Wasteland 2

[Mister Six]

It's out this Friday. Anyone else received their activation keys yet, and are you as excited as me for a new post-apocalyptic environment to explore?

[Ignatius_S]

Well... I was planning to play it cool and wait a bit, especially as they had said about mod tools being released not long after release but no new information has come out about that and it looks good!

One thing I was pleased to hear is that all the skills are worth using – they aren't any stinkers that should be avoided.

[Pit-Pat]

I'm completely torn between this and Divinity: Original Sin. I loved Fallout and Fallout 2, and I think I can enjoy the setting more than Divinity's, but apparently Divinity's combat is a lot better.

[Ignatius_S]

Personally, I take the attitude of restrict yourself to one? From what I've heard/read, it sounds like Divinity: Original Sin is a little superior overall but if you're picking just one, I would go with the setting you prefer. 

[Pit-Pat]

Yep, I definitely don't have time to play both.

I'm leaning more towards Wasteland but thie mentioned in the Eurogamer review gives me pause:

[another annoyance is] the necessity of creeping around the map to avoid a bad combat initiation. That often makes exploration a real slog, especially when you start coming across enemies like sharpshooters and distance-closing robot drones.

[Mister Six]

Ugh. Got halfway through downloading (verrrry slowly[nb]Because China.[/nb]) the six 2Gb download packs from GoG before I realised that using their downloading program lumps them all into one file. Won't be playing this until the morning.

[Ignatius_S]

Yep, I definitely don't have time to play both.

I'm leaning more towards Wasteland but thie mentioned in the Eurogamer review gives me pause:

I've read several reviews now and I think that's the only one that said something along these lines. PC Gamer (I think) mentioned that they would have liked to been able to sneak around more in order to enter combat in a more advantageous position, which read to me a little contrary to what the Eurogamer reviewer found. Digital Spy commented that exploration of the world was "a joy".

I've been following beta tester reports and it's not something that I can remember being mentioned – although, going from memory I think the lack of map markers mentioned in the Eurogamer review echoed a few comments I read.

Personally, I wasn't that bothered by that element what Eurogamer said – especially as it's still a positive review – but it doesn't hurt to wait and canvas more opinion.

Ugh. Got halfway through downloading (verrrry slowlythe six 2Gb download packs from GoG before I realised that using their downloading program lumps them all into one file. Won't be playing this until the morning.

Well, we'll be waiting to hear what you think!

[Mister Six]

So I've played this for, uh, quite a few hours today and am having a great time, though I've yet to have my mind blown (and doubt I will). That said I've only just reached the first properly branching path of the main plot - a choice between helping out two equally threatened towns - so I don't think I'm too far in.

Anyone who's familiar with the original Fallout games will be at home here - it's a similar vibe (for obvious reasons). I never played the original Wasteland - or at least, I never persevered because I found the interface so clumsy - but there's nothing in the game so far that's required any prior knowledge, or made me feel like I've missed out. There seem to have been quite a few characters brought back into the fray, but it's all very organic and doesn't distract from what's going on.

Aside from an occasionally unintuitive UI, the gameplay's generally smooth and easy to grasp. Like Fallout, combat is a turn-based affair, though this time you have control of all the PCs (most of the time - you can recruit additional NPCs to join you, but they may shake off your control and do their own thing in combat unless one of your characters has the leadership stat and is nearby). None of it is terribly frustrating (unless the rolls aren't in your favour, of course) though at this early stage the weapons do feel unbalanced; the sniper rifles are next to useless at the minute because most enemies come too close for them to be effective, and there's no warning during character creation that you should make sure your PCs have both long-range and short-range combat skills (whether short-range is melee or shotguns).

Also, combat isn't terribly tactical; though you can split up your team members prior to combat, the maps are quite constrained and linear and don't support flanking, and most combat seems to happen when you're within a certain range of the enemy (depending on how aggressive they are) so splitting up, getting people into position and then firing the first show (while the enemies are ambling around randomly) is, if not impossible, too much of a ballache to make it worthwhile. I also can't seem to find any options to change your team distances and formation (though I've not bothered reading the manual, to be fair) so you can't, say, have your sniper hang back while your bulkier folks pack out the front with shotguns, machine guns and other weapons that are prone to causing collateral damage.

