[Wasteland 2 - Officiel] 16/12/2013 16h59 - Wasteland 2 Beta Preview Roundup #1

[HawK-EyE]

Source :
http://wastelandrpg.tumblr.com/post/70195935800/wasteland-2-beta-preview-roundup-1

While the backer beta is just that, a beta for backers, we did not NDA against coverage from LPers, twitcher streamers, or preview write-ups, in fact we encourage them. We’ve seen a lot of Youtube LPs pop up, like this one from MaskedGamer.

There’s also a number of sites doing writeups or video coverage, we’ll try to round up the majority of it on this blog.



Rock, Paper, Shotgun did a three-part video to cover and discuss the game.

Massively did an "MMO Burnout" preview of the beta.

If you really pay attention to the story (and the tombstones right at the very beginning of the game), you’ll find that this isn’t just a new game with a new map and a few Wasteland references thrown in for a laugh; Wasteland 2 takes us right back to that original area and into this surreal situation that recaptures what you played in 1988, but better. Did I just say that? I believe I did.

Character creation has several throw-backs to the original game as you select your attributes, combat skills, knowledge skills, and general skills with very low points to distribute at first. This was always a great part of Wasteland as you really needed to give a proper role to each party member, and not just let everyone have 10 in Lockpick and 10 in Energy Weapons and 10 in Toaster Repair (yes, it’s in the sequel, too) from the start. Moral decisions were a new thing for Wasteland, and in the sequel, you can choose your character’s personality based on skills like Hard Ass, Smart Ass, or Kiss Ass, to name a few.

I really had a blast with character creation in general. The outfit selection seemed limited, but each choice was different enough to really add character. Once you’re all set, you can pose your character for an avatar shot or choose from ready-made avatars to be used in the party window, combat, etc. There’s also room for a character biography and some RP elements like nationality (true to the original) and religion. Who knows — maybe these have a purpose later on.

Eurogamer did both a Let’s Play video and later on a written preview.

Certainly, a quick look at the character screen is enough to see that Wasteland 2 knows exactly who’s paying its bills, rewarding that sense of enlightened masochism from the start with a huge range of skills to choose from and so few points that every one counts. There are 10 weapon skills just for starters, sharing points with general skills that are broken down far more than usual. Field Medic for restoring health and Surgeon for reviving the downed are two different skills for instance, with speech checks likewise broken into Kiss/Hard/Smart Ass.

Even with a full team of four to spread skills over, you hit the wasteland greener than the occasional splash of vegetation on its hills and about as unequipped as it’s possible to get without having to charge naked at bandits and hope they laugh themselves to death. (That said, the opening areas still offer a much easier start than the original Wasteland, that being an RPG from a time when the genre’s idea of a polite welcome was limited to brushing the dust off the curb before stomping your party into it.)

Not all of the old-school charm is so charming, however, and in particular I am yet to be convinced by the combat. It’s turn-based, but so far without the tactical depth to make it interesting rather than simply slow. There are no stances, no targeted hits, each character is only likely to have any skill with a single weapon and toys like grenades are rarer than hens’ teeth. Environments also suffer from a general lack of detail or options, with the result that - so far at least - there’s not much to do except stand next to cover, take pot-shots and toggle opportunity fire that may or may not actually be taken. Later, having more choices will hopefully make things more interesting. Right now though, I’d trade it for faster, pausable real-time combat in a heartbeat, if only to get the regular skirmishes with cockroaches and low-level bandits over with all the faster.

Attack of the Fanboy penned up a preview.

Very easy to play, the game will not however, hold your hand or make things easy for you. Quests are straightforward and range from the ‘go here and get this’, to the more obtuse ‘scan radio frequencies in this area’ kind of missions. Exactly how to complete objectives may not always be flagged either. One thing the original game did so well was to simply not tell players how to do something, but give them the tools to figure it out for themselves. This is replicated in Wasteland 2 and it’s a move that rewards players for experimenting. In the first game for example, in the Highpool settlement, one of the characters you talk to mentions a cave across a small lake, but there is no such cave evident until you move around using your ‘perception’ skill to find an entrance. In Wasteland 2 there are totally innocuous radio towers that most people would overlook as either part of the landscape or irrelevant, until you decide to try out a computing skill on them and find that they have a purpose after all. The ability to try out different skills on a variety of objects and get a response is indicative of the value Inxile places on rewarding experimentation. This interconnectedness of skills, abilities, objects and outcomes all weaves together to create an environment that bristles with choice and discovery.

And finally, GameBanshee has a meaty 3-page preview.

The character system of Wasteland 2 is a real strength. Not only does it feature substantially more skills than many other RPGs these days, but somehow the game manages to make almost all of them useful. At the same time, it’s just stingy enough with the points at character creation and level-up to make you seriously consider how to build your party. In Wasteland 2, building a character that’s good at everything is impossible, and even an entire party is bound to have some weaknesses even if you try to maximize the spread of skills. It’s reasonably well balanced even at this early stage, and creating characters under this system is great fun.

What makes Wasteland 2 a bit different from other popular CRPGs, especially those in the Infinity Engine vein, is that it tends to be highly focused on skill use and action rather than on dialogue. Though there are plenty of conversations to be had, the game is more concerned with its world interactivity and reactivity than in giving you a hundred different conversation options to steer the story. Creative or logical skill use, or specific order of actions tends to be rewarded by the game and often leads to different results - Wasteland 2 doesn’t always telegraph its choices obviously, but you can count on it usually acknowledging your actions one way or another.

When it comes to matters of honor, Wasteland 2 is already capable even in its beta state. The game uses a turn-based combat system with turn order decided by initiative of the combatants, and it plays out on a square grid that is drawn when battle begins. Use of cover plays a fairly large role in combat, s Wasteland 2 actually features a full cover system that could be positively compared to XCOM: Enemy Unknown’s, making positioning and tactics such as flanking viable and often very important.

The combat encounter design is also generally strong, but could still use some work. Although enemy variety is good, and enemies have different types of abilities (such as giant toads that will use their tongues to steal weapons right out of combatants’ hands), your foes will rarely use team tactics and usually either settle to bum-rush your party, or hide behind some cover and take pot shots. But, when the game combines several enemy types together and provides some interesting terrain, often battles still end up being quite challenging - cover points are not always immediately accessible, and you’ll frequently need to use creative positioning to survive - but it never feels unfair and when you do make mistakes, you tend to learn from them quickly.

Lire la suite ... Modifié le 16 décembre 2013 par HawK-EyE