Boy would our faces be red. Still many questions remain about this new fangled Wasteland like how will it play? Fargo doesn’t want combat tactics ”so deep that you feel disconnected”.
There’ll be no 20 minute long, head-scratching tactical combat in Wasteland 2 because it’ll have players ”groaning every time combat pops up.” A new ‘old school’ RPG?
”There are so many elements of Wasteland that worked quite well and we plan to build upon that foundation rather than start over from scratch,” said Brian Fargo, inXile’d leader of the Wasteland.
”Those elements are the sandbox type world, dark humor, party based combat, tactics in battle and a skill based system. However, combat isn’t going to consist of scrolling text so clearly we need to up the tactics part of the game.”
”And we don’t want the tactics SO deep that you feel disconnected from the world by being in long battles all the time. The last thing we want is someone groaning every time combat pops up.”
When does the sequel take place? ”The game is going to take place shortly after Wasteland 1 ends. And by the way for everyone who remembers little Bobby – he is pissed off having been shot by Rangers and left for dead.”
Naturally there are some pretty big expectations from the community of PC RPGs and Wasteland fans of yesteryear. Still the team have to balance the old with the new because times have changed.
”Having true cause and effect is a big one. A deep and interesting world is also key and there need to be surprises coming at you throughout,” says Fargo, reciting the founding pillars of the series. ”And yes Wasteland is party based game and that is one of the big differences from Fallout. Also there is a strong literary vibe to those games that is especially highlighted with Torment that we will continue on. We are reading every comment on our forums and setting up polls to make sure we have the broad strokes covered. Once we finalize those things we will go off and do what we do best.”
6 days remain for Brian Fargo’s Wasteland 2 project on Kickstarter which currently has over 48,200 backers with more than $2.2 million pledged. Thanks to Double Fine the Kickstarter ‘generation of games’ may have just begun in earnest. This method of financing a project is called crowd-sourcing and helps avoid publishers.
”I don’t see an end in sight for companies raising money with Kickstarter, but most will not be in the million dollar range. Shadowrun passed their goal of $400K and Leisure Suit Larry is well towards its minimum amount of $500K. Even the smaller projects with new developers will be tomorrow’s one million dollar projects,” said Fargo.
”Trust me, there will be some new group that comes along one day and blows me and Tim out of the water with their success,” he added, referring to Tim Schafer and his Double Fine Adventure which took over $3.3m.
”And I do believe that if we get enough companies to pledge putting a small percentage of their profits back into the community, it will keep the ecosystem alive. Kickstarter is such a wonderful way to get financed that it just makes sense to give back.” Brian Fargo has introduced the ‘Kicking it Forward’ campaign where 5 percent of project profits goes back to Kickstarter to be disseminated among others looking for backers.
There’s still plenty of time to give your wallet a workout on the Wasteland 2 Kickstarter page. Check out the full interview between Brian Fargo and VG247, discussing the well funded Wasteland 2 endeavour.