Mostly none of this is an issue, because combat is swift enough that the simplicity doesn't cause too many problems. But it's less complex than Fallout's was (there's no targeted attacks, either, aside from a 'headshot' option that does 200 percent damage but dramatically lowers your chance to hit) and that might bother some people.

It's also less ambitious - or perhaps just differently ambitious - in its attitude to morality. In this game you're one of the Desert Rangers, an unambiguously decent lawkeeping force, so there's no room for joining the mafia or becoming a porn star or blowing up children, or any of the fun things you could do in Fallout 2. But that's fine - it's nice to take part in some pulp heroics for once. The dialogue is also less complex - basically, you're given topics to question people on (and, if you have the 'hard ass', 'smart ass' or 'kiss ass' skills, additional options that will let you manipulate them somewhat) and that's that.

However, the dialogue is all decently written, the characters are mostly memorable and well-sketched, and there's a lot of humour in the text, especially the combat dialogue (giant maggots described as 'undulating horrors being my favourite). Actually, that text goes a long way to providing a very familiar world with a great deal of personality.

There's been very little story so far, just hints that there's some kind of robotic badness going down, and that someone has it in for the Rangers. It's also been very combat-focused compared to Fallout; I've yet to find a regular town or village to wander around, and side-quests mostly seem to be tied into the main storylines and its limbs. That said, I'm clearly still in the beginners' part of the game so I'm sure it'll expand and open up as it goes on.

There are a few bugs and rough edges here and there, though. Nothing game-breaking (except for when I dropped an item by accident and it landed underneath some decorative rubble, stopping me from picking it back up), but it's odd to see descriptions of a character 'ramming another clip in' when she's attacking with a wrench, or seeing an excited reference to a workbench in one corner of the lab, only for a quick scan with the cursor to reveal nothing of the sort. And the true 3D environments are nice, but constantly having to rotate the camera (which only moves according to the eight main compass points) to see around walls and trees is a drag.

On the whole, I'd say I'm greatly enjoying the game so far, though I'd caution people expecting a new isometric Fallout game to manage their expectations somewhat. It is, judging by my (admittedly limited) experience so far, a less expansive and ambitious game. But I'm very glad it exists and that I backed it.

[Mister Six]

tl;dr - It's great fun, though a lot less impressive than Fallout in scope.

[RickyGerbail]

some points:

- if you press space you'll get control of each ranger invididually, so you can position your guys one by one in the way you like.

- There are towns, you just have to get further than the first two dungeons (high pool and ag center) to get to some proper towny places.

- In terms of acting in immoral ways, i'm not going to spoil anything but you can be a very naughty boy in this game.

- combat gets more ranged based as the game progresses

- fallout tactics amounted to shooting at the eyes or using burst fire, so i can't say that i agree with your assesment regarding the combat. it's not great, but alright.

- this game is at least as big as fallout, possibly bigger. I'd definately recommend anyone who liked fallout 1 and 2 to check out this game.

[thraxx]

Ah shit, my wife and daughter are really going to regret that I read this thread.

[Mister Six]

Things.

Thanks, man! Very excited to read all that. On the 'individual control' point, can you set a formation for your team to walk in when navigating the maps as a group? I'd like to stick my shotgun and machine gun folks at the front and my sniper at the back, for obvious reasons, but it seems to switch up the formation with each new active character, and it's hard to get into the right positions prior to combat (though in some of the more open areas I can spread people out a bit and then initiate combat by getting my sniper to pop one in a baddie's skull).

[RickyGerbail]

it's not possible to pick formation afaik. I haven't been missing that since the vast majority of encounters are easy to see in advance and none of my guys are so vulnurable that they can't sustain a couple of hits before i get them to safety.

This playthrough i'm playing as a good guy, trying to do the right thing. The next playthrough will be my toaster repair/evil playthrough. There are a couple of nasty PC's that i've been wanting to pick up but i know there will just be a bunch of drama between them and the nice folks i currently have on my roster.

