Wasteland 3 Interview

The folks at Redbull Games have published an interview with inXile CEO Brian Fargo and VP of Development Chris Keenan about the recently crowdfunded Wasteland 3, the sequel to the series revival from 2014 (which was also crowdfunded). During the interview, Fargo and Keenan explain why the title will start with the player only building one character, why they went for Colorado as a setting, why the game must have a world map (though they are still experimenting on the specifics), how and why the game will give more options for evil players, and more.

An excerpt:

“I like the concept of you starting off alone and trying to survive with all the elements against you, so you don’t get the luxury of having your squad around helping to save your ass,” starts Fargo. “The thing with role-playing games is that at the start, we’re already asking you to spec out a guy before you really understand what’s best. And it compounds the problem when we’re asking you to spec out four people before you know what’s best. So, for all those reasons, we really liked that, from both a psychological perspective and also from a gameplay perspective.”

…

After spending time in Arizona for Wasteland 2, Fargo is happy to tell us how the new setting, Colorado, fits into the lore. “The idea was that the Rangers [the dominant faction in the Wasteland] wanted to expand their territory and bring law and order not just to Arizona, but to the rest of the States. And Colorado was interesting because NORAAD (North American Aerospace Defence Command) is located there, too. So it seemed like an obvious place to go.”

Switching the arid deserts of Wasteland 2 for the cold weather of Colorado means that the radiation suit you needed to stay alive is now going to be replaced by protection from the cold, but there’s still a world map in play, it’s just that inXile isn’t quite sure how it will work yet. Keenan explains: “There will be some amount of overworld travel as you move through. Whether it looks like the old world map is up for debate,” while Fargo insists that the team are currently experimenting. “But the idea of a world map goes all the way back to Wasteland 1 and the original Fallout series, and that’s not something we want to deviate from.” So the game won’t be Skyrim sized, then, but Keenan insists that “we still want you moving between locations and feeling like you’re outside a local space.”