Wasteland 2 to Switch to Unity 5, Get Graphical Improvements and More

It looks like inXile has decided to respond to the complaints about Wasteland 2’s graphics, judging by the post-funding Kickstarter update they have just sent out. According to the update, what was originally meant to only be a balance and bugfixing patch has morphed into something larger: a full-scale switch to version 5 of Unity, the game’s engine. Thanks to the switch, inXile will be able to implement phyiscally based shading, and on top of that they are promising a number of nondescript additions to the character system. Word from the devs is:  

If you’ve been keeping a close eye on things, you might have heard tell that we’re looking at doing some more balancing and improvements of Wasteland 2 in the future. We have expanded our original plan and decided that this is going to be a part of something much larger for all our fans.

In pursuit of this goal, one task we’re working on right now is migrating the Wasteland 2 codebase from the Unity 4.5 engine to Unity 5, which will enable some new possibilities for us. A major benefit of moving to Unity 5 is that 5 will include many of the tools from Unity 4.x Pro. We relied on many of these tools during our development (like creating and building navigation meshes), and they will be available to modders without having to pay thousands of dollars for a Pro Unity license. There is no doubt that this migration will allow us to release better tools for modding to our community in the future.

So what’s the (something bigger) that I teased earlier? Let’s just say that the Orange County lifestyle might be getting to us as the game will be receiving a facelift. Unity 5 offers physically based shading, which is already starting to look amazing in the scenes we’ve touched up.

As well as visual improvements, we have quite a few quirky tricks up our sleeves. The character system is getting perked up and will include some new elements to modify gameplay. Of course, more details will be released in the future so stay tuned!

Without screenshots and details it’s difficult to say how effective this update will actually be, but it’s good to see that the title is still being supported and hasn’t been abandoned in favor of Torment and The Bard’s Tale IV.