[Mister Six]

It's not a big deal, but it is an irritating hassle for me when I just want to get stuck into the combat (esp. with so few AP at the start) without being reminded that I'm playing a game full of idiots who try to fire shotguns through their friends' backs.

Interested by the talk of nasty team members. I've only had unambiguously good ones so far, though as I'm only at the Ag Centre, that's not too far in at all. Really looking forward to getting some free time so I can cane this game later on this week.

[Ignatius_S]

It was only a matter of time before I failed a will check - have now bought.

Any advice about stats welcome - I've read quite a bit that luck and charisma are pretty much dump stats but the latter is needed to a degree in order to recruit NPCs.

[Mister Six]

If you purely mean stats and not skill points, I've been fairly careful about distributing them so as not to overload in one area, but if I was going to start over again I'd think more carefully about pumping points into speed and intelligence, as both of them add to the character's action points (AP) for each round. Especially useful if your character is carting around a bigger or more complicated gun, as they take more AP to use. Intelligence also raises the level cap on surgeons, so it's worth investing in for your healing character (and you really should take one of them along).

If you hover the pointer over the stat it'll break down how it affects gameplay (a really useful feature that I wish more RPGs offered), but there's an all-in-one guide to stats here.

Luck's not a complete waste, for me at least - it positively modifies stuff like lockpicking and weapons jamming, and randomly grants bonus AP, which has got me out of a few tight scrapes before - but I never put a lot of points into it.

As for the skill stats, your basic four characters is enough to let you cover all the bases - I have one medic/surgeon, one hacker/repairer/tech bod, one lockpick/safe/demolitions person and one leader/outdoorsman/negotiator. I also spread the weapons styles across the characters, save for energy weapons (only found one of them so far, in the Ag centre, and ammo seems to be very rare).

If you explore the Citadel area at the start, you'll find Angela Deth, one of the protagonists from the first game, who will offer to come with you. If you plan on taking her along - and you might want to, because she's level 14 or something, and really helps smooth over the wrinkles at low level - bear in mind that she has the following stats, meaning that you can hold off adding them at the very start (though you should add them along the way, because she will leave your party at some point after the Highpool/Ag Centre missions):

- Assault Rifles 6
- Brute Force 5
- Blunt Weapons 3
- Hard Ass 3
- Outdoorsman 2
- Weaponsmithing 2

Due to the formation stuff mentioned above, I've found assault rifles and (especially) pistols to be the most useful, as shotguns fire in a cone of damage and machine/heavy guns are very likely to hurt anyone in front of them, friend or foe. Also, at least at the start the enemies aren't too tough, so heavy guns don't provide a massive advantage. I'm wondering whether it might have been more prudent to save those skill points for later on.

One thing I would highly recommend is giving each character two weapon skills: one long range, one short range. Some weapons only work at long range, esp. at low levels (sniper rifles, assault rifles), and if you take the Ag Centre route you're liable to be fighting up close with a lot of baddies. I only gave one of my characters melee fighting skills, and am beginning to regret it a bit.

Working from memory here... you might want to check on one of the wikis, if they've already updated...

Long-range guns:
Sniper rifles
Assault rifles

Mid-range guns:
Heavy machine guns
Energy weapons

Close-to-mid-range guns:
Light machine guns
Pistols (actually a really good choice, as ammo is more plentiful and they're quite flexible in their usage).

Close-range guns:
Shotguns

I've been playing on the standard difficulty rating, and I've rarely run right out of ammo, but am always cutting it very fine indeed, which is a great act of balancing for a game. Then again, I also took the Ag Centre route, which seems to involve a lot of unarmed enemies (and in this game you don't have wolves carrying around bandoliers full of bullets for no reason!).

Finally, the aesthetic choices you make for your character at the start of the game affect their inventory - for example if you make your character a smoker, they will begin the game with a pack of cigs. If you choose a character model with a cowboy hat, they'll start with that in their inventory. If you don't care too much about the roleplaying element of things, I imagine you could 'game' this to give you a bit more look to sell at the very start - though you wouldn't make a ton of money from it, so it's not worth worrying about too much.

