Comments on: Thoughts: Wasteland 3

By: ilitarist

ilitarist — Fri, 02 Oct 2020 12:17:44 +0000

I always viewed Fallout combat as a good part of a huge mix. As in unlike, say, BioWare or even Infinity Engine games combat is affected by all the other systems and vice versa. You steal enemy ammo and lure him to a place where his enemies live. Or during the combat you miss your target, hit some neutral character and now his faction hates you. You wouldn’t play a series of combat encounters from Fallout (unless you play Fallout Tactics which is a little different) for their own sake. If there’s no interesting exploration, story, dialogue, choices and consequence then devs probably should have made XCOM/Battle Brothers/etc style game.

Even Bethesda Fallout games have some of this interconnection of mechanics. That description of Raegan robot faction broke me because it’s exactly what Fallout 3 did but with all the subtlety and finesse removed. InXile, you were the chosen one, you were supposed to outdo AAA safe and boring RPGs, not to outdumb them.

By: Hentzau

Hentzau — Tue, 29 Sep 2020 12:55:26 +0000

If you already have the game pass then it costs nothing except bandwidth. The one thing to keep in mind is that the first couple of hours of the game are extremely representative and it doesn’t get any better than that, so it’s fine to drop it if you’re not enjoying it.

By: Hentzau

Hentzau — Tue, 29 Sep 2020 12:53:09 +0000

The music was good in places, but really weirdly used. The best one is wasted on a random fight in a prison.

By: Hentzau

Hentzau — Tue, 29 Sep 2020 12:48:48 +0000

The combat is fine in the same way that the old Fallout combat is fine, in that there are multiple ways to break it and turn it into a series of hilarious one-sided massacres. Doing so requires understanding the character system and a certain amount of min-maxing, which I happen to really really enjoy – I liked hoovering up XP from lockpicking and hacking and disarming traps and becoming more powerful, because sometimes the most basic example of “number go up” is enough to hook me. If you cannot turn your brain off for the talky bits, though, this isn’t remotely going to save Wasteland 3.

By: Ninja Foodstuff

Ninja Foodstuff — Tue, 29 Sep 2020 08:36:58 +0000

I had very much written this off given that I did not really make it past the prologue of the first, but I’m now actually intrigued to give it a go, especially as I am likewise enjoying the xbox game pass.

(Also, I’m loving the fact you are writing reviews again!)

By: innokenti

innokenti — Tue, 29 Sep 2020 00:58:01 +0000

I found this considerably more enjoyable than Wasteland 2, with the same caveats as mentioned.

It was disappointing that there were limits on the cool things you could do with characters builds in some cases (some weapons are just not that effective) and it was overall a bit clunky, but the combat really was fun to play around with. Having ridiculous one-shot damage with my sniper was a particular highlight, some notable shots knocking out most of the healthbars of a scorpitron or a major boss.

One other notable thing – the game’s use of music was quite nice, putting some good western tracks very much in the foreground of a handful of fights and really setting the mood up well. Just baffling that it /wasn’t/ the boss fights.

I also enjoyed the bite-size nature of the whole thing. I can certainly get stuck in for a while with an RPG I love, but given this was sailing mainly on its mechanics, I appreciate the moderate size.

By: ilitarist

ilitarist — Mon, 28 Sep 2020 13:49:20 +0000

Glad to see you came back in full!

My favourite part about Wasteland 2 was that it let me make a professional sniper who was great with sniper rifle but didn’t have enough AP to shoot it even once. I’ve restarted the game and was turned off by an extremely bland combat, juvenile writing and the whole ugliness of the game. Also the story made little sense and I’m surprised people think Bethesda Fallout games are too frivolous with consistency and realism. Cause Wasteland 2 was just horrible in that regard and also had toaster repair skill. You say combat is fine but meh, I don’t know. It’s not a tactics game like XCOM where you can ignore most of the story, those dialogues you post are too cringey.

Lol, robot Raegan. fou