WorstUsernameEver
But best title ever!
Considering I backed Wasteland 2 and took that risk based on the names involved and the fact that Wasteland was the spiritual predecessor of the Fallout series, I thought it would make sense to get to the original and at least give it a try.
So how did it go? Well, for starters I should specify that one of the reasons I managed to finish the game at all (quickly too, now that I think about it, it took me about four days) is because Per has done an awesome job on his guide. I'm serious, I'm not just saying that because he is involved in the website and I'm asslicking, though that's obviously a part of it. Anyway, without the guide I simply wouldn't have managed to build a decent party at my second attempt (first attempt ended up with Jackie being a grizzled survivor that dragged the corpses back to the Ranger HQ.. good stuff), and I would have stumbled in the dark for some really of the most obscure points (spotting a safe based on clip pistol? WASTELAND. Well, it was technically a bug, but oh well!). Not gamebreaking stuff, but I enjoyed getting moar loot and maximizing my party's efficiency. I doubt that's the experience the developers had intended but, well! I also screwed up myself in the ending for not reading some of the final paragraphs of the guide but more on that later..
Wasteland is, frankly, the closest I've ever felt videogame managed to emulate the PnP experience. I'm not sure how intentional it was: on one hand the ruleset is clearly pen-and-paper stuff (makes sense considering the designers' background), on the other hand a lot of that 'feeling' came from the primitive engine and being forced to fill the gaps for myself. I'm glad videogames came a long way since 1988, but there's no doubt it was a refreshing experience for me.
On the subject of the ruleset, I'm glad that Fargo has already stated that the sequel is going to build on top of it instead of scrapping and rebuilding, although I'm not 100% sure what that means. Will they keep stuff like level-ups via radio and the chance to use every skill and attribute everywhere? Will they keep libraries to learn new abilities? Will they go for a more generalist approach for abilities or keep special case stuff like Helicopter pilot? Questions, questions.
That said, I'm surprised by how well the ruleset holds up, all things considered. I'm generally a fan of having skills be roughly on the same level in terms of usefulness, and be useful throughout the game, but Wasteland makes a compelling argument for things such as late game high level skills unlock, skill-based weapon progression where every tier (actually done much better than in the original Fallout, although arguably still kinda screwed up since you can safely ignore mid-tier weapons and do all the game with brawling), and more importantly, a mix of point-based and learn-by-doing. That was *brilliant*. Loved it, loved it, loved it. The Wasteland 2 team ought to keep that element at least, because it was by far the most satisfying part of the ruleset for me.
There's a minus of course (plus most likely some more I'm forgetting about), and it's that some of the skills felt too situational even for what is certainly not a long title and can easily be ignored without losing pretty much anything. I think I experienced most of the content the game offers with my skill choices which is something that simply can't happen in, say, Fallout.
Which leads me to another point: there's some of the best multi-skill usage I have seen here, which was extremely surprising considering how old the title is. There are tons of skill-based way to solve a situation and still a relevant number of occasions where you will find yourself having to utilize one skill and only that to, say, open a door for example, so to not make your skill choice a simple cosmetic matter (I realize this seems to contradict my point from earlier but remember you have a party with four characters and consequently lot of skill points). On top of that, different skills might have slightly different consequences, for example, blowing up a door meant that you'd alert the enemies and they'd rush to the door (random encounters more frequent, etc.).
So, uhm, this is arguably stuff you guys already knew, heck, it's stuff I already read about the title. Seeing it executed was another matter entirely though and very pleasing. Of course, this shouldn't make me forget to mention that, at its heart, the game was still essentially a combat-heavy title, with a very primitive combat engine that offered few tactical choices. Menu-based combat has been done better, but at least most of the battles were short.
The plot? I would be lying if I said I think it was a good plot.. it isn't. It's both extremely lightweight and full of contradictions and gaps. Thinking about it, it's pretty much one of those 80s sci-fi action movie plots set in a Mad Max-like setting. It provided a good backdrop for the designer to be creative with quests and situations though which is what counts, really. And the team went crazy with that! I think maybe a little too crazy since I sometimes felt there was little consistency to the setting, although I guess one could argue that it wasn't meant to be taken entirely seriously and that the team expected the players to fill in the gaps themselves, which is something that can work, but not if it gets abused. Or maybe I just got anal as a result of posting here for too long. Who knows. (Yeah, I admit I thought that the "THIS IS COOL LET'S ADD IT" philosophy probably guided a lot of the choices for the locations.)