Hope that's not too much info. It's really a very well-balanced game, so as long as you don't deliberately hobble yourself, you should be able to muddle along just fine. Remember: there's no shame in save-scumming on locked doors (don't want to lock yourself out!). And do take along the shovel at the start, because there are lots of patches of dirt you can dig up for weapons and ammo, even in the Citadel.

[Mister Six]

Quick note: the Ag Centre is actually quite confusingly designed, so if anyone needs any help with it, let me know. If you're not taking Angela Deth along then make sure you have someone with the Bashing ability on your team. A point or two of Perception can be useful too.

[RickyGerbail]

Not too sure about getting so many skill specializations per character. If you have one guy who has lockpicking, safecracking, demolitions, blunt weapon and assault weapons you'll really not have enough points to spend between them to get them to effective levels. This problem will get exacerbated over time since skill point costs per skill level increases. You'll have a number of skills that cover all bases but you'll be so bad at them that you won't be able to do anything. It is possible to savescum for a while to make up for it but eventually you'll simply not be able to, for example, unlock doors at all. Another thing to take into account (and i haven't gotten this far but i'm pretty sure it will be the case) is that there'll probably be stuff in the end game that requires skill checks of 9-10. If you have a character that gets 3 sp per level you'll need about 10 character levels to go from level 5 to level 10 in an individual skill. This means that if you want to get those really high skill levels you're going to have to specialize in perhaps two skills, with an auxiliary one. I'm playing on ranger difficulty so some of this may be different on normal though.

[glitch]

I've held off from picking this up but I know I'll crumble at some point. I'm just thinking I might go for the Shadowrun DLC and wait for the price on this to fall a bit first. And hope that GOG do a Mac port for the STALKER games in the meantime.

[Ignatius_S]

Ta for all the feedback!

I've held off from picking this up but I know I'll crumble at some point. I'm just thinking I might go for the Shadowrun DLC and wait for the price on this to fall a bit first. And hope that GOG do a Mac port for the STALKER games in the meantime.

Quite a few places are doing Steam keys pretty cheaply – had a quick look and notice www.cdkeys.com (which I believe is usually well regarded) is selling it for £14.99. FWIW, in the last day or two it was selling it for £22.99, then £24.99 before being out of stock.

Speaking of Shadowrun, what did you make of that? I picked it up last week when it was on offer – rather liked it so far, but it's going to have to take a backseat for a bit now!

[Mister Six]

Not too sure about getting so many skill specializations per character. If you have one guy who has lockpicking, safecracking, demolitions, blunt weapon and assault weapons you'll really not have enough points to spend between them to get them to effective levels. This problem will get exacerbated over time since skill point costs per skill level increases. You'll have a number of skills that cover all bases but you'll be so bad at them that you won't be able to do anything. It is possible to savescum for a while to make up for it but eventually you'll simply not be able to, for example, unlock doors at all. Another thing to take into account (and i haven't gotten this far but i'm pretty sure it will be the case) is that there'll probably be stuff in the end game that requires skill checks of 9-10. If you have a character that gets 3 sp per level you'll need about 10 character levels to go from level 5 to level 10 in an individual skill. This means that if you want to get those really high skill levels you're going to have to specialize in perhaps two skills, with an auxiliary one. I'm playing on ranger difficulty so some of this may be different on normal though.

Well I'm probably fucked then! Though I did pick up a companion in the Ag Centre who had crazy high computer skills, so I'm hoping there will be other specialists I can pick up along the way, and focus on increasing their defining characteristic to take some pressure off my team.

Ah, I don't know. I'll muddle through one way or another. The game seems to be pretty good, generally, at never making it impossible to progress (even if it might make it impossible to get goodies from a side room).

[samadriel]

Ta for all the feedback!
Speaking of Shadowrun, what did you make of that? I picked it up last week when it was on offer – rather liked it so far, but it's going to have to take a backseat for a bit now!

I loved Shadowrun Returns, it really made me hungry for more stuff in that universe, so I'm glad Dragonfall's come out (the Director's Cut came out a few days ago, so now's a good time to check it out).  The combat's simple but enjoyable; I'm hoping Wasteland 2's combat is similar, although I expect it will be much more demanding (there's no ammo in Shadowrun, you just spend AP to reload).

