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Wasteland 2: Director's Cut
PC (Steam)
The REAL "Fallout 3"
4/5 stars
Way back in 1988, the young Brian Fargo co-developed a PC RPG with a unique setting for publication by his new startup publishing house, Interplay. This game was “Wasteland,” which took place in a post-nuclear holocaust version of the state of Arizona sometime in the 1990s. While the Internet’s historical record takes pains to portray “Wasteland” in a positive light, using words like ‘critically acclaimed’ and ‘groundbreaking,’ “Wasteland” ultimately didn’t make much of an impression on gamers of the era outside of the tiny niche that was PC gaming. 1988 was smack in the middle of the post-crash console resurgence, and any game that wasn’t released on the NES was destined to be all but forgotten.
Brian Fargo couldn’t let go this idea for an RPG set in a post-nuclear holocaust world, however, and a nearly a decade after the release of “Wasteland” took another stab at the idea. This time, however, Fargo included some alt-history and perpetual 50’s-era pop culture that made the setting much more interesting (plus by 1997, PCs were nearing the point of ubiquity in homes around America). The result was the ‘Fallout’ franchise, which is being kept alive today by Bethesda Softworks after several rounds of typically-American corporate shuffling and IP buyouts.
Two years after Fargo lost control of Interplay in 2000, he created a new game publishing house, inXile, a pun on the fact that he was ‘in exile’ from the other publishing house he founded. With ‘Fallout’ out of reach and a raging demand for new RPGs after the disastrous 7th Generation, in 2013 inXile took to Kickstarter to raise funds that would allow Fargo to brush the dust off of his ‘Wasteland’ IP and create the sequel nobody expected: “Wasteland 2,” which keeps alive the PC RPG roots of the ‘Fallout’ franchise, in spite of Bethesda’s efforts to take the series full FPS.
Presentation
“Wasteland 2” is built in the Unity Engine… and really shows it. There is nothing ambitious or spectacular about the game’s visuals. There are only a small number of not-very-detailed character models. Even worse, there are an even smaller number of hand-drawn character portraits that pop-up alongside dialog boxes… and these portraits are shared among PCs and NPCs alike, so it’s entirely likely to run into several reasonably-important characters that are doppelgangers of a party member… and each other. The environments do look quite nice, though, and manage to squeeze a lot of grungy detail out of the engine.
The audio is not particularly impressive either. The soundtrack is, at best, not noticeable. At worst, the music is actually grating. inXile also didn’t bother to pay the licensing fees for any iconic ‘80s music, so there are no Hair Metal radio broadcasts to cover-up the awful background music. There is a fair amount of voice-acting throughout “Wasteland 2,” but it’s a mixed bag. Some of the lines are well done, while others feel like one-take wonders.
Technically, “Wasteland 2” isn’t as rock-solid as it should be. While I didn’t experience any crash-to-desktop moments, I had a number of bad experiences with the camera getting screwed up and becoming unresponsive, as well as the environmental textures randomly transforming into analog TV test patters and flickering obnoxiously. That said, “Wasteland 2” doesn’t have any particularly glaring quest-related bugs, which is a huge improvement over Fargo’s old RPGs published under Interplay. The single best thing about “Wasteland 2” from a technical perspective, however, is the fact that the game FINALLY includes native Xinput controller support. It was incredibly nice to be able to play a Brian Fargo RPG with a gamepad without having to spend hours monkeying around with an input mapper first. This controller support is extremely well-done.
Story
“Wasteland 2” picks up 15 years after the events of “Wasteland.” Somehow prescient of the fact that NOBODY played “Wasteland” (and wouldn’t be able to tolerate the horrible UI to play it today, now that it’s on GOG, and bundled with “Wasteland 2” for free), the writers take great pains to beat players over the head with summaries of the previous game’s events, as well as the game world’s history.
In 1998, thermonuclear war broke out between the United States and Russia, resulting in the entire world becoming an irradiated wasteland. One group of Army Corps Engineers were out in the middle of the Arizona desert and survived the nuclear exchange relatively unscathed. This group decided to take up the mantle of law enforcement, thinking themselves the last of the U.S. Army, forming the Desert Rangers.
One group of Desert Rangers, all pre-generated characters from “Wasteland,” Snake Vargas, Angela Deth, Hell Razor, and Thrasher, cleared out an old prison and made it their base of operations. This group ended up battling a crazed cyborg as well as a malfunctioning AI computer at Base Cochise, which was pumping out a never-ending stream of military robots.