The quests themselves anyway? Those were more often than not excellent, even when they were linear. Not having to build dozens of high quality assets clearly worked in favor of the team's imagination and there's a ton of shit crammed in such a small game, a journey through the mind of a deranged pre-war android, a hostage situation with a bomb involved that could have made up the bulk of the plot of a Die Hard movie, the dramatic tale of a boy and his dog (who's got rabies), and some cultist shit I don't fully understand but it apparently involved a hot babe that glows wanting an artefact back or something, and of course there's more but I'd be spoiling the entire game. Not *all* of the game was brilliant though: the Vegas sewers sucked so badly I have to wonder if they outsourced them to someone else, Sleeper Base was boring and I still have no idea what was the intended way to reach Base Cochise since it was never mentioned explicitly in dialogue except in one point that 99% of the players would ignore. But oh well!
A final mention for the ending: I always gave Fallout credit for not forcing you to fight a boss fight (Fallout 2 abdicated to that slightly and the ending sequence was worse for it, I think), but Wasteland did it much better by not having a boss fight at all. There simply was no need for one, the ending sequence was tense enough, if a little lacking on skill usage (you could use.. Electronics I guess?). And on that matter... I fucked it up and my party died as a result, so the ending sequence mentioned all my party sacrificed itself for the Wasteland and then the game would boot up and lock to the map without giving me the chance to make a new party, move the cursor.. anything really. But I had the satisfaction of knowing I saved the American southwest... which is really populated by a bunch of crazy people living in derelict buildings and eating hobos, so I'm not sure how good an idea it was!
Bottom line is: Wasteland is good, really good, and the prospect of a Wasteland 2 that makes use of the possibilities given by modern technology (for example, visuals that don't make my eyes bleed) while remaining true to the skill-based, turn-based spirit is great, great, great. Fargo, St. Andre, Pavlish, Stackpole, Danforth, Avellone and the rest of the crew better not fuck it up.
So how did it go? Well, for starters I should specify that one of the reasons I managed to finish the game at all (quickly too, now that I think about it, it took me about four days) is because Per has done an awesome job on his guide. I'm serious, I'm not just saying that because he is involved in the website and I'm asslicking, though that's obviously a part of it. Anyway, without the guide I simply wouldn't have managed to build a decent party at my second attempt (first attempt ended up with Jackie being a grizzled survivor that dragged the corpses back to the Ranger HQ.. good stuff), and I would have stumbled in the dark for some really of the most obscure points (spotting a safe based on clip pistol? WASTELAND. Well, it was technically a bug, but oh well!). Not gamebreaking stuff, but I enjoyed getting moar loot and maximizing my party's efficiency. I doubt that's the experience the developers had intended but, well! I also screwed up myself in the ending for not reading some of the final paragraphs of the guide but more on that later..
Wasteland is, frankly, the closest I've ever felt videogame managed to emulate the PnP experience. I'm not sure how intentional it was: on one hand the ruleset is clearly pen-and-paper stuff (makes sense considering the designers' background), on the other hand a lot of that 'feeling' came from the primitive engine and being forced to fill the gaps for myself. I'm glad videogames came a long way since 1988, but there's no doubt it was a refreshing experience for me.
On the subject of the ruleset, I'm glad that Fargo has already stated that the sequel is going to build on top of it instead of scrapping and rebuilding, although I'm not 100% sure what that means. Will they keep stuff like level-ups via radio and the chance to use every skill and attribute everywhere? Will they keep libraries to learn new abilities? Will they go for a more generalist approach for abilities or keep special case stuff like Helicopter pilot? Questions, questions.
