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Wasteland 2

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It's out!  I'll probably try to get some time in with it this weekend, I've mostly ignored the updates, beta, videos, everything.  So I have no idea really what the game is like. 

 

I am ridiculously going to wait until reviews come out to know if the game I kickstarted years ago is ready to play.

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I played an hour or so of the beta, just to get a feel, and I'm pretty sure I'll be into it, but I have to finish Divinity first! Also, I'm going to wait for my big box to arrive + day 1 bug squashes.

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I played about 10 hours of the beta and my overriding thoughts were "yeah Divnity: OS was a pretty good turn-based RPG. Why am I playing this again?." I might give it another shot after giving Divinity some space, but the combat just didn't seem to have much meat on it.

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I am ridiculously going to wait until reviews come out to know if the game I kickstarted years ago is ready to play.

 

It's both ridiculous and understandable, which says a lot about the state of games.  This is the first video game KS I've backed that is (theoretically) 100 percent released and done.  So given that, it seems like I really ought to dip right into it, warts and all. 

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It's both ridiculous and understandable, which says a lot about the state of games.  This is the first video game KS I've backed that is (theoretically) 100 percent released and done.  So given that, it seems like I really ought to dip right into it, warts and all. 

 

yeah I think im going to wait for reviews too, and I did kickstart it. And even weirder, I guess, is that I'm treating wasteland 2 as a litmus test for the new Torment game they are making. Can they make a good crpg? Is it will written? The writing will be the most important I think. in

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I only read the RPS Wot I Think, and he said he liked it, but found some elements a bit fiddly, like having to clikc you lockpicker to pick locks, and specifically your computer person to use computer skill on a computer. That stuff never bothers me, for whatever reason.

 

I'm glad W2 came out first, as I have more heart invested in Torment, so I'm glad they'll get some feedback to adjust by. 

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Played this for roughly an hour, liking what has been seen thus far. Characters seems to be fleshed out and writing has been engaging. I have read the RPS Wot I Think as well and haven't found the UI and crew management to be that finicky yet, I'll have to see for myself after a couple of hours more. I did increase the combats speed, pretty much always do that in cRPGs, slightly impatient when it comes to cRPG-combat. Definitely worth giving a try, already feeling I got my money's worth.

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I've completely ignored the development, but also my gaming habits have changed completely since I backed it -- I now spend way less time on games, so I'm not sure if I'm going to play it. But since I have not yet started Divinity OS, maybe I'll play this before that.

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I'm an hour or so in, it's pretty much exactly what I'd hoped for! Lots of opportunities to use non-combat skills.

 

Yep, I'm the same, got through the first area where you can have combat, and so far am very happy with what it is. 

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Double Post!

Some more in-depth thoughts on it.  After playing for about an hour, I ended up starting over and rebuilding my team, realizing that I felt like I had made some pretty poor choices.  Character creation is great, I spent well over an hour figuring out how to design my team, and made a Charlie's Anglels type group with one dude and three badass ladies. I can't remember the last time that I actually had to put some thought and care into just creating characters, which is something I occaisioanally miss from old school games.

After seeing combat in action, I realized I had over-priortized Action Points and under-valued initiative and move speed. I had also completely misread how one stat worked (my fault, not the game's).  I could probably keep restarting over and over until I felt like I had a "perfect" team, but won't.  I just wanted one that was better than what I started with.  Finding a balance between AP, initiative, speed, combat abilities and non-combat abilities is surprisingly challenging even with four characters. 

There's a lot of attention to detail so far in the world description. Backers get a special ability that just adds flavor text to the world, which is something I wouldn't mind if they just let everyone have (and that might be possible, because you just unlock it with a hidden conversation option you type in).

The first real conversation I had where there were multiple ways to handle it was suitably varied, including a pretty surprising outcome that got a genuine chuckle out of me.  There are also critical successes (and probably failures?) in conversation skill checks that can affect how conversations go. 

I've only found one hidden conversation option so far. You can always type keywords into the conversation interface to see what someone says. The one I found was just a bit of flavor/backstory text. It was neat, but I'm not sure I'll worry about typing a bunch of stuff into every conversation to see if there are any hidden things.
 