[Ignatius_S]

I loved Shadowrun Returns, it really made me hungry for more stuff in that universe, so I'm glad Dragonfall's come out (the Director's Cut came out a few days ago, so now's a good time to check it out).  The combat's simple but enjoyable; I'm hoping Wasteland 2's combat is similar, although I expect it will be much more demanding (there's no ammo in Shadowrun, you just spend AP to reload).

Yes, I saw about the Director's Cut and I'll certainly be getting it. Combat is a little more simple that Wasteland, but like you, I've been enjoying it – although I hadn't noticed you could spend AP to reload!

[RickyGerbail]

shadowrun was a slightly dissapointing appetizer, wasteland 2 is a huge, luxurious sausage meal.

[RickyGerbail]

oh i just read that the maximum character level is 40, so that leaves a lot more points to spend on skills. Maybe it is feaseable to have 4-5 skills per character.

[Ignatius_S]

oh i just read that the maximum character level is 40, so that leaves a lot more points to spend on skills. Maybe it is feaseable to have 4-5 skills per character.

Ah, that's good to know! Previously, I had read some discussion before this had been confirmed and that kind of figure was being mooted. As some pointed out, if low, then the XP bonus for Charisma would be rather hampered.

Personally, I went with Mister Six's approach and spread the points out to cover most of the skills. One reason is that I had read that there's a practical point to all skills and so far I've found just about all my picks to have been useful; if there is a need to focus more tightly, then I thought I would be able to work out what's best for my style.

Another reason is the role-playing one - it's nice to go with something that fits how I see the character rather than for an optimum build. For instance, with the character that I saw as the leader, I had pumped some points into Charisma and have given them all the talking skills - although my big bruiser arguably would be someone to be able to pull off a bad ass pose, the leader I thought is someone who has genuine presence that a range of people will be able to impressed with and having a range of speech options seemed to feel that would fit best.

It might go horrible wrong, but I'm loving this so far!

[Mister Six]

If you do the Ag Centre first, don't - as I did - pick up and sell all of the different piles of shit for a poxy dollar each. There's a guy in the Citadel who'll pay more, apparently.

Also, you can get into the Citadel after first completing either the Ag Centre or Highpool - no need to do both before heading back.

[RickyGerbail]

Well this game is like a dream, a bittersweet dream because i can't believe that the production of awesome cRPG's like this has halted completely over the last decade and been replaced by bland teenybopper horseshit like Dragon Age and the Witcher. I'm currently in the second part now, having had problems recruiting a heavy weapons or sub-machine gun specialist like i was hoping. The second part definately seem like a step up from the first half, the current location i'm in has had me laughing out loud several times, i actually can't remember even the fallout games having anything this funny in them

Spoiler alert

the boss of the place is called Enormous O'Biggun

[close]

. 

[Mister Six]

Having now played a bit longer (clocked both Ag Centre and Highpool, found the old Prison, now exploring the Rail Nomads' village), I have to admit that most of my previous observations were inaccurate:

With a better rifle and more skill points, my sniper has come into my own, and usually gets first blood in battles. Tackling the Ag Centre (with its melee-based animal enemies) first gave the wrong impression; once you're fighting people who are also armed with guns it steps up a bit.

The Rail Nomad village is FUCKING HUGE. I think I've only gone around half of it and I've already picked up two new NPCs (one of whom is Scotchmo, King of the Hobos). I've also amassed a number of side quests and rescued a tortoise

Spoiler alert

then followed it back - slowly - to its burrow and stolen its guns(!).

[close]

My initial reaction that it's a combat-focused game seems to be off. Still got a lot more to explore, though, I hope.

I've also had a few opportunities to be a bit of a cunt, though not too many. Certainly not the panoply of options that Fallout 2 offered (so far, at least), but I have a way to go now.

However, I still can't find - if it exists - any option to set team formations, and not being able to pause and set up your team properly before initiating combat (I mean, you can but if an enemy sees you then your plans are screwed) is a minor pain.

This is a really great game, and I'm so happy I backed it. Highly recommended.

[surreal]

Picked it up from cdkeys.com this morning for £11.99, minus another 5% from a promo they were doing on Facebook.  Got a Steam key from them, just need to find time to get it installed and start playing now