Wasteland 2 interview with InXile's Chris Keenan
Wasteland 2 interview with InXile's Chris Keenan
Interview - posted by Zed on Mon 2 July 2012, 14:24:25
Tags: Chris Keenan; Fallout; inXile Entertainment; Wasteland; Wasteland 2Nukapedia (also known as the Fallout Wiki - previously The Vault) have an interview up with InXile's producer Chris Keenan. It's mostly about Wasteland 2.
AC: Both Fallout and Wasteland have stood out from other Role Playing Game series by avoiding the "Light vs Dark" clique and instead presenting grey moral dilemmas - shooting the rabid pet dog "Rex" in Highpool perhaps the most famous (in Wasteland). Can we expect more of these, and what challenges do you face in writing these encounters?
CK: Absolutely. Many current RPGs are about your overall standing in the world. Are you good or evil? That isn’t granular enough for the play experience we want to get out of this. Every area you visit is about presenting moral dilemmas for the player to figure out on their own. It’s not a black and white decision. Sometimes, you’ll feel like you’re making the right move and it will turn out completely different than you thought. Every NPC has their own personality, including your companions and they don’t always listen to you. One companion NPC is a bit of a kleptomaniac. When shit hits the fan during combat, he might “accidentally” take an item from your inventory. If you notice it, you can ask for it back, kill him or even politely ask him to leave. He might not want to give it back. What do you do if he is an assassin in combat? Deal with it for the advantage or kill him?
AC: Moving under the hood, Unity have been talking up the Unity 4 Engine this week, particularly trumpeting features like Linux support. Are we right in thinking from the feature list and Brian Fargo's previous announcements Unity have provided that it is Unity 4 that Wateland will use, and is there any particular stand out feature in Unity that you're looking forward to experimenting with?
CK: We are using Unity for Wasteland 2. After evaluating all of our options, it was the perfect choice for our team. So far, my favorite feature has been the Unity Store. We’ve been able to save a ton of time on the front end by purchasing items and scripts for prototyping. While this can take months to get to a point where you have the base assets to even start creating test levels, we are there already. Brian has always said the focus of this game is the gameplay and it will allow us to get more iterations on that aspect than we could have with any other engine.
Click here for the full interview.
Found this over at NMA.
AC: Both Fallout and Wasteland have stood out from other Role Playing Game series by avoiding the "Light vs Dark" clique and instead presenting grey moral dilemmas - shooting the rabid pet dog "Rex" in Highpool perhaps the most famous (in Wasteland). Can we expect more of these, and what challenges do you face in writing these encounters?
CK: Absolutely. Many current RPGs are about your overall standing in the world. Are you good or evil? That isn’t granular enough for the play experience we want to get out of this. Every area you visit is about presenting moral dilemmas for the player to figure out on their own. It’s not a black and white decision. Sometimes, you’ll feel like you’re making the right move and it will turn out completely different than you thought. Every NPC has their own personality, including your companions and they don’t always listen to you. One companion NPC is a bit of a kleptomaniac. When shit hits the fan during combat, he might “accidentally” take an item from your inventory. If you notice it, you can ask for it back, kill him or even politely ask him to leave. He might not want to give it back. What do you do if he is an assassin in combat? Deal with it for the advantage or kill him?
AC: Moving under the hood, Unity have been talking up the Unity 4 Engine this week, particularly trumpeting features like Linux support. Are we right in thinking from the feature list and Brian Fargo's previous announcements Unity have provided that it is Unity 4 that Wateland will use, and is there any particular stand out feature in Unity that you're looking forward to experimenting with?
CK: We are using Unity for Wasteland 2. After evaluating all of our options, it was the perfect choice for our team. So far, my favorite feature has been the Unity Store. We’ve been able to save a ton of time on the front end by purchasing items and scripts for prototyping. While this can take months to get to a point where you have the base assets to even start creating test levels, we are there already. Brian has always said the focus of this game is the gameplay and it will allow us to get more iterations on that aspect than we could have with any other engine.
Click here for the full interview.
Found this over at NMA.
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