I hit the first major decision point in the game, and am impressed with it so far.  It's got a suitable amount of gravity to it, and the storyline/dialogue built around it makes it feel very weighty in a way that games rarely do. 

 

I'm really impressed so far, and feel like I've got pretty much what I was expecting out of W2.

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There's a lot of attention to detail so far in the world description. Backers get a special ability that just adds flavor text to the world, which is something I wouldn't mind if they just let everyone have (and that might be possible, because you just unlock it with a hidden conversation option you type in).

 

Shit, we do? I must have missed that KS update.  Now I'm going to go back and look for it...

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Shit, we do? I must have missed that KS update.  Now I'm going to go back and look for it...

It's at the bottom of the page that has your Steam key on it. I think it's just called the rewards page, there's just a paragraph at the very bottom that describes how you unlock that skill. It just adds some description text of some things, usually automatically as you walk by (I'm assuming that's what I've seen). There are also some things in the environment you can right click on and get a description, even though no icon appears.

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I really want to play this, but am super busy atm so probably won't for a while. I kickstarted this, Broken Age, Banner Saga, and Tex Murphy and have yet to play any of them.

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I really want to play this, but am super busy atm so probably won't for a while. I kickstarted this, Broken Age, Banner Saga, and Tex Murphy and have yet to play any of them.

 

Yeah, I'm in exactly the same boat. I'm dying to play it. Although, I got Divinity Original Sin and didn't get all that far into it so I'm a little worried this will be another of my Steam games that ends up waiting for a random early-summer "hey let's finish that game I bought in 2012" vibe. Though Wasteland 2's theme is much more appealing to me...

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OMG. GOTY, of all the years (minor, gee-whiz, neato spoiler).

You can have a pet goat.

I have seen a few bugs though, it certainly needs a patch. There have been minor things like the wrong character portrait loading up for NPCs (corrected later on load). There have been a couple of possibly more serious glitches involving NPCs not appropriately moving when they are supposed to. Both times were solved with a reload, and thankfully I had quicksaves really close. If either would have persisted, they would have been very bad bugs. It may be that both were basically fine, and would have corrected over time, but I was paranoid about those NPCs being stuck forever. And lastly, either the Leadership skill is bugged or has an incorrect tool tip. It says it should give 2 percent/level, but only gives 1 percent/level. That makes it much, much less valuable.

Nothing has forced me to lose more than a few minutes, but for those of you who are worried about a buggy game, it might be worth waiting for the first patch. I'm glad I've jumped into it now though, when I'm having to just play and there aren't any guides I can consult (because I'm usually such a terrible min/maxer in games like this).

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I have nothing meaningful to say yet, just that the game is pretty good! I spent an hour making my party too, and I probably could have done it a lot better, but I'm going to persevere. The writing is very good at balancing the two aspects of an apocalypse fiction, overwhelming suffering vs goofy humor. I just reached Happy Valley, where the locals enjoy suicide and assisted suicide.

 

I am quick saving and quick loading a lot just to learn how the game works, I was shocked that the game doesn't really have a combat tutorial but having played the old Fallout games and Jagged Alliance there's nothing new here other than some nifty concentric circles like you'd expect from a modern game. The first thing I fought killed one of my characters with one attack. I mean, killed him permanently. The first boss I faced was god-like in its abilities, but with some finagling I was able to kill him and drag my party back to a doctor. Remember "You must gather your party before venturing forth"? That doesn't exist in this game. You can move one character across a map and when he or she touches the 'leave area' thingy your whole party will go with. That means running through hallways full of poison gas or snaking through a field of enemies with one character.

 

I've also run into a few bugs but like Bjorn nothing that couldn't be solved with reloading. When I play a game like this I am quicksaving constantly anyway to avoid the pitfalls that the designers put in there intentionally, so any unintentional problems have been a mild nuisance. 

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I just reached Happy Valley, where the locals enjoy suicide and assisted suicide.

 

I am stuck there!