As “Wasteland 2” opens, the Desert Rangers have spent the last 15 years consolidating their position at the Citadel, a new base they took over after kicking-out the crazed cyborgs and technology worshippers. Much of the territory they protected in Arizona has backslid into lawlessness and violence, as gangs of raiders and mutated animals have returned in the Rangers’ absence.
The player takes command of a squad of four characters, either pre-gens or custom-created, and on orders from the now General Snake Vargas, head out into the Arizona wastes to prove themselves. Their first mission is to investigate the death of a top Ranger named Ace, and finish his mission of installing repeater units on as many radio antennae as the team can find.
The team will find themselves on the horns of several dilemmas, and must frequently choose between two equally-undesirable factions as allies. Ultimately, many shades from the past (i.e., the original “Wasteland”) come back to haunt the Rangers, leading them from Arizona to California and back. This journey took me roughly 70 hours.
In general, the writing and setting in “Wasteland 2” feels incredibly bland and uninteresting when compared side-by-side with the ‘Fallout’ series, which is strange considering how many themes they have in common. ‘Wasteland’s’ world is perpetually stuck in the 1980s (one of the worst decades), culturally, whereas ‘Fallout’s’ pseudo-‘50s world has a lot more charm. Even the revisionist history and crazy technology of ‘Fallout’ feels more natural and better-realized than that of ‘Wasteland.’ I suspect that “Wasteland 2’s” writing suffers due to the fact that ‘Fallout’ used up all of Fargo’s and the other writers’ good ideas and they can’t really re-use them without being sued for infringement.
Gameplay
While it may pale in comparison to ‘Fallout’ in most other ways, “Wasteland 2” makes up for its deficiencies in the sheer quality of its gameplay. “Wasteland 2” essentially takes everything that was good about “Fallout” and “Fallout 2,” then removes everything that was bad about those games. I already mentioned the excellent controller support, but the simple fact that “Wasteland 2” is a team-based game instead of a solo experience fixes so much that made playing the old ‘Fallout’ games a chore.
In general, character design has a very old-school ‘Fallout’ feel to it. Characters have a number of stats that affect their capabilities. They can pick and choose from a large variety of useful (and useless) weapon skills and non-weapon skills. Every few level-ups, characters gain a stat point or a Perk point, allowing them to specialize even further or make-up for a deficiency. Having four characters from the outset instead of one allows different members of the team to focus on specific skills, instead of struggling to make one character somehow amazing at everything. In addition to the four characters the player starts with, it’s possible to recruit up to three NPC followers… and the player can actually issue commands to them in battle! Without using a mod!
Combat is also largely identical to “Fallout” and “Fallout 2.” Everything takes place on an isometric map with a square grid. Characters receive Action Points (AP) at the start of their turn. Doing things during their turn costs AP, and they can save up to 2 AP to carry over to their next turn. Ranged attacks consists entirely of guns, while melee attacks take the form of knives, clubs, and knuckles. Precision strikes allow characters to aim at specific body parts of enemies (much like ‘Fallout’s’ VATS), but aren’t particularly useful due to the significant accuracy penalties involved. Characters can be knocked unconscious by attacks and automatically recover once the battle is over… or they might be knocked out and start bleeding to death, which requires a character with points in the Surgeon skill to use an item to revive them… or they might just be outright killed, at which point the player is free to reload a previous save or continue on without that character if they hate fun.
Outside of combat, many skills come into play, both in conversations and in environmental interaction, making a good team of Rangers one where every character has only a few skills, but they are all different from what other characters have. I did not min/max my team of Rangers: Instead I re-created the MeltedJoystick crew, and we did alright, despite the wasted skill points I blew on my four main characters when NPC companions ended up far better with those skills (Yes! NPCs can help outside of battle too!). In general, “Wasteland 2” feels well balanced and was an enjoyable RPG experience… right up until the final battle, which experiences a massive difficulty spike right after a point of no return. That’s just bad design, and putting such an unpleasant experience right at the end of the game guarantees that it will stick with players as a bad last impression.
Overall
“Wasteland 2” feels kind of like a bland copy of “Fallout 2,” but with more refined gameplay mechanics… and that’s because it IS. This is definitely the next post-nuclear RPG that genre fans have been awaiting for a long, long time. It’s a shame inXile will never get its hands on the ‘Fallout’ IP, and all of the great story fluff that went with it, ever again.
Presentation: 2.5/5
Story: 3/5
Gameplay: 4.5/5
Overall (not an average): 4/5
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