That said, I'm surprised by how well the ruleset holds up, all things considered. I'm generally a fan of having skills be roughly on the same level in terms of usefulness, and be useful throughout the game, but Wasteland makes a compelling argument for things such as late game high level skills unlock, skill-based weapon progression where every tier (actually done much better than in the original Fallout, although arguably still kinda screwed up since you can safely ignore mid-tier weapons and do all the game with brawling), and more importantly, a mix of point-based and learn-by-doing. That was *brilliant*. Loved it, loved it, loved it. The Wasteland 2 team ought to keep that element at least, because it was by far the most satisfying part of the ruleset for me.
There's a minus of course (plus most likely some more I'm forgetting about), and it's that some of the skills felt too situational even for what is certainly not a long title and can easily be ignored without losing pretty much anything. I think I experienced most of the content the game offers with my skill choices which is something that simply can't happen in, say, Fallout.
Which leads me to another point: there's some of the best multi-skill usage I have seen here, which was extremely surprising considering how old the title is. There are tons of skill-based way to solve a situation and still a relevant number of occasions where you will find yourself having to utilize one skill and only that to, say, open a door for example, so to not make your skill choice a simple cosmetic matter (I realize this seems to contradict my point from earlier but remember you have a party with four characters and consequently lot of skill points). On top of that, different skills might have slightly different consequences, for example, blowing up a door meant that you'd alert the enemies and they'd rush to the door (random encounters more frequent, etc.).
So, uhm, this is arguably stuff you guys already knew, heck, it's stuff I already read about the title. Seeing it executed was another matter entirely though and very pleasing. Of course, this shouldn't make me forget to mention that, at its heart, the game was still essentially a combat-heavy title, with a very primitive combat engine that offered few tactical choices. Menu-based combat has been done better, but at least most of the battles were short.
The plot? I would be lying if I said I think it was a good plot.. it isn't. It's both extremely lightweight and full of contradictions and gaps. Thinking about it, it's pretty much one of those 80s sci-fi action movie plots set in a Mad Max-like setting. It provided a good backdrop for the designer to be creative with quests and situations though which is what counts, really. And the team went crazy with that! I think maybe a little too crazy since I sometimes felt there was little consistency to the setting, although I guess one could argue that it wasn't meant to be taken entirely seriously and that the team expected the players to fill in the gaps themselves, which is something that can work, but not if it gets abused. Or maybe I just got anal as a result of posting here for too long. Who knows. (Yeah, I admit I thought that the "THIS IS COOL LET'S ADD IT" philosophy probably guided a lot of the choices for the locations.)
The quests themselves anyway? Those were more often than not excellent, even when they were linear. Not having to build dozens of high quality assets clearly worked in favor of the team's imagination and there's a ton of shit crammed in such a small game, a journey through the mind of a deranged pre-war android, a hostage situation with a bomb involved that could have made up the bulk of the plot of a Die Hard movie, the dramatic tale of a boy and his dog (who's got rabies), and some cultist shit I don't fully understand but it apparently involved a hot babe that glows wanting an artefact back or something, and of course there's more but I'd be spoiling the entire game. Not *all* of the game was brilliant though: the Vegas sewers sucked so badly I have to wonder if they outsourced them to someone else, Sleeper Base was boring and I still have no idea what was the intended way to reach Base Cochise since it was never mentioned explicitly in dialogue except in one point that 99% of the players would ignore. But oh well!
A final mention for the ending: I always gave Fallout credit for not forcing you to fight a boss fight (Fallout 2 abdicated to that slightly and the ending sequence was worse for it, I think), but Wasteland did it much better by not having a boss fight at all. There simply was no need for one, the ending sequence was tense enough, if a little lacking on skill usage (you could use.. Electronics I guess?). And on that matter... I fucked it up and my party died as a result, so the ending sequence mentioned all my party sacrificed itself for the Wasteland and then the game would boot up and lock to the map without giving me the chance to make a new party, move the cursor.. anything really. But I had the satisfaction of knowing I saved the American southwest... which is really populated by a bunch of crazy people living in derelict buildings and eating hobos, so I'm not sure how good an idea it was!
Bottom line is: Wasteland is good, really good, and the prospect of a Wasteland 2 that makes use of the possibilities given by modern technology (for example, visuals that don't make my eyes bleed) while remaining true to the skill-based, turn-based spirit is great, great, great. Fargo, St. Andre, Pavlish, Stackpole, Danforth, Avellone and the rest of the crew better not fuck it up.
