savegame corruptions and crashes to desktop also blighted my attempts to explore and survive.

Meanwhile, Softpedia has a video Quick Look and a very brief write-up, from which I’m going to quote an excerpt:

My first battle involved a giant toad that stole two weapons from the members of my party and was finally defeated by a Ranger using a knife.

The second one was against raiders who were better armed, but failed to find cover before I pumped them full of lead.

The system is pretty simple at first, but as more skills become available, the complexity level will increase.

The world of Wastelands 2 is at once familiar and mysterious and the team at InXile has managed to add a lot of flavor even to the initial battles against Raiders.