 

I refused to pay the gun tax, which immediately threw me into endless battles with the Red Skorpions.  I reached the farm, talked to Jim and Jobe, then reached Danforth's compound, where the only option is to be bullet-ridden by his turrets.  Trying to sneak around on either side doesn't work. And I can't tell if this is part of my main goal (find a way past the radiation), or if it's a distraction.

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The writing is very good at balancing the two aspects of an apocalypse fiction, overwhelming suffering vs goofy humor.

Yeah, the writing is really good (with all the caveats that it's still video game writing). I've genuinely gotten a good chuckle out of a bunch of the humor. And each character feels like he or she has a voice all their own, not like you could just swap out any of the dialogue onto someone else and it would still fit.

The personality of the world is also getting me to start to try and actually role play my created characters, and not just treat them like meat bags of stats and skills. My shotgunner is not very bright. She has two jobs, to soak up damage and shoot things in the face with a shotgun. She also likes animals. She befriended a goat while Vargas was having some new recruits recite the Rifleman's Creed. She doesn't have a rifle, so she has no creed. In her limited wisdom, she has decided that her goat is her rifle, and so she has the Goat's Creed.

"This is my goat. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

My goat is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life.

My goat, without me, is useless. Without my goat, I am useless. I must lead my goat true. My goat must be better behaved than my enemy's goat. My goat must butt him before he butts me. I will...

My goat and I know that what counts in war is not the heads we butt, the noise of our braying, nor the cud we chew. We know that it is the hits that count. We will hit...

My goat is human, even as I, because it is my life. Thus, I will learn it as a brother. I will learn its weaknesses, its strength, its parts, its accessories, its sights and its horns. I will keep my goat clean and ready, even as I am clean and ready. We will become part of each other. We will...

Before God, I swear this creed. My goat and I are the defenders of my country. We are the masters of our enemy. We are the saviors of my life.

So be it, until victory is America's and there is no enemy, but peace!"

(The goat is in fact nearly completely useless, but my Shotgunner doesn't know that and so charges into battle with her loyal friend, braying together in the face of death.)

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I've never played Wasteland. I did play a ton of Fallout and Fallout 2. 

 

Checking out the quicklook and a few things bothered me, but figured I'd ask. Was Wasteland typically a party based game or was that a choice they went with in the sequel? Is it even possible to play as a single character from the start?

 

I don't mind getting party members as the game progresses, but the only thing I loved about Fallout was roaming the world alone, it was part of the fantasy appeal for me. Would be silly if that was the deal breaker for me, but figured I'd check.

 

edit: I spelled Wasteland wrong two times there. sad.

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I've never played Wastland. I did play a ton of Fallout and Fallout 2. 

 

Checking out the quicklook and a few things bothered me, but figured I'd ask. Was Wastland typically a party based game or was that a choice they went with in the sequel? Is it even possible to play as a single character from the start?

 

I don't mind getting party members as the game progresses, but the only thing I loved about Fallout was roaming the world alone, it was part of the fantasy appeal for me. Would be silly if that was the deal breaker for me, but figured I'd check.

I've only fooled around with Wasteland in the last year or so, never played it back in the day. But from what I know, original Wasteland was a party based game, and W2 mirrors that exactly (starting party of 4 and you can recruit up to 3 additional characters).

That said, you can start with just one character if you want. I actually did that briefly just to faff about for a bit. Combat was brutal, but I just threw a character together, didn't put much thought into it. It might make for an interesting experience to try and do it with just one character (and maybe picking up an NPC once in awhile for specific help). You'd be way more limited on what non-combat actions you could do, since it's balanced around having a bunch of characters. But a lot of that stuff just gives you the ability to collect more loot. Since you'd only be supporting the health and ammo of a single character, you wouldn't really miss the lost scrap and items from things you weren't able to break into.

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It turns out goats and explosions don't go well together.  I may have set a harder goal for myself than I thought.

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I'm also stuck in Happy Valley, and I too am trying to roleplay the game to a certain extent. I probably could save and reload a thousand times to kill all of these dudes but I determined to find the password to Red's shop without resorting to what is essentially fiction-breaking time travel with the F9 and F11 keys. Since the urgency of the situation has died down maybe I'll explore the world map a bit.

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